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I have an old maple tree that has grown too large that is next to my house. I'd estimate the diameter is 3 ft + with numerous limbs that have grown out of the trunk. It looks to be on its last legs.

It needs to come down. The question I have is it worth trying to get wood from it for a stock. I have no idea what the grain would look like nor do I know if it is full of spalted wood.

Is this one of those things that sounds better in theory than in practice?

Thanks.

You hit the nail on the head with your last sentence.

If you have 10-15 years for slow drying and take care of it. It isn't a fast thing

Man, that's a buzz kill for instant gratification.

Do it. You'll only regret not giving it a try. It's really not that hard.

It won't make you ANY money.
But I don't think it would hurt to have a nice chunk hauled to a good bandsaw and cut into stock-size slabs. Wet down that pile, see if you've got anything worth putting in a stack on laths, otherwise enjoy it in a fire, a Viking funeral for a fine tree.

Species of maple makes a huge difference... many are useless as stock wood...

The best stock wood will be at the root bowl. The lower you get the denser the wood is, until it branches out to the side and becomes the main tap roots. Soft maple can be about like the softer grades of walnut, so they are ok for some rifles, but anything with much recoil you'd want to stay away from if you are making a stock for anything that kicks more then a 30-06 of 7MM Mag.


We used to cut them off about 4 feet under ground. Lots of shovel work, but really worth it.

As Sitka said, the sub-species makes a huge difference.

Sugar Maple (also called rock maple) is the best for density, and Red maple can be the most striking for curl. I made these 2 rifles from an 8 foot blank I cut myself, and it's from a Red Maple tree.
Soapers 4 by Steve Zihn, on Flickr
PB Zihn-York 3 by Steve Zihn, on Flickr

Sugar is usually harder and holds carving and checkering better, but not every time. The wood I used for the 2 rifles above was quite hard and holds crisp carving very well. I have made some very hard stocks from Red maple, but getting hard Red is pretty rare. As a rule, stock makers will look for the Sugar Maple trees 1st and Red 2nd.


Silver Maple and Western Big-Leaf Maple are best for fire wood and smoking meat.

By then I'll be in my early to mid 70s. sigh.

I had a shop teacher who was always cutting blanks from trees and had a few of them in the rafters of his garage waiting for the day they would become gun stocks.

Beautiful work Steve. Wish I could do inlays like that, much more so the carving. Need lots more practice and probably a little more patience too.

Thanks Nighthawk.

About as stupid a post as there ever was here!

There is so much so incredibly flat-ass wrong it is tough to find a place to start!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is exactly one wood I have seen the numbers on that is better than the walnuts for stock making on a density for density basis. It also rules everything on figure quality, figure quantity, figure variety, and of all things availability. It is a maple. It has its own species, just like red, sugar, silver, rock, and a whole bunch of other maples.

Wood has two critical characteristics as they relate to mechanical properties to determine suitability as stock wood. First is the quality of the wood as determined by physical property tests. Many different parameters are tested including shock resistance, hardness, elasticity, yield strengths, and a whole bunch more.

The other characteristic is quantity... as in "how much wood is in that wood?" Woods with higher specific gravities have more "wood" in the wood.

Bigleaf maple is the only wood I have seen that surpasses walnuts in virtually all categories when compared on a specific gravity basis. Not a lot of bigleaf is dense enough to use for heavy recoiling rifles, but to suggest it is just firewood is obscenely arrogant and stupid.

Not going to get into the suggestions about what stockmakers look for... but it is a peek into the land of total freaking cluelessness.

"Root bowl"??? Only been working with wood at a serious level for many decades... guess I need to look again so I can eat my salad...

Sorry, got to get away from this ridiculousness! Laughing almost as hard as the infamous buck knife scraping session! Hard to find this much stupid in a single post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wood needs a year per inch of thickness to dry down in most cases. Get it cut up into 3” thick slabs, seal the ends with paraffin or polyurethane and let your slabs dry.

Szihn is entirely correct about figure. What he’s referring to is “stump” figure....basically the tap root.

It’s not a difficult process...I’ve done it twice. Once on a small ring Mauser with Richards Micro Fit doing the initial stock cutting, inletting, and the second time doing all by myself on a Sako .

I’d cut it down, have it sawn up ad see what you’re working with...you might be surprised.

This is my Sako that I built from start to finish....I didn't do the checkering though...everything else, yes. Outstanding stump figure I'd say.

