Sugar maple question...

[Griffbm3]

So I was walking around the sugarbush the other day, one of my 16" DBH sugar maples had just fallen over. Its' neighbor had fallen, and the wind knocked it over. There is no rot, and I was only able to keep it in 5 and 6 foot sections.
I was wondering if I should even bother milling this up at this length, or should I just buck it for firewood.
I have never milled sugar maple before, but I have done some Eastern Hemlock, as well as some Beech (PITA), but this sugar maple is a very solid tree that just fell. Just gathering some opinions, no problem taking it out in the lengths it's in now. Anything specific to this species for milling? Just an alaskan mill with a 288 running it. Have a great day everyone.

Jason

 

[Al Smith]

What ever you do,do so in a timely manner.Maple,especially sugar maple will spalt rather quickly .If you fiddle around for months that danged things will grow mushrooms.If it's firewood,cut and split and stack it.If it's a short saws log,do so post haste.

 

[tmacie]

I love the way maple looks....so any maple is worth milling to me!!


Travis

 

[Al Smith]

I love the way maple looks....so any maple is worth milling to me!!


Travis

In Vt you should have plenty of them to choose from.My philosophy is to mill good logs and slice the marginal ones for firewood.Then too is the fact that not so good of lumber is just high priced firewood.You can always burn the mistakes but it's nearly impossible to turn firewood back into lumber.

 

[tmacie]

Al, good thoughts there.....I'd think it would take a lot of epoxy to put firewood back into lumber. LOL.

Yes we do have quite a bit of maple to choose from, I am working on getting some pictures of the large stuff that we have milled, some of it is just stunning.


Travis

 

[Al Smith]

Now this may sound odd but my parents little barn is timber framed with sugar maple.It was built somewhere around 1919 or so.It was just a native grown lumber source they used back then.Now days most maple ends up as bowling alleys ,table tops or furniture.It does make a dandy work bench top also.

 

[woodshop]

As is often the case, one man's trash is another ones treasure. Lots of maple around here (eastern PA) but most of it is soft maple, and not much solid strait sugar maple. 4-5 ft lengths are fine. I'd mill it in a heartbeat if I came across some solid sugar maple. I second Al Smith though, it will spalt up and start to rot pretty quickly in warm weather. Of course you have the winter setting in up there, so you might be OK to get it off the ground and deal with it in early spring. I've had soft maple and beech (both also spalts quick) sitting over winter here with no problems when I went to mill them in the spring. You have to get it off the ground though at least.

 

[Adkpk]

Now this may sound odd but my parents little barn is timber framed with sugar maple.It was built somewhere around 1919 or so.It was just a native grown lumber source they used back then.Now days most maple ends up as bowling alleys ,table tops or furniture.It does make a dandy work bench top also.

Doesn't sound odd to me. My little cabin is framed with sugar maple. Always wondered if it was ever done before. Now I know. Thanks Al.

 

[Al Smith]

It makes a lot of difference the time of year you harvest the trees.That is why here in the east that the late fall and winter months are traditionally when the majority of timber is cut.Late spring and summer trees are going to be full of sap,could present a problem.

Of course you have jump on it if you are getting the logs kind of helter skelter from free sources .If it's in the heat of summer you have to bite the bullit and mill them anyway before they get too far long.

 

[Woodsurfer]

I cut down a big hard maple a few years back. Had to leave it in the woods for a few weeks before we could arrange for a tractor to pull it out. Then the logs sat out in the sun for a few more weeks while we waited for the Woodmizer man. After 6 weeks that wood was crawling with bugs, bark falling off, looked dicey.

It milled up fine and is now living on as my workbench, picture frames, furniture, etc. The bugs were only under the bark, no tunneling. Great stuff!

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I love the way maple looks....so any maple is worth milling to me!!

Me too! And if i had those logs, the lumber would already be on stickers!!

Rob

 

[cantcutter]

How long as the sugarbush been used as a sugarbush? If it pre-dates you owning it you may have to consider that there may be cast iron taps inbedded in the log. You may want to metal detect the logs before running your chainsaw through it.

