Curly Maple

[woodsy]

I have a few large diameter curly soft maple logs.  I want to quarter saw some of them and I am wondering if I will lose figure by doing so.  I am under the impression that curly figure can be more intense on a radial cut than on the tangent.  Is this right?? I don't want to find out the hard way :D   

[chevytaHOE5674]

Is the curl on the surface or does it go through to the heart? At the mill we cut a cookie off the end and then chop at it with an axe to see how deep the curl goes... That will help you decide how to cut it.

[WIwoodworker]

The radial cut will display better figure. As chevyTahoe pointed out, the curl may not go through the whole log (which is common) so you may want to determine the depth of the curl before deciding how to cut the log.

[northwoods1]

With a piece of wood that is curly, the curl will show better when sawed on the quarter as opposed to flat sawed. This is easy to see by simply examining a piece of wood that has a good flat and quarter sawed face. You can check for curl like chevy tahoe said and if you want to experiment more just take a small piece of what you have and reduce it down to square so you can see both types of faces and then make it 8 sided then finally make it round. You will be able to see exactly how the figure changes as it goes from flat to quarter and everything in between. Most places that specifically deal in curly wood intentionally 1/4 saw it to get the best figure.

[woodsy]

Thanks for the responses. This is good to know before slicing up the log.

I nipped a cookie off and the figure goes fairly deep, maybe within an inch or two of the very center.  So if I understand correctly, this would tell me that by quarter sawing it I would not lose figure.

Conversely, if the figure was only seen through half the diameter and if quarter sawn, the face of the boards would be figured on only one half.