Not many sawyers will want to mess with a tree that grew right next to a house for fear of hidden nails, clothes line anchors, and such that may lurk beneath the surface. Metal detectors alleviate a lot of that but aren't infallible so they are still reluctant to cut up a "household" tree. I encountered that when I had the bright idea to salvage woodworking stock out of maple, cherry, walnut, and ash trees that we had removed from around the house over the years. I still have two cherry logs laying on the pad in front of an out building from three years ago that I can't quite bring myself to cut up for firewood. The ash was particularly painful to cut up because I use that stuff for custom croquet mallet handles. (No snickering- I get $300 for one of my croquet mallets. )

Nice job of work, Godog. Obviously the wood came from the "root bowl".

A year per inch of thickness is a decent rule of thumb, depending on the wood, its initial moisture content, and where it's drying. In this day and age of accurate and affordable moisture meters there's no reason for a home hobbyist to ever use ill-prepared wood stock for a project.

So the "laughing" may continue.
https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/11664721/1

Let everyone on the Fire read, and make their own decisions.

As for Art,..... he has a well deserved reputation around the upper part of the Kenai Peninsula. Very well deserved.
Which is why he lives on the computer instead of doing any gun work. Dishonest, idiotic and foolish. Laughing is a very good pastime for him.

If not gunstock blanks, at least have them cut some slabs for a table, benches, etc.

Big live-edge slabs are very hot in the custom furniture market. First find a sawyer who knows about big slabs, and have him come take a look at your tree for value. Big maples may be totally rotten at there core, which will make much less valuable wood. Still, if you have to spend money to take it down anyway, and you have a place to store it, the value of the lumber will probably pay for the sawyer.

Nothing worse than a person trumpeting about stuff of which he's ill-informed. Obvious skills combined with a scientific approach trumps all. Mere skill in shaping wood isn't enough in this day and age. Old guys who flew by the seat of their pants turned out some impressive work, but they turned out a lot of dreck too. Word of advice to any stockmaker: don't be that old guy.

Good point, Jeff.

I would find a guy with a portable chain saw mill and guarantee him that you'll cover the cost of his replacement chain(s) if he strikes buried iron in the wood. Every locale seems to have one of those guys scurrying around. (A regular saw mill still wouldn't touch it because of my earlier warnings. A big circular saw blade or monstrous band saw blade is hellaciously expensive and the won't risk it, not to mention the risk to life and limb if those blades hit iron. Of course it may also depend on how hungry they are...)

That stock looks pretty nice, but you may have missed the fact the grain is running exactly the wrong direction for any strength in the wrist area where it is thinnest and weakest. I have a couple pieces just like that taken out of a walnut tree at the fork and they are beautiful, but weak. One is on a .22, so no recoil, but I managed to break it at the wrist just bumping into a door right after I finished it. After a few adult words, I got to repair it and strengthen the wrist with some long dowels to the point you need to know where the break is to identify it. The second piece is the book end to the first and is waiting for a 52C that is going to get sporterized very soon.
I love the look of the root ball pieces and highly figured pieces found in the fork of the trees, but I've also found they are the least stable and weakest of all the wood in the tree and will tend to move quite a bit if exposed to moisture or long, hot days. Layout of the stock on these pieces is critical before cutting, shaping, and inletting. If it is a hunting rifle you want to depend on, these woods probably aren't the best choice. If it is a safe queen, it's probably great as long as it doesn't dry out too much in the safe.....

Bob

That stock looks pretty nice, but you may have missed the fact the grain is running exactly the wrong direction for any strength in the wrist area where it is thinnest and weakest. I have a couple pieces just like that taken out of a walnut tree at the fork and they are beautiful, but weak. One is on a .22, so no recoil, but I managed to break it at the wrist just bumping into a door right after I finished it. After a few adult words, I got to repair it and strengthen the wrist with some long dowels to the point you need to know where the break is to identify it. The second piece is the book end to the first and is waiting for a 52C that is going to get sporterized very soon.
I love the look of the root ball pieces and highly figured pieces found in the fork of the trees, but I've also found they are the least stable and weakest of all the wood in the tree and will tend to move quite a bit if exposed to moisture or long, hot days. Layout of the stock on these pieces is critical before cutting, shaping, and inletting. If it is a hunting rifle you want to depend on, these woods probably aren't the best choice. If it is a safe queen, it's probably great as long as it doesn't dry out too much in the safe.....

