AngryCorvair said:
barefootskater said:
Jumper K Balls (Trent) said:
Silly idea, but one I would be into .
Mail chunks of it to any GRM member interested and see what they can make out of it. The "Curtis Maple challenge". Have a running thread with all participants progress on their maple projects.
There is a lot of talent on this forum. I'd be interested to see what folks would/could do with it.
Of course the drying process to make the lumber stable and useable could take years.
I'd wait though.
Curtis Maple Challenge!
Id pay for a chunk + shipping
IN for $20.
Sounds like I need to order a lot of flat rate boxes.
JAGwinn
New Reader
2/8/20 7:55 p.m.
frenchyd said:
Curtis73 said:
frenchyd said:
In reply to Curtis73 :
Please rethink your idea.
First the work involved is massive. Eyeballing what you have there is about 4-500 board feet of wood once you get rid of the firewood. I kid you not having done it. Just moving a trees worth of wood is a monumental job. Hours of hard physical labor and that's if you have the required forklifts. Etc. You have to mill it right away. It's got to be stacked and stickered while it's freezing. Once it thaws it has to be under tarps with heavy weights on top, in part to hold the tarps on but also to keep the wood straight. Drying wood loves to warp, bend, curve, and twist. you need good natural ventilation. If on the ground you need something to keep it off the dirt or you will quickly ruin all your work. Gravel works. As does asphalt. But it's got to be flat! Anything less than flat that's the shape the boards will eventually assume.
In order to dry properly so it doesn't spalt ( that's streaks of mold going through the wood that look very colorful but is one step away from rotten) Stickering is thin even sticks set every 8-10 inches apart to let air go through the wood pile. We are talking hundreds of sticks made from already dried wood. No you cannot use green wood it will transfer mold.
Most sawmills won't cut yard trees because of embedded metal will damage or destroy their blades. If they do you are responsible for anything the blades hit. If your mill has a circular blade and the teeth are replaceable if you are in luck you might get by for $50 or less when it hits that metal that's assuming he only loses a few teeth and the rest can be resharpened. ( or more if he loses a lot of teeth.You don't want to know what replacing a 50-60 inch blade will cost if the blade is ruined because of embedded porcelean or something. ). A bandsaw mill can actually have the whole blade ruined. Those get very costly too but cheaper than those big circular blades.
Wood has grades. FAS stands for furniture and select. that's high quality wood with very limited knots or other defects. In Maple you want the white early wood on the outside. The darker heart wood isn't considered choice.
Mill run is wood just as it comes off the tree plainsawn not quarter sawn. It's the least expensive wood but you can assume over 15% waste and that's if your sawyer knows his stuff.
AW there is too much to cover here. It takes at least a year to dry wood outside. Don't attempt to do maple outside. Cut the boards 4/4 or 4 quarters. They will finish up 3/4" when dried and surfaced. Flooring is 3/4 inch thick. Furniture is made with 3/4. Etc.
when all finished you will likely have too much wood and yet not enough. Sounds crazy but I started out with over 55,000 bd ft of wood. I ruined over 1000 bd feet and sold 1200 bd ft for 10 cents a bd ft plus gave away at least a few thousand. I still have about 10,000 bd ft left with a lot of it having planned use.
but I've scrapped probably 5,000 bd ft because it was too long or insect damaged. Cut offs and bad warped twisted or curved.
This is all great info. Thank you.
I have a 36x48 barn with a gravel floor where I dry wood. Right now it has about 2000 bf of white and red oak, about 1000 bf of pretty rare wormy chestnut from the 40s, and other assorted lumber. Stickers I got... probably about 10,000 of them. Thousands of 3/4" plywood strips left over from projects at the theater.
I'm hoping the sawyer knows his stuff. He's retired after 30 years in the biz.
This whole process is mostly because my cousin and I are both carpenters, and five families have already taken all the firewood they can handle. I could process, season, and sell the rest, but I don't want to fill my 0.18 acre property with huge stacks of wood until fall, nor do I really have the time and lumbar fortitude to do all that processing. So... friend of a friend is going to mill it. This is how I start. Your input is fantastic. I'm sure now that I've started down the rabbit hole, we'll be talking a lot in the future.
... and flooring can be any thicknesses. I did a floor with strips of Luan once. Takes stain nicely. Many of the commercial options for things like oak hardwood or bamboo are 3/8"
Sorry to explain something you obviously already know.
