Working with Curly Red Maple

[beauharlan]

Hello, Has anyone worked with Curly Red Maple that could give me some advice on practicing on it? Also, does anyone know of a good place to buy it so I can practice before going into the real work? Thanks.

[wattlebuster]

Ive seen curly red maple that seemed as hard as sugar maple. Give Allen Martin a call. He knows wood an what it takes to make a good longrifle stock. He probabaly has what your looking for right now

Allen Martin
570-713-8348

[P.W.Berkuta]

Buying curly red maple can be a $#@* shoot. It can be hard and dense or soft and chippy/flaky - you just don't know until you test it.

[smart dog]

Hi,
There is nothing special you need to do except kind of the obvious things for any wood.  Make sure your gouges and chisels are razor sharp.  Contrary to what you might expect, softer maple tends to crush under the knife rather than shear so having really sharp tools is a must.  Secondly, heavily figured wood requires you to constantly monitor the direction of the grain.  That is true of all figured woods but curly red maple can be especially challenging.  Cutting away large chips and tearing away wood during planing is a common problem that you have to watch out for.

dave 

[rich pierce]

When I plane figured wood I hold the plane at about a 20-30 degree angle from the direction I’m planing (with the grain). I slant it so that the blade does not hit the curl dead on. This seems to eliminate any unfortunate “pop-outs”.

[recurve]

My new build is red maple(with nice curl) from Allen M. it seems to work easier than the sugar maple stock of my last build. Mark Weader said to expect it to fuzz up between finishing coats.  I'm wondering about using ferric nitrate on it with some Loral mtn stains I want the curl to pop with a slight red/brown look



this is the sugar maple build I want a little

less red and more  pop curl

red maple build

[Jim Kibler]

About red maple hardness...  It really varies a LOT.  Some isn't fit for a gunstock while some is every bit as hard as sugar maple.  Sometimes we have trouble telling hard red maple from sugar maple.  Recently we started using a ferrous sulfate solution as an indicator.  Seems to work pretty well.

Jim

[Jim Kibler]

Another bit of info...  Most of our red maple comes from Northern PA and the MI.  Recently we have gotten into a batch that came from The Upper Peninsula of Michigan and it's super nice.   It really does remind me of sugar maple.  Smooth cutting, hard, slick and almost creamy.  Doesn't fight you at all. 

The UP is a competitive location for figured maple and I can see why...

[Curtis]

The blank for this rifle was red maple.  It was the hardest piece of maple I have ever worked with - but of course as mentioned above not all red (or sugar) maple is the same.  If you can handle the wood, do the "thumbnail test"....  that works well for me.











Curtis

[Daryl]

A man once told Taylor that a good rifle could not be made from Red Maple.
Taylor replied: "a man's got to know his limitations".

[Craig Wilcox]

Curtis, that is probably the prettiest rifle stock I've ever seen.  Thanks for showing it.

I have a nice red maple growing in my front yard.  In about 150-200 years, it might be harvestable; about ten years at present.

Back yard has a 40" DBH sugar maple.  Tapped it 3 years ago, fire dept came when I tried to boil it down...

[coopersdad]

This red maple was very soft, it failed the fingernail test.  I would've passed in person but I bought it online, and decided to keep it.  It worked easily - fastest patchbox cavity drill ever. It carved better than I'd hoped, but some chunks pulled out during stabbing outlines and details.  It didn't scrape well either. It stained dark with Ferric Nitrate. If I had it to do over I'd have experimented with some dyes.  Overall I'm happy with it and learned a lot. 

[Bob Gerard]

Curtis- that rifle is legendary. I’m in awe of your skills 😍

[Curtis]

Thanks, Craig and Bob!  Here is the whole build process on that rifle, finished pics on page 9.

https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=40237.0

Curtis