Fair Trade I Guess

[kmmcrafts]

Took a couple full bags of sawdust from my dust collector to my brothers mill to dump in his sawdust pile. He told me he had some more Hard Maple for me to take home so we traded. 

Not a big fan of hard maple but free is good. Hate scrolling it though so I’ll either be using it in the CNC or making a boat load of cutting boards. 

I might make more money selling his scrap lumber than trying to make stuff with it to sell .  

 

[OCtoolguy]

2 hours ago, kmmcrafts said:

Took a couple full bags of sawdust from my dust collector to my brothers mill to dump in his sawdust pile. He told me he had some more Hard Maple for me to take home so we traded. 

Not a big fan of hard maple but free is good. Hate scrolling it though so I’ll either be using it in the CNC or making a boat load of cutting boards. 

I might make more money selling his scrap lumber than trying to make stuff with it to sell .  

 

Kevin, can you tell me what the difference is between "hard" maple and regular maple? And, please, no smartass answers.

 

[Bill WIlson]

I'm not Kevin, so can I give you a smarta$$ answer? 

Soft maple and hard maple are different varieties of maple.  Soft maple would be red maple or silver maple.  Sugar maple is hard maple.  The practical difference, as the name implies, soft maple has a Janka scale rating of between 700 and 950, similar to mahogany.  Hard maple has a Janka scale rating of 1450, similar to white oak.  So hard maple is about 1.5X to 2X harder than soft maple.

Edited March 27, 2019 by Bill WIlson

[OCtoolguy]

4 minutes ago, Bill WIlson said:

I'm not Kevin, so can I give you a smarta$$ answer? 

Soft maple and hard maple are different varieties of maple.  Soft maple would be red maple or silver maple.  Sugar maple is hard maple.  The practical difference, as the name implies, soft maple has a Janka scale rating of between 700 and 950, similar to mahogany.  Hard maple has a Janka scale rating of 1450, similar to white oak.  So hard maple is about 1.5X to 2X harder than soft maple.

Thanks Bill. I'm trying to order some wood to make more of the baskets that I have made in the past. I want to make some with two woods with contrasting color so I'm leaning toward walnut and maple. The local wood source I use lists "hard" maple but does not list "soft" maple. I'm wondering if the hard maple will do ok on the scroll saw. Can you advise me? Thanks again. 

 

[kmmcrafts]

4 minutes ago, octoolguy said:

Thanks Bill. I'm trying to order some wood to make more of the baskets that I have made in the past. I want to make some with two woods with contrasting color so I'm leaning toward walnut and maple. The local wood source I use lists "hard" maple but does not list "soft" maple. I'm wondering if the hard maple will do ok on the scroll saw. Can you advise me? Thanks again. 

 

The scroll saw will be fine with Hard Maple.. You might say a lot of bad words trying to cut it though....

[OCtoolguy]

Just now, kmmcrafts said:

The scroll saw will be fine with Hard Maple.. You might say a lot of bad words trying to cut it though....

Kevin, I was not a sailor but I can vocalize like one. My language is the main reason I knew I could never run for public office. And my politics too of course.

 

[WayneMahler]

Cutting hard maple or white oak I use a skip toothed blade. Size depends on the thickness. I have used the UR blades but cutting is slow and a better chance of getting burn marks for me. 

[OCtoolguy]

10 minutes ago, WayneMahler said:

Cutting hard maple or white oak I use a skip toothed blade. Size depends on the thickness. I have used the UR blades but cutting is slow and a better chance of getting burn marks for me. 

The baskets are made up of multiple layers of 1/4" thick pieces. Nothing more than that. I'm toying with changing the patterns a bit to make some different size and look baskets and they may incorporate a little thicker wood. Maybe up to 1/2" but nothing more than that.

 

[Bill WIlson]

In addition to being much denser, hard maple is generally considerably more expensive than soft maple.  Often the coveted figure that maple is known for (bird's eye, curly, waterfall, etc) comes from hard maple trees.  Not sure there is much benefit in using hard maple for your baskets, when factoring in higher material costs.  Even if you got a piece of figured maple, I wouldn't necessarily want to use it for a project where you were cutting away most of the grain profile anyway.  As far as color, I don't think you would notice much difference between soft and hard maple.

