Using Hard Maple


pghmyn

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If you have a lumber mill in your area (not a lumber yard or hardwood dealer, an actual mill) you can get much better prices. Thankfully living in the north east, maple is pretty plentiful around here. I pay a little over 2$ a board foot for hard maple at the mill. At a hardwood reseller, It's about twice that.

Hey joelav, where in Agawam? That's about an hour twenty for me one way, but if I'm looking at a sizable order it'd be worth my time. My local place is a lot more per BF than that.....

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Oh, I also had another question to go with my last post:

My jointer is rather small on the out feed table, and I have to joint boards that will be 56" long for a table top. I was thinking about making a small add-on MDF "table" to extend the surface. Does this seem like a good idea?

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Your jointer should be fine for pieces that length. I find it helpful to use an actual ripping blade when working with hard maple to reduce burning. The 40 tooth you bought is really on the high end in my opinion for rip cuts, although it's ideal for cross cuts. I use a 24 tooth blade like this one: http://www.amazon.co.../ref=pd_cp_hi_3 to rip maple. Other species you can get away with a 40 tooth combo for rips and crosscuts, but maple burns so easily.

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Your jointer should be fine for pieces that length. I find it helpful to use an actual ripping blade when working with hard maple to reduce burning. The 40 tooth you bought is really on the high end in my opinion for rip cuts, although it's ideal for cross cuts. I use a 24 tooth blade like this one: http://www.amazon.co.../ref=pd_cp_hi_3 to rip maple. Other species you can get away with a 40 tooth combo for rips and crosscuts, but maple burns so easily.

I've tested the blade with hard and soft maple and it rips and cross cuts with no burning at all. In comparison to my old blade, which turned the entire side of the wood brown, it is amazing.
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Hey joelav, where in Agawam? That's about an hour twenty for me one way, but if I'm looking at a sizable order it'd be worth my time. My local place is a lot more per BF than that.....

Me too... I'm just up the road in the Northampton area and pay around $5 a board foot for Maple locally.

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I probably consume 1000bf hard maple/year.

Like many woods, Hard Maple is a group-name for a family of trees. They all take finish differently. Slightly, but enough to be noticed. It's important for your project to source all your lumber at the same time. It adds to the cost, but you need to over-procure at the start.

My personal f-up was building a 300bf all birdseye. One of the boards was pulled from a different lot at the mill. Through the planer and wide belt, it all 'looked the same'. To my horror, when the 1lb seal-coat went on, one of the sticks in the table top was noticeably different. I REALLY don't like to color birdseye. I used a TS55 to rip out the offending stick and re-fabricated the top. While being overly anal, the new top turned out fine.

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Hey joelav, where in Agawam? That's about an hour twenty for me one way, but if I'm looking at a sizable order it'd be worth my time. My local place is a lot more per BF than that.....

It's actually in Westfield, so like an hour and 40 :)

I can't tell you how awesome this guys lumber is. Check out what this 1 common piece of ash (1.00/bf) looks like after it came out of the planer. These are crappy pics, but it is the curliest piece of wood I have ever seen The marks are waves, not tear-out as it appears in the pics

maxgbmu.jpg

With a flash

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ABSOLUTE nightmare to work with, but the table I am making is coming out nice. This ash was going to be secondary wood for a few other projects. This board is 10" wide and 9 feet long. Curly all the way.

In addition, this is a box I made out of some 1 common red oak for my chisels. This was supposed to be a laundry shelf for the basement that I wasn't even planning on putting a finish on (I'd rather work with oak than pine) More often than not, I get "planer surprises"

IMG_1050.jpg

An last but not least, these were in the pallet pile at the mill. I got them for free, Birdseye Ambrosia. Sorry for the crappy walnut danish oil, the wife insisted on it

Capt546ure.jpg

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Just thought that I would post a picture of the two beautiful pieces of Soft Maple that I picked up last Friday. The dimensions are 10.75" x 98.5" x 5/4". After letting them sit for 4 days now in my basement, there have been no real changes in the wood (cupping/warping/etc). They are remarkably straight and clear. My hardwood dealer charges a 25% surcharge for wide boards starting at 11" and I got lucky enough to JUST miss that. I got a great deal getting the boards for about $18.50 each.

