Tag Archive | silver
August 4, 2012  

Soft Maple Is Not Too Soft

Silver maple has a special place in my heart. It was one of the first trees I ever milled (I would say it was my first, but my memory isn’t that good). It was a tree taken out by our neighbor and had a short trunk, only about 6′ long, and about 24″ in diameter. At the time I knew little about processing lumber and nothing specific about maples, and didn’t know what I had. Looking back it was a great short log. It had very little heartwood, which meant that all of the boards were a bright white color. Plus, it had no knots except for the very center.

Silver maple comes in many different figures, including ambrosia (on the left), caused by small beetle holes in the middle of each tiger stripe.

Like I said, the lumber was nice, but I didn’t know how to feel about it. Around here, maple isn’t that prominent. We have a lot of silver maple in yards and along the big rivers, but this is basically walnut, cherry and oak land. The fact that it was maple threw me off, and the fact that it was silver maple really threw me off. I read what I could about it in books (since the internet wasn’t widely available). I also checked out field guides, focused on magazine articles and tried my best to figure out where I could use the lumber.

Everything I read made silver maple sound like a loser. It was a secondary wood. The Audobon field guide probably said it was used for wood spoons (everything that has no odor is used for wood spoons). Sugar maple was what I wanted. It was hard maple – tough and durable, the kind of stuff they make the first few feet of a bowling alley out if, not to mention the pins. I didn’t have sugar maple, I had silver maple, which is a soft maple. But it looked nice (did I mention that?). Some of the more quartersawn boards even had a little curly figure. Nobody had anything good to say about soft maple. So, I didn’t use the wood right away. I dried it and slowly used it here and there as a secondary wood, but that was all.

When I used it, I found that it planed easily and would come out clean if the grain was straight. I also found it to work well with other tools and started to wonder more about why it gets such a bad rap. I finally figured it out – it’s the name.

They call silver maple “soft” maple, while sugar maple is called “hard” maple. I would argue that this is wrong. Silver maple should just be called “maple” and sugar maple should be called “unnecessarily hard maple”. That would even out the playing field. No one would want to use wood that was unnecessarily hard. They would want a wood that is just right, like silver maple. It does everything hard maple does, comes in almost all of the same variations and won’t make you dread running it through your tools.

I even used silver maple (ambrosia figure) for the floors in the kitchen of my last house. It looked great and worked fine as a floor. Sure, it dented some, but hard maple dents too. Think about it, even oak dents, so the question is, how soft is too soft?

Silver maple is soft compared to sugar (hard) maple, but that isn’t saying much. Compared to sugar (hard) maple, cherry and walnut are softwoods too. But, cherry and walnut are great woods and the fact that they are not rock hard makes them even better. They are not too heavy and they are a pleasure to run through the tools. So how does silver maple compare to woods besides hard maple?

To put it in perspective here are a few domestic species and their densities or specific gravity. The higher the number, the denser and heavier the wood. Though silver maple is not the hardest of the group, notice the fine company it keeps in the middle of the pack.

This entire secretary is made from silver maple. The door panels were a blistery, curly figure that happened in a big old log.

.35 – White Pine
.37 – Basswood
.42 – Poplar
.47 – Silver Maple
.50 – Cherry
.55 – Walnut
.63 – Sugar Maple
.63 – Red Oak

So, I eased into using silver maple. First, I just used it for stuff around the shop, like fixtures and jigs. Then, I started using it for drawer sides, then painted parts and then stained parts.

Now, I use it regularly and will gladly let it be the primary wood. It works especially well for my more rustic work because I can find specific logs with lots of character. They are often curly or wormy or figured in some way. And, at the same time you can find logs with clear, bright white lumber.

This sofa table was made from ambrosia maple.

I have been amazed at how diverse silver maple is, and I am always finding new places to use it. I would encourage you to give silver maple a try as well, and don’t forget to call me when it comes time to stain (staining maple is worthy of an entire blog posting on its own).

September 13, 2011  

White Wood, Sap Wood and Spalted Wood

Lately I have gotten a lot of questions about spalted wood and white woods. The main question I get about white woods is usually, “What white woods do you have?” They really are asking, “What species do you have that has a wide enough sap ring to produce white boards?” The customer usually ends up buying maple, but it starts a discussion about where white woods come from and what to look for in your purchases.
Every tree has heartwood, which is the center of the tree and sapwood, which is the outer layer of the tree, just inside the bark. The sapwood is white. Sometimes it is tinted a little, (poplar, for example, is slightly green) but it is always very close to pure white. The heartwood is always darker. Sometimes, it is only a shade darker (basswood) and sometimes it is chocolate brown (walnut) or even black (persimmon). This sapwood layer is thin in some trees and very thick in others.

This hickory was cut quickly, before it could spalt. Hickory often has sapwood that is thick enough to produce all white lumber.

Lumber that we consider white woods will have a much thicker ring of sapwood when compared to lumber that you would normally think of as being darker. Here is the trick, the sapwood needs to be thick enough to produce a reasonable amount white lumber. This is very often the case in species such as maple, ash, and hickory. In these trees, the sapwood is thick enough that we can use use it. In darker woods like walnut, cherry and oak the sapwood is usually only about and inch thick and is trimmed off like fat from a choice piece of meat. Within, the white woods it is possible to have a log that is almost entirely sapwood or a log that is almost all heartwood. It is most common that the white wood log is about half and half.

Recognizing the sapwood layer is the key to understanding the defects that can happen to white woods. Typical defects in white woods are end stain, sticker stain and spalting (although this is typically considered a positive among furniture makers). Sapwood is a live layer of the tree and will degrade or decay. I compare this layer to fresh produce. If exposed to hot and wet conditions the white wood will start to darken, then spalt (early rot) and then rot. In the same conditions, heartwood will not spalt and it will only very slowly rot. When purchasing white woods, pay attention to the color of the boards, especially if cut during the summer. If the logs are stored for a long period before cutting the ends will typically be darker. If the lumber is not dried quickly enough, it will have an overall darker color. And if it is dried on sticks that don’t allow for proper drying there could be sticker stains, which are dark stripes across the boards that very often do not plane out.

This is a good example of spalted silver (soft) maple. It shows the darker heartwood with minimal color change and the lighter sapwood with the dramatic spalting characteristics that woodworkers look for in light woods.

When shopping for spalted wood or looking to make your own, simply make sure that the log has a thick layer of sapwood, since this is the only area that will spalt. The maples spalt the best because of the sugar in them, but I have also seen good spalting in poplar, hickory and sycamore. I have even had some very nice spalted oak before, but again, this was only in the sap wood. All of the boards looked perfectly normal on the heartwood sides, except for some worm holes. Just remember white woods are sapwood and only sapwood spalts.

This dresser was built with WunderWoods lumber by customer Steve Palmer. It is a great example of consistently spalted lumber. This log had a lot of sapwood, which made some nice wide spalted boards.