Bob


Been there, done that.
Band saw mills don't take kindly to cutting heavy metal objects embedded in trees, which is why most saw millers will use a metal detector on a tree before agreeing to cut it these days. We have found old bullets, railroad spikes, nails, bicycle frames, and lots of other interesting things grown into large trees even after a metal detector missed them. You would be surprised at what a circular mill will cut through. We once had what we thought was a white oak cut up (turned out to be black oak) and the saw cut completely through a railroad spike embedded in the center of the tree. That time cost me $25 to replace his removable teeth and he went back to work. In the end, the tree was deemed scrap and abandoned, but this can be typical of cutting up trees in an urban environment. Be prepared for some expenditure. Hopefully, the tree you are cutting up is worth the risk.

Bob

As Sheister pointed out that is not wood from the root burly but rather from a crotch. It is oriented backwards from the usual, with the crotch figure running right through the grip. Normally the fore end is wood from one side of the crotch. It is absolutely a strength issue.

The tap root is not what one is looking for in the stump. The curving wood at the butt where the roots spread creates naturally appropriate grain flow for strong stocks.

Stock makers will not use wood that has not been dry for at least 10 years, generally. Each time wood gets down to the very dry end of things it takes a set. When it gets a bit wet it will move some, but less than it did before. Each new cycle will improve its stability.

Yet no comment about the actual facts about wood... something you clearly know very little about. Your Buck knife technique is too special to let fade away...

Your geography is every bit the match of your wood knowledge.

Photos of the blank in this thread show a gorgeous blank from the stump area of a tree. It is well laid out and a beautiful thing. The curve in the grain in the butt is the sweep of the root.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/12968358#Post12968358

In my business I deal with log buyers and a few years ago one gave me the card of a man that buys Black walnut for gun stock production. Later I cut a nice Black walnut and called the man. He asked for a pic of the butt. This is my hired man and the tree butt.



He called me and said if I would have cut deeper into the "root bowl" he would have inspected closer and gave me a offer to purchase.

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Thanks for the post Roundoak, and the quote.

Yes the term "Root Bowl" common for any one who knows anything about the subject, and isn't just a fool and liar.

Lots of ways to mishear what someone said and it is possible the guy even used the term. I have never heard it used but there are two similar words used sometimes (not really correctly either) to help explain the use. They would be "root burl" as there often is unusual growth that looks burly, but that really does not describe the situation. Also "root ball" which is closer, but only from a horticultural view when replanting trees. No where will you find "root bowl" used to describe stump wood on a tree.

Have heard it myself.
But then, some think,
that this IS the middle of nowhere.

I’ve heard and seen the term “root ball” used especially when referring to replanting a potted plant or something along those lines. Same thing when a tree is uprooted exposing the “root ball”.

1 : a concave usually nearly hemispherical vessel : a rounded container that is usually larger than a cup a soup bowl a set of mixing bowls; specifically : a drinking vessel (as for wine)
2 : the contents of a bowl ate a bowl of rice
3 : a bowl-shaped or concave part: such as
a : the hollow of a spoon or tobacco pipe
b : the receptacle of a toilet cleaning toilet bowls
4 a : a natural formation or geographical region shaped like a bowl
b : a bowl-shaped structure; especially : an athletic stadium
5 football : a postseason game between specially invited teams college bowl games

There is another term "bole" which means "trunk" in tree technology. It does not include roots and generally refers to the unbuttressed area of the tree where most loggers cut.

Please show mean anything wrong with what I stated. You are attacking me rather than defending what you have stated. You absolutely know there is nothing wrong with what I stated because you have researched and found it correct leaving only this option...

Being admittedly ignorant about a lot of wood and stock issues (just use synthetic anyway), I had to Google "root bowl".

Quite a bit of information here.

FWIW.

There are a few people on "the upper part of the Kenai Peninsula" that don't know Art.

Then again they know the upper KP is not Anchorage.

I recommend this:

Art has always been straight forward with me. As mentioned, you need to excavate underground and save the part under ground and up.
I don't know the technical term.

I have the utmost respect for the previous posters and their knowledge of this subject. However, none of you guys were there when the tree was cut if I remember correctly. No one helped me cut the trunk 4" above ground level and help me dig the stump up, by hand with a shovel and axe. The stump was about four feet or so below ground level. In the end I had a stump and trunk section that was a little less than 8'. The tap root narrowed down fairly quickly as expected, yielding one chance at a cut with any figure at all...we did the best we could. That piece of wood was to be used by a man that was like a second father to me...he planted the walnut himself on his farm in upstate South Carolina when he was a child. It was his dream to make a gunstock when the tree matured. Fast forward about 60 or so years and he was in his 70's and losing his battle with cancer after the tree had been downed a few years prior. Among other things my buddy Sammy gave me was all the wood from his tree when it became apparent he would not live to see his gunstock made. His instructions to me was to make one for myself from the root section of the tree, where most of the figure was. The tree was fairly straight and feather crotch wood from the trunk/branch junction was not in great supply. Lots of straight grained walnut...plain stuff....as you might expect.

