Bought 3 blanks 4 yrs ago from Dunlaps and he assured me that these red maple blanks were hard and had decent curl. I wanted all #7s but for some reason he recommended # 4s and #5s in addition to one #7. He said I would be pleased w/ the lower grades. Because I had ordered 3 blanks, a 25% discount applied.
When the blanks arrived. the first thing I checked was the hardness and although the red maple blanks weren't as hard as the harder sugar maple blanks, they were hard and all 3 were made into carved LRs. The # 7 had pretty decent curl and the #s 4 & 5 had passable curl which I found acceptable seeing I'm not too concerned w/ the amount of curl....the customer insisted on the # 7.
Also bought some sugar maple blanks from Tiger Hunt and Freddie Harrison...his quarter sawn blanks being very expensive.
The first pic is that of the #7 and the lower pic is of the #4.
50 % of my LR builds were out of red maple, carved up nicely and made decent LRs. .....Fred
