curley maple axe handle question

[PB Wilson]

Personally I am blessed every time I go in the woods or hold a nice piece of wood in my hands . From Zebra or Canary wood to a nice piece of pine I am truly blessed .

It is not that there is no wood without a thousand uses . It is that we have not discovered them yet .

I agree 1000%.

 

[Lieblad]

.....

 

[markv]

I smoked goat meat once . Very hard to keep the bowl lit . L:O:L

O:K: so its older than granma .

i used to smoke turkeys , they are extremely hard to light

 

[300Six]

"Curly" maple pattern is not a structural flaw but rather 'an expensive to buy' desirable/attractive and rare version of standard Rock (USA term) or Sugar Maple lumber. Runout/end grain orientation very much counts when it comes to physical use. Maple at any specialty lumber yards is not soft and in fact is one of the hardest of the hardwoods around. Reason I say that is Box Elder (Manitoba Maple), and even Red/Silver Maple, also happen to be "Acer"'s (the genus) but are shunned by lumbermen and mills.
I ordered a 'AA special fancy figured ' walnut gunstock years ago and the custom maker convinced me to go one grade down because I told him I actually intended to use the rifle for hunting (vintage 45-90 Remington rolling block). He knew that decorative 'run out' grain going through the wrist of the piece would 'look like a million bucks while hanging on the wall' but would be structurally vulnerable when subjected to heavy recoil, and therefore refused to fill the order until I relented..

 

[19-3ben]

i used to smoke turkeys , they are extremely hard to light

Plus, I can never figure out which end to light, and which to suck on.

 

[Square_peg]

I encourage everyone to stay away from curly maple. The market is flooded with 'poached' maple trees. Tree poachers are coming into your publicly owned forests and stealing curly maple from you. These forests are managed for timber and the proceeds fund schools (keeping your taxes down). Thieves come in and steal your maple. They take just the curly maple from the base of the trunk and leave the rest of your valuable timber rotting on the forest floor. This has occurred in numerous local forests here in the Northwest.

Here are photos of one such theft I came upon in your forest.

 

[300Six]

Square_Peg, seeing examples of wood poaching is a crying shame. But somebody has gotta be pretty sharp at being able to spy curly maple while it's still on the stump with bark on! Or are they merely gambling? Far as I know around here only at the sawmill can it be determined whether the wood is figured or not.
Curly Maple and Bird's Eye Maple oftentimes are used by paddle makers for special or custom orders and no one has ever told me they aren't as strong. But for sure they are really pretty!

 

[Chignecto Woodsman]

I encourage everyone to stay away from curly maple. The market is flooded with 'poached' maple trees. Tree poachers are coming into your publicly owned forests and stealing curly maple from you. These forests are managed for timber and the proceeds fund schools (keeping your taxes down). Thieves come in and steal your maple. They take just the curly maple from the base of the trunk and leave the rest of your valuable timber rotting on the forest floor. This has occurred in numerous local forests here in the Northwest.

Here are photos of one such theft I came upon in your forest.

Not just poachers, but the forestry industry itself does this. Have land with good hardwood next to an industry clearing? Say goodbye, because they'll turn it into toilet paper and settle for a fraction of what it's worth. Otherwise, you can spend ten years paying some local schmuck to fight a team of the country's top lawyers.

 

[300Six]

Not just poachers, but the forestry industry itself does this. Have land with good hardwood next to an industry clearing? Say goodbye, because they'll turn it into toilet paper and settle for a fraction of what it's worth. Otherwise, you can spend ten years paying some local schmuck to fight a team of the country's top lawyers.

In the quest for exportable building materials Canada is really selling itself short. Oftentimes I look at boreal forest spruce studs at Home Depot and Rona to notice 150 years worth of growth rings within a 2x4. It'll be a few lifetimes before another tiny tree just like it can ever be harvested. 35 years ago Crown Zellerbach in Kelowna was only releasing fir plywood in the domestic market if it was rejected by their fussy Japanese clients. Also at the time in Prince Rupert I watched truckloads of fresh cut old growth logs being loaded daily onto container ships headed to the Orient.

 

[Square_peg]

Square_Peg, seeing examples of wood poaching is a crying shame. But somebody has gotta be pretty sharp at being able to spy curly maple while it's still on the stump with bark on! Or are they merely gambling?

There are ways to tell curly maple. I've withdrawn them from this forum for fear of encouraging other poachers.

