Soft Maple Use

[Gabby]

Question- Have a large quantity of med. sized sofr maple ($0 cost except my time to cut the logs) Can soft maple be used for a flat hay rack. Rack would be painted and keep dry when not in use. tks in advance.

[oakiemac]

I would say absolutely. Soft Maple is a nice wood to work with. cuts easy, machines nice. I don't think it is very durable when exposed to the elements but if you paint it and take care of it you should have no problems.

[SwampDonkey]

If ya had white ash or white oak, I'm use it instead. If that soft maple is going to be out in the elements make sure the end grain is sealed good with something. I've seen maple get dotie quick around bolt holes.

[Frank_Pender]

Many wooded paintbrush handles are Western Big Leaf Maple.  I have sold some lumber to make such handles, but alas the buy has passed on and I do not know who his customer was at the time. :'(

[Ernie_Edwards]

As a point of interest, just yesterday I was looking at a handbook on the trees of Michigan.

On the soft Maple they said that the "soft" came from the tree easily losing its brittle branches in a wind storm, that in fact the wood was considered very hard with a tight grain.

[beenthere]

Ernie
Looking at the "Wood Handbook", the maples are divided into 'soft' and 'hard'.
Hard maples include sugar maple, and black maple. The 'soft' maple group includes red maple, silver maple, box elder, and bigleaf maple.
Looking at the specific gravity, strength, and hardness numbers; there is a distinction in the separation of soft and hard based on which ones are harder, stronger, and more dense. (Not sure why the 'brittle' branches would enter into the separation, but maybe its from a tree identification standpoint or possibly some local promotion).

Just the 'side hardness' values (pressing a ball into the wood) at 12% moisture content, the two hard maples have values of 1180 and 1450.
These values for red, silver, and bigleaf respectively are 950, 700, and 850.  Boxelder isn't listed.

Red maple is a soft maple that has the better strength and hardness values of the soft maple group, but is hard to separate when in lumber form, according to the literature.

[SwampDonkey]

I'm not sure the red maple are so brittle to wind breakage unless they are dead and dry. They're pretty tough, take hold of a green branch and wrestle with it a bit. ;D