A take of curly maple..

[Hanleyster]

I was visiting a friend's house this weekend and he was showing me all his new toys like boats and quads in his garage.

Then he took me to his wood piles to show off his stash.

He asked me if I know what curly maple is and I say yes, due to seeing it on speakers as veneer I know its quite valuable .

Well, he had about a full cord of it all cut and split into firewood!

His cousin had a tree fall and it was all beautiful curly maple, but he had no idea it was anything special.

The guy burnt up about half the tree before my friend told him about its rareness and value.

lol

He gave me a piece, I might have my father-in-law lathe it into something like a spoon or something, not sure.

 

[toxcrusadr]

Oh the humanity.

People don't normally think of finding a sawmill when a tree goes down.

 

[blhagstrom]

Not a big deal.
Lots of Maple trees here.
Just about all maple fire wood I have obtained and split is curly.
The wood is not rare.

When I was turning wood, I made some really nice bowls and such from fire wood.

Logging the actual Maple tree is in urban area is impossible, so a of maple is simple chopped for fire wood.
They need to bring the trees down in pieces.
When the big ones fall here, they can squash cars and kill the riders or split houses and maybe kill you.

Aging the timber so it doesn't split all to hell is a trick. That may be the value of the lumber.
Timber is timber.


NOW, when someone spots a Black Walnut tree that need to come down. The wood turners get notified and come with their saws.

Madrona also.

 

[Dingman]

Not a big deal.
Lots of Maple trees here.
Just about all maple fire wood I have obtained and split is curly.
The wood is not rare.
NOW, when someone spots a Black Walnut tree that need to come down. The wood turners get notified and come with their saws.
Madrona also.

Sorry to OP, off topic - I live in a part of Des Moines that was a walnut orchard? quite a long time ago- over a century. So, we still have alot of black walnuts around.
Per your comment - an elderly lady next door had two large black walnuts in the back yard. She went to nursing home, the house sold - the new owners wanted to remove the trees. I told them they could get paid for the trees (I really didn't want them cut at all), but no - they paid a few $K to have them removed.
I wish I had pics, I counted the rings after and came out at around 110. Dayum. They were big trees and nothing else really grew around them.
I have a few of my own, and so do most all neighbors.

OK, back to maples. Yup, they get large and are soft. Especially the silver maples, right? I had one removed, it was going to squish my little house, LOL>

 

[blhagstrom]

Bigleaf maple.
100' tall, 4' diameter.
I wouldn't call it a softwood but perhaps.
They are monsters at 100'

The forests here are massive and there is so much untouched areas because the Cascades are impossible to get into that there is more rotting wood than growing wood.
A forester told me that and after trying to keep my back yard tidied up I buy it. I have some 80 year old re-growth and the amount of dead and drops is amazing.

Re-growth is pretty wild here too.
We had a 'Charlie Brown" Christmas tree 15 years ago, live baby fir that I planted. It has to be 40' now.

 

[GuyK]

Bigleaf maple.
100' tall, 4' diameter.
I wouldn't call it a softwood but perhaps.
They are monsters at 100'...

Yup, though our broadleaf maples don't generally get that big. Yes, there are many all over the place that large or even greater, but most tend to start dying earlier than that. They tend to rot from the inside out. And the wood is very soft. Looks like sugar maple, which is hard as rocks, but about as soft as poplar.

 

[toxcrusadr]

Urban logging is more popular than you might think. Although it is sometimes difficult to bring down a large tree intact, you do only want the trunk in 8-10 ft pieces so you don't need 100 feet of room to drop it all at once. The biggest problem is nails and fencing which can dull the sawmill blade.

Here's a black walnut I got out of a guy's back yard a couple years ago. He called the Forestry office at the Conservation Dept. looking for someone to take it off his hands, and I knew people over there so they called me. The deal was he paid for the tree service to take it down and cut it into exactly whatever pieces I wanted, and I removed the entire tree, every twig.



That's one of the three big logs - 30+", almost bigger than would fit on our sawmill.

Here's the stack of the largest planks:



We cut branches as small as 12" to get some interesting pieces. Some of the forky ones will make great live edge coffee tables. Just an enormous amount of lumber.

Didn't find a single nail or piece of fencing in this 80-100 yr old tree. Turns out we could have sold it to a veneer mill for big bucks, but who knew. Anyway I was so happy to be able to save it. No real need to chop up big trees for firewood, and if (when) I retire, I might just make a deal with a local tree service to harvest more of this kind of stuff.

 

[usedto]

Turns out we could have sold it to a veneer mill for big bucks, but who knew.

