So I scrounged up this wood from the local compost. Just rounds with no leaves or branches to speak of. There was a lot of rot which is probably why it was taken down. I suspect it was a planted tree out of Burns Wyo in some ones yard. I am guessing that it could be maple but I do not know enough about trees like this because there are so few around here. Some I have given away to some wood workers I know and some I am going to keep for smoking.
Wood and cambium layer look alot like silver maple, but the bark doesn't....but that could be a geographic thing....
Boy that curl is beautiful, though! I bet rustyspurs would love to make some turkey calls from that stuff!
Found this cool site. http://www.treebarkid.com/ I went though some of the trees in the maple family. Only guessing. What about box elder? There is a town in eastern Wyoming named after box elder which makes me thing that tree might be common.
There is Box Elder around here but does Box Elder develop that kind of curl in the grain. I don't know.
Does not look anything like Boxelder that I have experience with. Maple sounds possible, it does look some White Oak, too. Sent from my Z832 using Tapatalk
That doesn't look like the bark of any maple I am familiar with. The maples out in dry areas of the west are usually the same maples we have in the east - Red, Norway, Silver, maybe Sugar Maple. The bark doesn't look like any of those. I am not very familiar with European maples like Sycamore Maple, so maybe you have one of those. The wood does look like maple, but I can't ID the tree from these pics.
Well then it is possible that it is box elder. That would be more common around here than say silver maple. I tried to find some pics on the net about box elder having a grain like this but really did not find anything. I wonder how it will be for smoking meat.
Is it dead? box elder weighs a less than silver maple, from what I understand the Box Elder doesn't always have red streaks in it
There was no red streaks anywhere in the wood I cut up. In fact every piece of this wood I cut had some of that curl in it and was of the color you see. I did find pics of the flamed box elder on the net and that is some pretty cool looking wood.
Looks a lot like that tiger figured maple. We get it a bit around here if you get the right tree. Imported it can be a hefty 10 grand for a good sized tree. I saw that kind of figuring on some really nice guitars before.