Maple Blanks for Rifle Stock?

[msmith]

 I have a Maple in a right away that may have to be cut..What size should the blanks be ? Is there a certain section of the tree that is better? Just curious in case it has to be cut.

[Keb]

Quarter saw it. Avoid heart wood & sap wood. If you are making BP long rifle stocks it should be (minimum L x W sizes) 2 1/2" x 8" x 75" long. It will need to be dried before cut into stocks, too. Also, seal the ends with latex paint, hide glue or paste wax as soon as you cut it in planks. It could be valuable if there is any amount of figure in the wood. Otherwise, it will be good firewood.

[northmn]

Several varieties of maple some better than others.  The sugar maple is a harder denser maple that with figure makes an ideal stock.  Red maples can be used but are less than ideal but often have more figure.  They are also often pretty soft.  How large is it?  Others that have asked a similar question have asked about trees that were pretty small in diameter.  I have a plain sawed stock for a future project that looks OK and some like them.  To get a quarter saw you have to be able to cut out a center piece and then have enough left over to get about an eight inch plank minimum.  I made a fowler out of a tree I cut myself using a split out quarter sawed plank, but I cut the tree almost level with the dirt.  I could only get two blanks out of it quarter sawed (thats all I wanted anyway).  Today I think they must slab off sides until they get to the center part and then quarter saw as some nice plain sawed blanks are out there.  Quarter sawn wood is less susseptible to warpage, but with proper drying and the right cutting technique you can also eliminate the problem with plain sawed. 

DP

[Jerry V Lape]

And the best part of the wood will be right at very base, even down into the large outer roots if you can dig away the soil before cutting. That curved grain is now highly sought for use as the transition from the straight action and forestock area into the wrist and butt.   Also right where very large branches curve into the trunk if the tree is large enough to have those.  The 2 1/2" thickness is really minimum on a dried and seasoned blank ready to work, I would add another half inch to work with in the rough plank. 

[Acer Saccharum]

It's all good in my opinion, heartwood and sapwood, as long as it isn't checked. I'd prefer a 20" dia trunk or bigger, but if you can get the root flare with the log, the you can probably get by with a smaller trunk. But older/larger trees seem to be denser, and dense is what you want whenever possible. You can go for quarter sawn, but in my opinion, an awful lot of wood gets wasted seeking the quarter sawn blank.



planks have been sawed 3" thick at a band mill. I cut them into stock blanks as soon as practicable. Seal up all edges where endgrain is exposed. These planks are VERY heavy when wet.


I sticker my sawed out blanks in this clamp arrangement. This keeps a lot of warping and twisting to a minimum.

[jwh1947]

Acer, good visuals.  How long do you age your rough-cut blanks?  We ran across some red recently that was nearly as hard as lots of sugar.  It worked quite well.  Freddie Harrison had it originally.  He regularly comes up with great wood!

[Old Ford2]

Hello Acer,
When stacking your wood planks, what is the frequency of the sticker and channel?
Best regards
Old Ford

[northmn]

I laid mine out so that the toe of butt is to the outside of the tree as that also can assist in figure.  Acer's diagram illustrates the center piece that needs to be removed.  When splitting firewood I ahve seen some of these pop out like a little tree inside a big tree.  Seasoning a stock can elicit some debate, but depends a lot on your location.  The old one year per inch works some places but I would not like to try it in my area.  Some used to season a couple of years in a shed or even outside and then bring them into an attic.  I use a hotbox where the blank can be heated for 24 hours a day at a very warm temperature.  During a wet season I even put a commercial blank in a hotbox once in a while while working on it.  I cut my blanks in March and had the gun finished by Sept using a misture of home drying techniques.  Remember to paint the ends of the planks about 4 inches up and liberally on the end grain.    A commercial kiln dried blank will ahve a 6-8% moisture content, an air dried blank in many states will maybe make 12%.  In a state like Arizona they may make the kiln state.

DP

[Acer Saccharum]

Do's
When you begin drying the wood, realize that it is full of water. If the ends are not sealed, the ends dry first, shrinking as they dry, causing deep checks, starting at the ends, and working their way in.

This is my air dry process, which is not to be taken as the best way to do it, but it's what I do:
First of all when the wood is freshly cut, the ends of the logs need to be sealed immediately.
Cut the wood into planks. Use DRY stickers, preferably pine, but DRY pine. Oak stickers will stain the maple deeply. Wet stickers will cause mold to form, which can go quite deep into the wood.

Store the wood OUT of the sun, OUT of the wind, covered loosely with a tarp for a year. Some folks recommend spraying for insects at this time. Then you may uncover and move to a drier location. After a few more years go by, I move the wood to my brother's barn, where they are high and dry.

I prefer to cut the wet planks into stock blanks. The piece of wood is smaller than the plank, and damage from shrinkage is much reduced. Also, the piece being smaller, internal stresses don't build up as they would in a large plank. Definitely make up a clamping fixture, as the stocks can twist and curl as the dry. Drying wood is very powerful, and the whole stack of blanks can tip itself over if just weighted down.  I cut the wet blanks very generously with a chainsaw, dry them for a year or more, then resaw the profile on my bandsaw, rout the corners for safe handling, reseal the ends, and then move them to the barn attic.


Don'ts
If you are not going to cut the planks immediately into stock blanks, get the bark off. bugs live under the bark, and will bore into the good wood if the bark is left on.

My last batch of blanks I cut out after I'd let the wood dry in the plank for two years. I had a lot more waste than if I'd cut stocks out when the wood was wet. Some of the stocks I had to make wooden spoons out of instead of rifles. It was enough to make me weep.

Note:
Air dried wood in this part of the world, Eastern NYS, will probably not get to dry less than 12% moisture content. I think you could probably take an air dried blank and kiln dry it, but I never tried that. If you take an air dried piece from this area and send it to a dry place, like inland BC, or Arizona, further shrinkage will certainly occur.

[msw]

serendipity... just had a good sized maple come down in a high wind, and I should have my chainsaw back from the shop mid- week.  I know a guy with a lumber bandsaw, who'd be willing to slab the whole mess down, so now i can go looking for stockblank possibilities...

as the song said, "waiting is the hardest part..."

[Acer Saccharum]

Plain maple is hard to come by, believe it or not. Most wood sellers seek the curly stuff and the plain goes into pallets.

[Keb]

Plain maple is hard to come by, believe it or not. Most wood sellers seek the curly stuff and the plain goes into pallets.

I visited one of the well known stock suppliers last week and they said they have plain maple coming out the wazoo. They have no interest in stocking any more at this time. However, the curly stuff is a different story. Sounds like the old supply & demand thing to me.
I know I'd rather have a nicely figured stock than a plain one but it's sometimes hard to justify the cost. 

[northmn]

The hot box I mentioned is easy to build and will get the moisture down from the 12% Acer talked about.  I use them after the wood has dried for at least a couple of weeks.  When it was described in the Traditional Bowyers book the individual used a car in the summertime to assist in drying wood.  Claimed it really fogged things up.   One could make a solar hotbox also.  Dpends on your time frame,  I wanted to still be young enough to shoot the gun after the wood dried when I dpeeded up the process.  Acer more or less summed the air drying process up.  Its best to get the end grain sealed as soon as possible.

DP