Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Stock From Own Tree

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.