What do you think of clear maple for handle material???

C

Cushing H.

Gold Member
Joined
Jun 3, 2019
Messages
2,714
As part of our prepping to move to KY, we are having a bunch of painting done. One of the rooms we outfitted years ago as an office, and in that room has been a collection of lean-against-the-wall bookshelf units (modular) ..... rather nice, solid (and expensive). to paint they needed to be removed from the room. HOWEVER, the wonderful, thoughtful, forward looking folks who installed the shelves use very aggressive torx headed screws to secure the modules side to side. (understated scream here .... they used aggressive thread, *very* small torx heads, and drove the screws into *solid* maple to a depth of something like 2.5 inches. despite trying to unscrew the screws (= broken torx bits), or to drill out the screws (which were hardened (=dulled regular drill bits, and a carbide drill that did cut the screw metal, but was impossible to track the length of the drill without skipping off the side into the wood).

End result - we had to take a circular saw to the assemblies to get them out of the room (again, muted scream re the lack of forward thinking of the people who installed these....)

I was planning on throwing out the wood, but now that I look at it, there are a great many potential 5-6 inch lengths of furniture grade clear maple, with cross section of 1 1/4" by 3". has anyone used clear maple for handles???? Is it worth cutting up into blocks and using .... potentially dying and stabilizing???? (also, there is quite a bit, so I likely will be able to give away a bit of it.....)

Please let me know your experiences and thoughts??
 
It dyes well.
It is fine as-is for kitchen knives and field users. Not stunning, but practical.

I would dye four pieces each in red, green, blue, brown, and black. Try them out on some basic knives and see what you think.
Personally, I would stabilize it, because I prefer stabilized wood for finishing ease.
 
I made a wa handle out of unstabilized maple with a dark bolster. I like the look and it has kept well, probably about three years old now. It was finished with tru-oil.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top