Ash provides a nice contrast to walnut.  I've used African mahogany with walnut as well.  The colors aren't as starkly different, but they compliment each other well, IMHO.

[kmmcrafts]

Birch and Walnut for contrast is what I use a lot.. most of my wall clocks and signs are nothing but BBply.. and walnut backer.. I've also used Red Oak with walnut.. (The sign picture )

[neal560sl]

3 hours ago, octoolguy said:

Thanks Bill. I'm trying to order some wood to make more of the baskets that I have made in the past. I want to make some with two woods with contrasting color so I'm leaning toward walnut and maple. The local wood source I use lists "hard" maple but does not list "soft" maple. I'm wondering if the hard maple will do ok on the scroll saw. Can you advise me? Thanks again. 

 

Ray, I use Rock Maple on nearly all my Christmas ornaments and have no trouble cutting them using the Olson Mach blades.  My nephew gives me cut offs from a mill he works at, so the price is right.  I love using it for ornaments as they seem to be less prone to cracking and the light color shows up well on a Christmas tree.

[OCtoolguy]

1 hour ago, Bill WIlson said:

In addition to being much denser, hard maple is generally considerably more expensive than soft maple.  Often the coveted figure that maple is known for (bird's eye, curly, waterfall, etc) comes from hard maple trees.  Not sure there is much benefit in using hard maple for your baskets, when factoring in higher material costs.  Even if you got a piece of figured maple, I wouldn't necessarily want to use it for a project where you were cutting away most of the grain profile anyway.  As far as color, I don't think you would notice much difference between soft and hard maple.

Ash provides a nice contrast to walnut.  I've used African mahogany with walnut as well.  The colors aren't as starkly different, but they compliment each other well, IMHO.

Thanks again Bill. I will take all that into consideration when placing my order.

 

[OCtoolguy]

8 minutes ago, neal560sl said:

Ray, I use Rock Maple on nearly all my Christmas ornaments and have no trouble cutting them using the Olson Mach blades.  My nephew gives me cut offs from a mill he works at, so the price is right.  I love using it for ornaments as they seem to be less prone to cracking and the light color shows up well on a Christmas tree.

Now, there is another name for maple. Never heard of "rock" maple before. Wood can be so confusing. I'm just trying to find contrasting shades without having to use stain. I hate staining. Messy.

 

[neal560sl]

2 minutes ago, octoolguy said:

Now, there is another name for maple. Never heard of "rock" maple before. Wood can be so confusing. I'm just trying to find contrasting shades without having to use stain. I hate staining. Messy.

 

I'm with you on staining and sorry for the confusion (rock maple).  I'm from Vermont and that is what we always called it, but it is the same as hard or sugar maple.  Its what gives us the sap that we make Maple Syrup from.

[OCtoolguy]

5 minutes ago, neal560sl said:

I'm with you on staining and sorry for the confusion (rock maple).  I'm from Vermont and that is what we always called it, but it is the same as hard or sugar maple.  Its what gives us the sap that we make Maple Syrup from.

Thanks. I should have been able to figure that out. My "go-to" wood supplier here by me has hard maple but not the softer kind so I guess I'll go with the hard stuff. What I'm making should be no problem with cutting. Nothing over 1/4" thick.

 

[bcdennis]

Kind of a stupid question but what does your brother do with all the Saw Dust?

 

 

[kmmcrafts]

9 minutes ago, bcdennis said:

Kind of a stupid question but what does your brother do with all the Saw Dust?

 

 

Sells it to local horse farms and stock yards.. Not sure what the demand is at the moment.. but about a year or so ago he was telling me that he was grinding up the wood chips ( scraps go to a chipper where he sells chips to landscape companies ) to make sawdust instead of the chips.. at the time.. sawdust was almost more valuable than the lumber itself, LOL Just cannot sell to the farms etc if there is Walnut sawdust in there.. guess it makes horses sick? Not sure the reason ... but even just a little walnut gets in the sawdust.. he can't sell it to the horse farms.. but still okay for the stockyards..