Big leaf maple is a highly desired specialty wood around here... Good luck with however it works out...
Not much maple in the region where i live. Over on the other side of the cascade mtns. I guess there is a couple species of maple that are very desirable for making guitars, violins etc. Or maybe its just the burls off of them.
Mainly if it has figure such as tiger or quitling or birds eye. Not all trees do. Not sure if my old photobucket link will work. It's a clock I made from tiger maple.
They got it all down yesterday. It's gonna be quite a job working it up. The guitar dude showed up today. He cut a few rounds off to check the grain and took a few blocks. He said there might be a couple more good pieces. I told him he's welcome to cut as many rounds off as he wants with his 660.
I spent a couple hours Friday cutting and moving wood from the far side of my property. Today, my dad came over and we got down to cutting, splitting, and stacking. The racks out front are two rows deep and almost full. My dad went home with a full truck bed and we left a pile of splits by the driveway for him to get tomorrow. It was a real soaker today but at least it wasn't cold. A buddy is stopping by later this week to pick up a load of rounds and then he's going to come back next week to help me work on it more. I'm trying to avoid the stuff on the lawn right now because it's so wet. Cutting, splitting, and moving wood could turn it into a mud hole.
Back at it for a few hours today. Got a row put up and a pile by the driveway for my friend to get in the morning.
This project has been a real azz kicker. Communication with the tree service was really poor and led to some confusion. They were back with a boom truck to pluck logs off a couple of neighboring properties last week. With lots of runaround about whether or not they would do it, they used the boom truck to move the big main trunks from my yard to a neighbor's property. The neighbor and his buddies wanted it for firewood, it's in a much easier spot for them to work on, and I wanted it out of my yard. Last I was told before I left that day, was that the boom truck would not be used. When I got home after dark I could see the big stuff was moved and assumed they cut it all up for their loader to handle. The following day I could see 8-10' logs at my neighbor's and was told they were here with the boom truck past 8pm. So far, with what I've got stacked, what my dad has taken, and one pickup load to a friend, we've got 4 cords done. I'm guessing there's another 3 cords of rounds and smaller logs to work out of my yard. The pic is some of the big stuff that went to my neighbor. He and his friends are gonna get several cords out of it.
I finally got the last of it out of my yard today. My dad took his 8th pickup load. His load and what I stacked out back equaled about a cord for the day. Also, my neighbor with a hydraulic splitter said he would take anything, no matter how ugly and full of knots. So I put about a half cord worth of big, nasty crotch pieces over on his property. It took 3 tanks of fuel through my saw and several touch-ups of my chain. A lot of the wood today was really dirty from being on the bottom of the pile. The tree service bucked up one big trunk for me and used their loader to move the rounds over by my driveway. There's about a dozen of them that still need splitting. I've processed 8 cords and just as a wild guess, my neighbor will maybe get 4 more from the logs he took. My front yard is a giant mess still. There's a boat load of sawdust and debris to clean up before I can reseed with grass. This pic is from last month and shows what I have left to split and stack.
Yes the yard gets pretty messed up if you process wood in it. I try to do as much of the cutting as I can on my driveway when I’m doing it. It’s pretty easy to clean the chips and debris up that way.
I had some silver or Norway maple and gave some up too. It’s great wood but I was nearing the end of the season and figured I have enough to last me for a bit. Glad you’re getting this stuff out of the way. It’s been dry down where I’m at recently so hopefully its been the same way for you.
Kind of interesting on the Guitar Builder (called a Luther). I sell wood to one pretty routinely blacktail , but he buys only veneer Red Spruce. He is pretty picky; tight growth rings, veneer, large diameter, but these are for the guitar bodies that project sound too. Did the guy say what he uses the wood for? The guy I sell too is kind of eclectic, so I am not sure if it is just him, or he builds them in some traditional way. I think he does use some maple for the neck, but I am not sure. he does not buy maple off me; just Red Spruce.
Splitting by hand , that would be ALOT of work. But , you've almost got er. Nice looking dog. Did you count rings on these ? 5'8" DIA at the stump is pretty big ! Be interesting to know how old they were.
I think I've had it 3 years and it worked pretty well until it broke 2 weeks ago. It's been replaced with a fiskars. Before this I'd used traditional 6lb mauls and I can't see myself going back to something that heavy.
I haven't counted any rings but the guitar maker guessed the trees were 60-80 years old. He showed me a binder full of pics of guitars he's made. Pretty cool looking stuff. I was able to find some pics of his stuff online.
