Tiger Maple Question

[Shreckmeister]

Which stock blank should  I choose to make a rifle with a thin wrist.  I have been given a choice of "hard maple" or "softer maple"  They are  both fiddleback maple.  I'm told the hard maple is difficult to carve but much stronger than the other piece.

[Acer Saccharum]

Hard maple is definitely stronger. Plank sawed is is much stronger than quarter sawed for a thin wrist gun. I know quarter is preferred for showing the grain, but if you're worried about strength, go for plank sawed. Plank sawed means if you lay the gun flat on a table, the growth rings would be parallel to the table surface.

Tom

[Dphariss]

Which stock blank should  I choose to make a rifle with a thin wrist.  I have been given a choice of "hard maple" or "softer maple"  They are  both fiddleback maple.  I'm told the hard maple is difficult to carve but much stronger than the other piece.

Soft maple can be like pine with figure. Avoid it like the plague.

Dan

[David Rase]

You want a nice plain hard piece of slab sawn maple for strength through the wrist as well as carving ability.  Soft wood tears when carving.  If this is your first rifle I would fore go the carving and focus on architecture.  I would also go for a plain piece of wood vs. a figured piece for a first rifle.  Figured wood is harder to work the plain.
DMR

[Lucky R A]

    Generally good advice, but to avoid "soft" or red maple --not sugar maple like the plague would eliminate some very good wood.  I have probably seen as many originals stocked in red maple as sugar maple.   The trick is to choose the wood yourself.  If the wood feels heavy, and you cut cross grain the resultant cut (with a sharp chisel) shines you have a good stick of wood.   A lot of the highly figured pieces of wood are red maple..  Start with a good dense piece of wood with little figure in it and get some experience, before digging into a expensive highly figured piece of wood.   Fred Miller used to have some really outstanding pieces of wood salted away,  he used to tell me "I don't sell that to the kids."   

[Long John]

There's a profound difference between "grain" and "figure" in wood.  Grain is the orientation of the wood fibers.  Wood is strong depending on how the stress is applied relative to the grain.  Figure is what we see when we look at the wood.  The key is being able to read the blank and infer the grain orientation from the figure - not always easy!

For a riflegun with a thin wrist section you want the grain flowing parallel with the axis of the wrist.  Don't confuse that to mean the figure caused by the annular rings of the wood!  Many people do!  Take the cardboard tube from the inside of a roll of TP and cut it diagonally.  If you look at the tube perpendicular to the plane of the cut you will see a curve.  If that tube were a log the grain of the wood would be running along the axis of the tube - not the curve you see.  You should not use the curve of the figure produced by the annular rings to infer grain unless you check the other faces as well as the end of the blank to make sure that you don't have a diagonal cut.

With curly maple the grain flows perpendicular to the curly figure.



The grain of the wood in this blank ran right down the length of the wrist.

Best Regards,

JMC

[Acer Saccharum]

John, I should have been clearer when saying that plank sawed is stronger than quarter.

IF you can get a quarter sawed blank where the grain runs parallel with the wrist, this makes a stock as strong as plank sawed will.  But many quarter sawed blanks have the grain run diagonally across the wrist, and this is a natural place for the stock to fail.

Of course, in a plank sawed stock, the grain can run diagonally across the wrist when looking down on the stock.

So I just talked myself out of that argument. 

I agree with you.

Hahahahaha.

Tom

[Dphariss]

    Generally good advice, but to avoid "soft" or red maple --not sugar maple like the plague would eliminate some very good wood.  I have probably seen as many originals stocked in red maple as sugar maple.   The trick is to choose the wood yourself.  If the wood feels heavy, and you cut cross grain the resultant cut (with a sharp chisel) shines you have a good stick of wood.   A lot of the highly figured pieces of wood are red maple..  Start with a good dense piece of wood with little figure in it and get some experience, before digging into a expensive highly figured piece of wood.   Fred Miller used to have some really outstanding pieces of wood salted away,  he used to tell me "I don't sell that to the kids."   

This is dandy if you can inspect when you buy it, I guess. But living in Montana makes this pretty tough so I order nothing but hard maple.
Having been forced to stock guns in soft maple when working for others I won't waste my time. I certainly would not risk ordering anything else.

Dan

[Captchee]

 like others have said , hard maple  with the grain runing through the wrist .
 i would also not say its difficult to carve . You do need sharp tools .
 But IMO the resulting carving is much cleaner

[Dphariss]

like others have said , hard maple  with the grain runing through the wrist .
 i would also not say its difficult to carve . You do need sharp tools .
 But IMO the resulting carving is much cleaner

Exactly.
Is impossible to carve wood that has poor structural integrity.

Dan

[Bill of the 45th]

Suzkat, I would recommend one of the suppliers like Dave Keck, who's picking up Fred miller's business.  Tiger Hunt also has great wood.  Dave can cut the barrel, and ram rod channel for you, and may have a Sheck profile or one close for you, and he stands behind his product.

Bill

[Shreckmeister]

Hey Bill,  You think I might want to build a Shreck.  What gave you that idea?  2011 buck season is coming.  Wouldn't mind a nice 10 pt taken with a fine Shreck copy hangin on my wall.

[Acer Saccharum]

Is a Shrek gun one of those chubby green things?

[billd]

No Tom,  It's the gun that chubby green thing carries.