Let me know what pieces turned out better than you expected. I once got some fiddle back black walnut and a massive white oak tree that was solid burl. I love watching wood come off the saw seeing what sort of figure/ coloring a piece has.
Don't be sorry!! I did not know this information and having watched sawmill videos on youtube, I appreciate the inside stuff of it! Thanks!
In reply to Curtis73 and frenchy :
for my $20 I would want 3 inch by 3 inch by 6 inch samples, no more precise than what you'd get with a bandsaw. Gonna try my hand at making pistol-grip shifter handles, so most of it will end up as sawdust.
JAGwinn said:
frenchyd said:
Curtis73 said:
frenchyd said:
In reply to Curtis73 :
Please rethink your idea.
First the work involved is massive. Eyeballing what you have there is about 4-500 board feet of wood once you get rid of the firewood. I kid you not having done it. Just moving a trees worth of wood is a monumental job. Hours of hard physical labor and that's if you have the required forklifts. Etc. You have to mill it right away. It's got to be stacked and stickered while it's freezing. Once it thaws it has to be under tarps with heavy weights on top, in part to hold the tarps on but also to keep the wood straight. Drying wood loves to warp, bend, curve, and twist. you need good natural ventilation. If on the ground you need something to keep it off the dirt or you will quickly ruin all your work. Gravel works. As does asphalt. But it's got to be flat! Anything less than flat that's the shape the boards will eventually assume.
In order to dry properly so it doesn't spalt ( that's streaks of mold going through the wood that look very colorful but is one step away from rotten) Stickering is thin even sticks set every 8-10 inches apart to let air go through the wood pile. We are talking hundreds of sticks made from already dried wood. No you cannot use green wood it will transfer mold.
Most sawmills won't cut yard trees because of embedded metal will damage or destroy their blades. If they do you are responsible for anything the blades hit. If your mill has a circular blade and the teeth are replaceable if you are in luck you might get by for $50 or less when it hits that metal that's assuming he only loses a few teeth and the rest can be resharpened. ( or more if he loses a lot of teeth.You don't want to know what replacing a 50-60 inch blade will cost if the blade is ruined because of embedded porcelean or something. ). A bandsaw mill can actually have the whole blade ruined. Those get very costly too but cheaper than those big circular blades.
Wood has grades. FAS stands for furniture and select. that's high quality wood with very limited knots or other defects. In Maple you want the white early wood on the outside. The darker heart wood isn't considered choice.
Mill run is wood just as it comes off the tree plainsawn not quarter sawn. It's the least expensive wood but you can assume over 15% waste and that's if your sawyer knows his stuff.
AW there is too much to cover here. It takes at least a year to dry wood outside. Don't attempt to do maple outside. Cut the boards 4/4 or 4 quarters. They will finish up 3/4" when dried and surfaced. Flooring is 3/4 inch thick. Furniture is made with 3/4. Etc.
when all finished you will likely have too much wood and yet not enough. Sounds crazy but I started out with over 55,000 bd ft of wood. I ruined over 1000 bd feet and sold 1200 bd ft for 10 cents a bd ft plus gave away at least a few thousand. I still have about 10,000 bd ft left with a lot of it having planned use.
but I've scrapped probably 5,000 bd ft because it was too long or insect damaged. Cut offs and bad warped twisted or curved.
This is all great info. Thank you.
I have a 36x48 barn with a gravel floor where I dry wood. Right now it has about 2000 bf of white and red oak, about 1000 bf of pretty rare wormy chestnut from the 40s, and other assorted lumber. Stickers I got... probably about 10,000 of them. Thousands of 3/4" plywood strips left over from projects at the theater.
I'm hoping the sawyer knows his stuff. He's retired after 30 years in the biz.
This whole process is mostly because my cousin and I are both carpenters, and five families have already taken all the firewood they can handle. I could process, season, and sell the rest, but I don't want to fill my 0.18 acre property with huge stacks of wood until fall, nor do I really have the time and lumbar fortitude to do all that processing. So... friend of a friend is going to mill it. This is how I start. Your input is fantastic. I'm sure now that I've started down the rabbit hole, we'll be talking a lot in the future.
... and flooring can be any thicknesses. I did a floor with strips of Luan once. Takes stain nicely. Many of the commercial options for things like oak hardwood or bamboo are 3/8"
Sorry to explain something you obviously already know.
Let me know what pieces turned out better than you expected. I once got some fiddle back black walnut and a massive white oak tree that was solid burl. I love watching wood come off the saw seeing what sort of figure/ coloring a piece has.