 

[Griffbm3]

Thanks for the input

I am reasonably sure this particular tree wasn't part of the original sugarbush as it is WAY off the natural lay of the slope. Prior to our use, there were no pipelines used, and this tree was surrounded by other trees, but I have access to a regular metal detector. Hopefully it will answer the question about old quills/spiles.

Interesting you mention the metal though, as the regular use metal detector saved me from making a tremendously bad back cut last year on a take down of a HUGE sugar maple. The tree was rotted and leaning over a structure, so we moved the structure, dropped the tree, and moved back the structure. Just made a much lower backcut thanks to the metal detector. Worked like a charm...

Jason

 

[cantcutter]

I am originally from Vermont and have run chains into more than one iron spout while cutting up maple. The plastic and aluminum ones they use nowdays are no problem that a file cannot fix but those old cast irion spouts will ruin a chain in a hurry. Most people are good about removing them at the end of a season but after so many years of tapping some are bound to get missed and it doesn't take long for the tree to hide them.

 

[Al Smith]

I am reasonably sure this particular tree wasn't part of the original sugarbush as it is WAY off the natural lay of the slope.

Jason

In this discussion of sugar maple an interesting tid bit.At Heuston woods state park near Eaton Ohio is a patch of virgin old growth sugar maple .Those trees are enormous ,huge like oaks maybe larger.The canopy starts at 100 feet up.It's hard to believe that at one time the entire state from lake Erie to the Ohio river was covered with those huge trees.

Now as to when somebody got the idea to boil down maple sap for sugar,who knows.It was here when those people in funny looking clothes made landfall in Plymouth Mass.Long before beer in a can,that's for sure.

Supposidely that's the reason they stopped there,out of beer but that is just a tad off the subject.

 

[cantcutter]

The natives taught the Europiens how to boil the sap down. They called it sinzibukwud, but there is no telling how long they had been boiling sap. Probably thousands of years. In Vermont its safe to say that every old sugar maple has been tapped at some point in its life no matter where you find it.... 100 years ago the state was 90 % cleared so you can bet that any standing maple older than that was left there for a reason

 

[tmacie]

I've run into many a nail, spouts fence insulators etc. One that was impressive was a 50" diameter maple that we hit multiple nails and a fence insulator in. These things were 3" from the center of the tree believe it or not. They were there a loooooong time ago.


Travis

 

[Al Smith]

I've run into many a nail, spouts fence insulators etc.
Travis

Oh you would be surprised what hidden treasures can be found,even in deep woods trees.A few years back my sawyer found a handfull of 16 penny nails about 15 feet up in a hickory I hauled to him.Evidently some deer hunter had made a stand in the tree years previous.It cost old Al the price of several Woodmizer blades for that little stunt.

 

[habanero]

I've run into many a nail, spouts fence insulators etc. One that was impressive was a 50" diameter maple that we hit multiple nails and a fence insulator in. These things were 3" from the center of the tree believe it or not. They were there a loooooong time ago.


Travis

How old would a 50" diameter maple be? I'm just curious because if you found an insulator only 3" from the center, that would have had to have been only a 6" tree when it was put there. Wouldn't have been much need for an insulator before electrification, so it had to have been after that. I would have expected that big of tree to be older than that, though I guess maples grow pretty fast.

 

[aquan8tor]

I've run into many a nail, spouts fence insulators etc. One that was impressive was a 50" diameter maple that we hit multiple nails and a fence insulator in. These things were 3" from the center of the tree believe it or not. They were there a loooooong time ago.


Travis

The strangest thing I found was a tennis ball sized piece of quartz in the crotch of a honey locust that was at least 8-9 feet off the ground when the tree was standing. Must've been incorporated into the bark when the tree was very young; It was about 6" into the crotch, but just about exactly midline with the pith. Either that, or someone put it there; I've seen deer antlers buried to the tips that were put there decades before, in front of an old abandoned house.