Years later when that piece was cleaned up and planed the figure really popped. I understand the grain flow, while gorgeous, was not conducive to being worked up for a 416 Rigby. It took me a year to work up the stock and have it presentable looking. Prior to full length glass bedding, I recognized that the wrist would more than likely be weak. I drilled out a 5/8" hole from where the rear of the receiver would be bedded, through the wrist, down to as close to the rosewood grip cap as I dared. Into the hole I poured Acraglass (not the gel) and squished in a 1/2" round aluminum rod about 4-4 1/2"long and let it set up. There was a tiny piece sticking out afterwards that required a little mill work to allow the rear receiver lug to bed properly. Then the receiver and barrel were bedded in Acraglass as well. Stock was cleaned up and treated with two coats of Thompson's Water Seal. After drying for a week, I sanded in a teak oil finish using Daly's Sea Fin teak oil @ 120, 220, 400, 600, 800, 1200 and 2000 grits....two sanded in coats at each grit.

The stock has never "moved" on me in right at 30 years and the 30/06 has accounted for bunches of deer with no splits, cracks or warping. She holds her zero year after year! I've never had to adjust the scope when checking the zero each fall. I felt that an oil finish would show off the figure the best. However, I am the very first person in line to admit that, while beautiful, it won't be as waterproof as one of the many poly finishes on the market today. That's the reason I worked in two coats of Water Seal before the oil...that trick has worked wonders for me on many stock refinishing jobs over the years. As stated before, I did everything myself excepting the checkering...I sure don't have the skill nor the patience for that. The guy that checkered it said "don't bring me any more of that wood...it was hard as hell on my tools".

This figure did come from the stump because I dug it up and helped with cutting the slabs. It is not from a crotch...not this time!

Here is the last deer it took:

Cool Beans!

Sounds like you did the job right the first time and the wood was cooperative. Just to be clear, I never did mention I thought the wood was from a crotch or stump, I was referring to my stock, which was definitely from a crotch and has the same grain running perpendicular to the grip.
I'd be curious to know what is in Thompson's Water Seal? Seems like I heard somewhere it had silicone in it, which I try to avoid like the plague in finishing of any type. Can't argue with your finish results, however..

My stock has also stayed pretty stable over the years, but it has spent an awful lot of time in my gunsafe with a Goldenrod in it so it is plenty dry. The sister blank is in the shop, which is also dry so it will be ready to use at any time. Can't remember when I cut down that tree, but it had to be at least 30 years ago. The butt of the large tree on the site was 54"- 68" at the crotch. The small tree was 38" at the base. Didn't have the equipment to take out the stump or I would have. Most walnuts don't have what would technically be called a tap root, but some pretty impressive root masses nonetheless that will lend themselves to very nice wood if you can harvest it without totally destroying the root pieces. Also, most cutters hate to cut up the root as they almost always contain rocks, sand, and a darned nasty list of who knows what grown up in the wood.
I'll see if I can find a pic of the one I did finish. Can't seem to download the pics. Files are too big and I don't know how to resize them at the moment...

Bob

Never heard the term either, but then again there's no accounting for colloquial ignoring of standard terms used in the English language.

Who was it who coined the term " musket grain" to refer to improper grain flow through the wrist? Linden? Shellhamer? If I had a chunk of sentimentally important wood with stunning butt figure but musket grain through the wrist I would save it for a .22 safe queen.

Gotcha, the previous poster said “As Sheister pointed out, that is not wood from the root burly (sic) but rather from a crotch....”

I figured it referred to my stock, which I dang sure knew grew below ground. I’m good at making assumptions at times.

It’s all good...hope the OP gets some pretty maple out of that tree...could be pretty.

Incidentally, my buddy had a killer small ring Mauser made into a 257 Bob from one of the trunk slabs years before. Wood is plain as day. But she’s a pretty little thing and is a tack driver with 100 grain Partitions. I coveted that rifle in my younger days and before he passed, he gave it to me. Buried him on a Thursday, two days before our rifle opener. That Saturday I took the rifle to the stand, knowing a nice buck would show up...just knew it. The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon...pink light. About a hundred yards away there he stood and the rifle started one of the craziest strings of good luck I’ve ever seen. Every animal I’ve ever shot has fell straight to the ground. I’ve never tracked a single animal shot with her in 30 years.