Don't be sorry!! I did not know this information and having watched sawmill videos on youtube, I appreciate the inside stuff of it! Thanks!
Agreed. Never be sorry for sharing your knowledge. I learned a TON from your post.
So I just emailed the mill. I'm diving in full force, possibly with folly, and definitely with abandon.
He quoted me a price for cutting it into kiln-dried T&G flooring and I bit. So, the first 275 sf that comes off will be flooring for my living room. His price came in actually a little cheaper than purchasing actual maple hardwood at a box store on sale so I couldn't resist. Not cheap in the grand scheme ($3.50/sf) but solid oak is usually $3 or more, and solid maple is more like $4-5. I asked him about the process and he took me back to watch as he was actually doing some oak for a guy. Rough cut first, dried to 3-4% in the kiln, squared up on the mill after drying, then he has a planer/processor that surfaces and does the T&G at the same time. Then he took me into the office to show me the Ash flooring he milled, and took me into his house to show me the (gasp) walnut he did for his living room. After seeing the process and the finished product, I was sold.
I figured I'd be spending $700 on getting good carpet installed, so $1000 for hardwood was something I could swallow.
Of course, I will have to do the finish, but I can't wait to have a "farm-to-table" floor in my house.
We'll talk finishes in another thread, I'm sure.
AngryCorvair said:
In reply to Curtis73 and frenchy :
for my $20 I would want 3 inch by 3 inch by 6 inch samples, no more precise than what you'd get with a bandsaw. Gonna try my hand at making pistol-grip shifter handles, so most of it will end up as sawdust.
I think I'll cut up a bunch that fit in flat rate boxes, so y'all can pay $20 for the flat-rate and get a solid chunk of stuff.
Baseball bats
Shift knobs and e-brake handles
Your own wooden chassis vehicle, like a Morgan. If you use a Windsor to power it then it'll be allowed that you claim the chassis to be made from Canadian Maple.
If I get enough "burl" out of this cutting, I'll do a gauge panel and shifter for the LeMans
Got wood reading this 
cuz all my red oak from the '08 drought in H'town, ended up being cut...split...and stacked as FIREWOOD........arrrgh
Curtis73 said:
AngryCorvair said:
In reply to Curtis73 and frenchy :
for my $20 I would want 3 inch by 3 inch by 6 inch samples, no more precise than what you'd get with a bandsaw. Gonna try my hand at making pistol-grip shifter handles, so most of it will end up as sawdust.
I think I'll cut up a bunch that fit in flat rate boxes, so y'all can pay $20 for the flat-rate and get a solid chunk of stuff.
Count me as interested when/if this happens.
How dense is maple? Maybe it "wood" make some good Pinewood Derby cars?
Heck, time to take up carving/whittling as a hobby, maybe.
In reply to slowbird :
Pretty heavy, but depends on variety. Sugar Maple for example is much lighter than most varieties.
Flooring is 3/4" thick because wood used to be cheap and and the flooring was a significant portion of the strength of the whole underfoot system.
Nowadays houses are built with plywood subfloors and the actual flooring isn't needed to be strong. It's rather uncommon still but I've used 5/16" actual hardwood flooring (not engineered or laminate). It's 100% easier to install (pneumatic stapler instead of that big whacking floor nailer), lighter, and more environmentally friendly. It's also easier because the level of the floor doesn't come up 3/4" so you don't need to cut all your doors and mess around with baseboards.
slowbird said:
How dense is maple? Maybe it "wood" make some good Pinewood Derby cars?
Heck, time to take up carving/whittling as a hobby, maybe.
Wide variations based on species. Softer stuff like sugar maple is sometimes used as a harder carving wood or for lathe turning, but the harder species are used as gym floors and bowling alleys.
I asked the sawyer what he thought it was (because I thought it was sugar) and he named two that he thought it could be; Norway or something else. He seemed to be leaning toward Norway. He equated it in hardness to Pin Oak, which I assume is one of the softer oaks, but that's just from my amateur firewood cutting observations.
This is what I am doing with a chunk of maple. Maple/walnut endgrain cutting board. It's a work in progress, but I'm really looking forward to the final result.
Also, I'd totally sign up to do something with your maple.
Good news... .my flooring is DONE so I can revive my zombie thread. I picked it up today. He confirmed that it was Norway Maple. There was one other maple he thought it might be, but he said the cambium layer was the clincher. Norway cambium dries brown and the other one he said dries white. Either way, he said that the two kinds of maple it could have been were both very hard and it's what they use as gym floors and bowling alleys.