Black walnut? You could have got even more from a custom gun stock maker. Maybe still could if the planks are thick enough.

 

[toxcrusadr]

Yep, I am aware of gunstock blanks...We did cut some 2-1/2"-3" thick pieces (not shown in this stack) that can be used for gunstocks.

 

[Sam Cogley]

Damn, that's some serious lumber.

My dad has some 100+ year old black walnut that was logged somewhere east of Jeff City. My grandfather was working for the loggers, and the crew cut up the waste branches that the logging company didn't want. Those branches were as big around as that tree. I can't begin to imagine what the whole trees must have looked like.

 

[toxcrusadr]

 

[kaplang]

My picture doesn't do it justice due to the lighting but I bought this custom made console off Craig's List a few years ago. The door panels and the panels accross the top and sides are 3/4" solid Curley Maple ( not veneer ). Who ever built it did a masters job. I think it's gorgeous. I removed the stereo and TT that it came with and use it as my televioson stand.

 

[toxcrusadr]

That's purty.

 

[2011etec]

Lots of sugar maple here in Ontario .Only place bigger than here is Alaska.I burn maple and oak usually but when i worked in the local steel plant we use to get wood 4x4x8 foot blocking.Once it was cleared bug free it was for the taking.I burnt many a cord of mahogany and cherrywood.Tommorow i got a 60 foot manitoba maple aka box elder and various other names coming down so will have tons of so so wood to burn also.kaplang thats a beauty.

 

[blhagstrom]

Urban logging is more popular than you might think. Although it is sometimes difficult to bring down a large tree intact, you do only want the trunk in 8-10 ft pieces so you don't need 100 feet of room to drop it all at once. The biggest problem is nails and fencing which can dull the sawmill blade.

Here's a black walnut I got out of a guy's back yard a couple years ago. He called the Forestry office at the Conservation Dept. looking for someone to take it off his hands, and I knew people over there so they called me. The deal was he paid for the tree service to take it down and cut it into exactly whatever pieces I wanted, and I removed the entire tree, every twig.

View attachment 936620

That's one of the three big logs - 30+", almost bigger than would fit on our sawmill.

Here's the stack of the largest planks:

View attachment 936621

We cut branches as small as 12" to get some interesting pieces. Some of the forky ones will make great live edge coffee tables. Just an enormous amount of lumber.

Didn't find a single nail or piece of fencing in this 80-100 yr old tree. Turns out we could have sold it to a veneer mill for big bucks, but who knew. Anyway I was so happy to be able to save it. No real need to chop up big trees for firewood, and if (when) I retire, I might just make a deal with a local tree service to harvest more of this kind of stuff.

There is a little cottage industry place here in Duvall pulling in a lot of huge pieces and slabing them.
Must be cast offs from logging, nasty looking pieces of tree with fantastic figure.
The slabs are gigantic.

I got firewood once from someone the had 5 giant firs brought down in his back yard.
Because there wasn't room to drop them, they had to take them down in pieces.
$5000 to bring them down!
He thought perhaps he would make firewood to sell to re-coup some cost.
After hand splitting a few pieces, he gave the rest to me for free.
Must have been 14-15 cords of wood.

 

[2011etec]

Would love to have just one of your west coast cedars,id have enough kindling for life plus.

 

[dbALE]

No matter how pretty it is it burns the same. Some nice curl in small 7-8" branches. The log I sold was curly all the way through.

 

[toxcrusadr]

I never criticize people for burning the smaller stuff for firewood, but SO many huge trees brought down by tree services could be put to a much better use as lumber. Giant fir! Curly maple! I would love to have some of that stuff.

Alas, all I have for maple is mostly soft maple. Found this piece of Silver maple at the city yard waste dump. Completely spalted.


Including this guy right at the crotch...


Spirit of the tree??

 

[SuperjazzyJa]

There is a house in Stillwater, NJ that has a ginormous oak tree right by the master bedroom. It would easily take 4 or 5 people holding hands to "hug" that tree. Each branch is a tree unto itself. The leaves are huge! I hope that tree never falls on the house. It's gotta be hundreds of years old.

 

[2011etec]

There is a house in Stillwater, NJ that has a ginormous oak tree right by the master bedroom. It would easily take 4 or 5 people holding hands to "hug" that tree. Each branch is a tree unto itself. The leaves are huge! I hope that tree never falls on the house. It's gotta be hundreds of years old.

That tree has most likely been there before any white man was ever on this continent.Some of the giant redwoods have been alive for ever.