You do beautiful work, sir. Thanks for sharing that.

We each have our own talents sir. I build plate armor, gauntlets, and chainmail among other things like hammered dulcimers. Be proud of what you craft. I never worry if it will sell, I just have trouble setting a price and parting with it.

Back to the OP's question. I have found that, more often than not, Maple trees in particular will telegraph if they have decent figure in them or not by how they look from the outside. Usually fiddleback, quilt, and of course, burl, will show on the outside of the tree, either at the stump or at the crotch. In a rare instance like a couple Maples I've taken down, the fiddleback will be a series of wrinkles all the way from the ground to the crotch area. Quilt will sometimes need to have the bark removed to identify, but it will also telegraph to the outside of the tree if enough is present.
Straight grain maple is still good wood, just not interesting enough for gun stocks IMO. Makes great furniture, tools, and a few other things....

Bob

I have seen this and agree although in my area and experience I am only talking about fiddleback, sometimes called tigerstripe or curly maple here. I have taken one to two inch strips of bark of off trees that were on the chopping block and invariably those with stripe will show that even to the point of how tight the curl is. I'm not sure what exactly causes the figure in some trees and not others but if wind was involved in the answer I could be persuaded to that line of thinking. I would also like to throw out that quarter sawn versus slab sawn will result in the curl being more evident either on the top/bottom of the blank or the sides depending on how close or far from the center of the tree.

The other side of my cutie....love it when the figure is on both sides....its a heart breaker to me when it doesn't.

When I read the book, "UNDERSTANDING WOOD" it changed my life.
The first edition was 1980, and I got it soon afterwards from Fine Woodworking magazine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Bruce_Hoadley

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Wood-Craftsmans-Guide-Technology/dp/1561583588/ref=sr_1_1



Don't read this book at the end of your life, read it at the beginning.

How old a ole boy are ya?

I have seen some of the log cutters going to the tree transplanting machines to get the root ball in one shot. Expensive equipment but some of the wood sells practically by the ounce. Mesquite and Walnut mantles rival gun stocks in price. One outfit will here will drop the tree and mill it and pay you back with your selection of blanks so not a bad deal to get 3- 5 of the best and then let the rest go.

Yes. Big leaf maple is the only species that I've seen much of, and one does not know what he might have until it's shaped and finished. Very little consistency as one goes from tree to tree.

Sitka Deer is spot on, pay attention to his writings.

Take a look at the photos on Roger Vardy's site. Some show him head deep in the dirt digging out the root wad prior to dropping a tree. This is where the primo grain is.

Back to Maple, takes big logs to make good blanks, provided the grain is there.

Way back in 1994, I still have a lot of blanks from this and several other trees:

This one started at about 4 feet in dimeter. Pacific Big Leaf maple.









PS if anyone out there really wants to get into serious stock making, I have my NorthStar duplicator up for sale over in the classifieds on Accurate Reloading.

Very true. Back when I was involved in cutting trees for blanks, it took a lot of searching to find the tree that had good grain. We finally figured it out! Growing conditions and minerals in the soil make a difference. A stressed tree (one growing hanging onto a ridge in a windy area) was a good candidate. Lots of rainfall makes a difference.


This one was a twin trunk widow maker. Steep Slope and a lot of heavy overhang. Had good grain way up past the big limb you see.



Dropped without killing someone:



Another one on a different ridge about 10 miles away:. Lots of good grain in this one also.

Harsh growing conditions make the best grain figure. Trees that grow fast are plain. To cut a root ball means a lot of dirt and rock. I was given a truck load of Manzanita roots that could never be cut. A ruined blade for every 2". Good trees are never dropped for Stocks, furniture or laminates. They are lowered to the ground. One Ohio walnut brought $30,000. Around here there are people to buy trees but they cheat you and cut those you do not want removed. You get a small amount while they get rich. Then they sneak onto a neighbors land to steal more.
I have made much from my trees and if pre-cut first, it does not take long to dry but I stack and sticker in my basement for a month or so. Less then 40% humidity. Even wood from the barn that is 30 years old will be dried more. I have walnut, cherry and white oak planks to make you spin. I had a lot of ash but used it to make soffits on my house and a trailer to haul wood. Does not need to be real dry for construction.
Now some green wood was used for turnings, etc but it was infused with some kind of glycol. Ethylene or something. It prevents splitting.
All my wood was cut with the Alaskan chain saw mill. Special chain but slow as frozen molasses. I buy rolls of chain and make my own. Cutters Choice has everything. I put a 30" bar on my old Solo and as old as it is, it cuts.