He was also very pleasantly surprised at how much burl was in it. I can't wait to rip up this carpet and get started, but I want to install my fireplace first, or at least get it framed out.
I also had a walnut cut. I asked for one 2.5" thick, live-edge slab cut out of the middle and the rest done 5/4.
The maple. 1/2" x 5" T&G
And the walnut.
11GTCS
Reader
8/1/20 5:38 p.m.
Oh wow, that burl (tiger?) grain is amazing! Please post some pics after it’s installed and finished. I vote for sand it, no stain, urethane and send it!
The figure on that maple is gorgeous!
I have a few test pieces. If I do stain, it will be just with some honey color to add a slight contrast to the xylem/phloem. I'll try a couple really light stains, then I'll try an oil poly and a water poly. Not a big fan of water poly from a durability standpoint, but I'm afraid oil poly might make it darker than I want until I get a few coats on it.
No matter how you do it, that will look great. You gotta be stoked.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:
I have a few test pieces. If I do stain, it will be just with some honey color to add a slight contrast to the xylem/phloem. I'll try a couple really light stains, then I'll try an oil poly and a water poly. Not a big fan of water poly from a durability standpoint, but I'm afraid oil poly might make it darker than I want until I get a few coats on it.
Maple will yellow some. But if you put clear shellac on it will add just enough color to heighten the different grains and really cause the wood to visually pop.
Don't buy commercial floor finish. Most are versions of plastic and thus much softer than shellac. Plus if anything ever happens stain, water marks, gouges, you cannot do localized repairs of the finish. Shellac will seamlessly blend in since each coat melts the previous coat. So you can fix local spots with Shellac and have the repair invisible. Not so with commercial finishes.
Finally you eat shellac every time you take a pill. It's safe. It's environmentally sustainable, and a drunk sailor with a broom in a dust storm can do a flawless finish. ( I only slightly exaggerate)
If you have a shaper you can do tongue and groove. With care you might be able to do acceptable with a router table or even just a router. What I did in a lot of area's is 1/2 lap and use screws I'd take a 3/8's brad point drill bit because they leave nice even holes without scarf. Then I'd sink in a screw and make a plug to cover it. ( I can knock out 20-30 plugs in a few minutes sitting at the drill press using scraps and end cuts).
When the glue dried the next day I'd take a sharp chisel to level it off than sand it flush.
It takes a little more time to do but the floor doesn't squeak like it will if you staple the flooring down.
Steve_Jones said:
No matter how you do it, that will look great. You gotta be stoked.
Damn near cried when I saw it this morning.
frenchyd said:
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:
I have a few test pieces. If I do stain, it will be just with some honey color to add a slight contrast to the xylem/phloem. I'll try a couple really light stains, then I'll try an oil poly and a water poly. Not a big fan of water poly from a durability standpoint, but I'm afraid oil poly might make it darker than I want until I get a few coats on it.
Maple will yellow some. But if you put clear shellac on it will add just enough color to heighten the different grains and really cause the wood to visually pop.
Don't buy commercial floor finish. Most are versions of plastic and thus much softer than shellac. Plus if anything ever happens stain, water marks, gouges, you cannot do localized repairs of the finish. Shellac will seamlessly blend in since each coat melts the previous coat. So you can fix local spots with Shellac and have the repair invisible. Not so with commercial finishes.
Finally you eat shellac every time you take a pill. It's safe. It's environmentally sustainable, and a drunk sailor with a broom in a dust storm can do a flawless finish. ( I only slightly exaggerate)
I'm willing to try it just for you.... but we've been down this road 
I value your input, but I'm not a shellac fan.
Mix 2 parts denatured alcohol with one parts Shellac plus or minus a bunch. I've got a bucket Ive used for a decade and 1/2 and when the old shellac gets too thick on the edge I peel it off and drop it in the mixture. It melts and becomes part of the next pailful.
the first coat takes 15 minutes to dry. Then using some 320 paper take off the little nibs you raised. Wipe off the white dust and give it a second coat that takes twice as long to dry then check again for nibs. Sand any you find and wipe off the dust again. Third coat twice as long to dry. ( an hour) 4th coat. You may be done. But that will take 2 hours to dry.
Soap and hot water takes shellac out of clothes. ( or your hair, hands etc)