My dad and I are not agreeing on how to prepare the boards, however. After watching Marc's video "The Jointer's Jumpin'" religiously ;) I know the process. Joint one side to be flat, then use planer to make opposite side parallel. However, my dad thinks we can just go straight to the planer. I don't want to immediately dismiss him as he has 25 years more experience than I do. But, I want the best result possible.

post-7471-0-10729700-1349829544_thumb.jp

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I let the wood sit a week in my basement to acclimate to the humidity and environment. I did all the rough size cuts on the band saw, jointed one side and one edge, and finally took a small amount off the top of the smaller boards. Now I am going to let them sit for a little bit because I have all the grain exposed.

While I was going through the lumber, some of it felt heavier than others. Is this normal in Soft Maple? I have never worked with the species before, and I want to know if there is something I should know about. I also have never taken "raw" lumber from a saw mill and jointed/planed it before. I hope my steps are correct.

Attached is a photo of the rough cuts I made.

post-7471-0-23061000-1349977610_thumb.jp

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Maple is great. I used it to make a bunch of kitchen cabinets, and I'm finished up on a laminated maple benchtop right now. It is much harder than oak and does work different being its not open grained. It doesn't tear out in small slivers like oak. I might describe it as chip out. (i'm not sure how much sense that makes) I know it's been mentioned, but sharp tools and light passes can't be stressed enough; that especially includes router bits. The freshly milled corners can be sharp enough to give you something like a nasty paper cut if you run your fingers down it feeding a pieces through a machine.

I've worked with curly maple a bit too and find the finished look is well worth the extra work. It works quite the same as clear hard maple. Sharp tools and light passes. A finely tuned smoothing plane comes in really handy too.

One of my main attractions to it is its lightness so I've never tried coloring it. I have heard that dyes can give figured maple some great looks. I've always give a coat of BLO, multiple coats of cut shellac, and finish up with Lacquer varnish or poly.

It should be relatively inexpensive throughout WI and widely available.

You can see lots of pictures of my work with maple on my blog http://birdsandboards.blogspot.com/

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Maple is great. I used it to make a bunch of kitchen cabinets, and I'm finished up on a laminated maple benchtop right now. It is much harder than oak and does work different being its not open grained. It doesn't tear out in small slivers like oak. I might describe it as chip out. (i'm not sure how much sense that makes) I know it's been mentioned, but sharp tools and light passes can't be stressed enough; that especially includes router bits. The freshly milled corners can be sharp enough to give you something like a nasty paper cut if you run your fingers down it feeding a pieces through a machine.

I've worked with curly maple a bit too and find the finished look is well worth the extra work. It works quite the same as clear hard maple. Sharp tools and light passes. A finely tuned smoothing plane comes in really handy too.

One of my main attractions to it is its lightness so I've never tried coloring it. I have heard that dyes can give figured maple some great looks. I've always give a coat of BLO, multiple coats of cut shellac, and finish up with Lacquer varnish or poly.

It should be relatively inexpensive throughout WI and widely available.

You can see lots of pictures of my work with maple on my blog http://birdsandboards.blogspot.com/

Those cabinets of yours look great. If I was to ever redo the cabinets at my house, I would plan on using maple. I am fortunate that I have such a plentiful source of my favorite wood here in Wisconsin (being our state tree, and all).
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Thanks for the compliment. One other thing i wanted to mention is about mixing maple boards and plywood. I'm sure it can be said for most species, but look out for color match before and after applying a finish. To save money I used 1/4 inch ply from menards for the panels and there is a very obvious color difference. I'd go with raised panels next time.

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I bought two boards that looked like they came from the same tree/batch. Because they were so large when I bought them, I really didn't notice weight differences. But when I cut them down to rough dimensions and began to plane them I noticed weight differences. They look the same in color and grain patterns, but some of the pieces are noticeably heavier than others. Is there something I should worry about?

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