 

[Chignecto Woodsman]

In the quest for exportable building materials Canada is really selling itself short. Oftentimes I look at boreal forest spruce studs at Home Depot and Rona to notice 150 years worth of growth rings within a 2x4. It'll be a few lifetimes before another tiny tree just like it can ever be harvested. 35 years ago Crown Zellerbach in Kelowna was only releasing fir plywood in the domestic market if it was rejected by their fussy Japanese clients. Also at the time in Prince Rupert I watched truckloads of fresh cut old growth logs being loaded daily onto container ships headed to the Orient.

Yes, same here. They are cutting mountain hardwood and sending it off to China for toilet paper, press board, and wood pellets. A book I have with stories from local lumberjacks has a pretty common theme of the men condemning the forestry industry after the end of axes and hand saws, pretty similar to the feelings people have today working 20 years for a company and then being let go without any compensation.

There was a good documentary on CBC a year ago, something like that, about poaching. A lot of it is in Russia due to the immense forests, and it ends up in Kent and other stores.

 

[300Six]

There are ways to tell curly maple. I've withdrawn them from this forum for fear of encouraging other poachers.

Understandable, and thank you. My neighbour recently had a few large Maples removed on their property because they were dangerously overhanging the house and one of them (after being cut down) showed exquisite curly figure throughout some of the resulting firewood. I spirited away (with their permission) a few chunks of this stuff but the tree exterior didn't look to be any different from that of the surrounding trees, to me.

 

[Square_peg]

2 months ago some local thieves were charged with stealing maple. This was several counties away from where I've found maple theft. The problem is wide spread.

"Three Lewis County men and a Winlock wood buyer have been indicted by the federal government on suspicion of cutting bigleaf maple trees in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and selling the wood for use in musical instruments. "


Good on you for saving some of your neighbors beautiful wood from the fireplace.

 

[300Six]

2 months ago some local thieves were charged with stealing maple. This was several counties away from where I've found maple theft. The problem is wide spread.

"Three Lewis County men and a Winlock wood buyer have been indicted by the federal government on suspicion of cutting bigleaf maple trees in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and selling the wood for use in musical instruments. "


Good on you for saving some of your neighbors beautiful wood from the fireplace.

In fact the neighbour (the wife, in fact) is keen on trying to do something with the wood other than giving it away or burning it, and that's why I pointed out the consistent spacing and uniformly wavy lines in the chainsawed (and already split) 24 inch logs.
I endlessly toyed with split firewood size rounds 5 years ago (when I was a wood shop teacher at a rural high school) but you really need a large wheel bandsaw with ripping blade (not a common item), commercial table saw, jointer and planer in order to process stuff like this. End results were great though and the students learned about local trees first hand (they were asked to bring bark-on pieces from home) and produced gavels, mallets and handles and chair legs out of various types of local wood (usually via a lathe) after, and my operational budget became more devoted towards bits/blades/sharpening than it was to wood purchase. They also made house frame models with class-processed white pine, poplar and basswood.

 

[gben]

Pro baseball has recently been using Maple bats, and they make sure the grain is oriented so the ball impacts the side of the grain, not the end-grain.

There is no problem with using maple for handles at all as long is it is done intelligently and has the grain traveling the length of the handle the best it can.

When handles are made with aesthetics first in mind instead of function, then they will probably not be as strong as a traditional handle, but those who pursue such aesthetics are probably not going to put as much strain on the tool as those used by real tradesmen or craftsmen anyway. Anything is good for a mantle-piece.

 

[300Six]

Pro baseball has recently been using Maple bats, and they make sure the grain is oriented so the ball impacts the side of the grain, not the end-grain.

There is no problem with using maple for handles at all as long is it is done intelligently and has the grain traveling the length of the handle the best it can.

Sam Bat had it's origins in Ottawa (I think they're located in nearby Carleton Place now) and pioneered the use of Maple bats instead of the traditional Ash. I don't know what ever possessed baseball leagues to use Ash instead of much more durable Hickory, and allowing the substitution of maple must have been a real bureaucratic hurdle to overcome.
Nobody uses end-grain oriented handles for anything. This would be like coring a tree trunk in order to obtain a handle. It would break before you even began to shape it. I think I know what you were getting at though (perpendicular to the length grain or parallel) and that's why there are embossed stamps on all bats, and why I advise folks choosing curved axe handles to avoid 'manufactured' runout.