Curly maple

[lineguy82]

I dont know much about trees or sawing, but can you tell if a maple log will produce "curly maple" before you cut it?

[Autocar]

I haven't been around of alot of it , but if you take a axe and blaze the side of the log your beable to see it. I read once where they say you can see it while the tree is standing also just in the bark.

[pasbuild]

Typically you wont see it in the bark and its difficult to see in your cross cut, the best way is to knock off some of the bark.

[GAB]

I sawed a maple that fell and damaged the neighbors house and car in a wind storm, after I cut up and split the branches from the tree.  The branches did not split as maple usually does.  So I took a very light slab cut and then a thin board off of the butt log.  Then I took a piece of the thin board and ran it through the planer and definitely confirmed curly.
Made a phone call and sold it quarter sawed 5/4 thick for guitar necks.
I could not see any difference in the bark of that tree from any other maple.
Gerald

[MJD]

I read somewhere along time ago that metal in a tree can cause curl, then a few years later a guy wanted me to mill a big cherry tree for him and he warned me that there was a tree fort in it so there could be metal in it. Well that cherry had so much curl in it you could not see the natural grain, I wondered if it was from the nails that were in that tree from the fort. Then a few years ago I bought a timber sale and there was a 30" dia. hard maple that was used for a hunting stand, had nails/ spikes up the side where they nailed boards for a latter so it was put in the firewood pile, when I split that tree for firewood the curl was amazing, I have milled a few oaks that had curl but nothing like these trees that had metal in them, on both the cherry and maple you could not tell from the bark but with the bark removed the cherry looked ripplely and the maple was like bubbles/ bumps. If curl happens naturally I have not seen it.

[Cedar Savage]

Was it curly before the nails were put in them, or after? The metal would need to be put in a young tree to affect it, its entire life.

[WDH]

The curl is created by irregularities in the cambium that puts down the wood to the inside and bark to the outside each year.   

[MJD]

Was it curly before the nails were put in them, or after? The metal would need to be put in a young tree to affect it, its entire life.

Thats a good ? I know they must of been larger trees to be able to have a fort/ tree stand in them. It was probably 10 years ago but i do think the curl faded away towards the center of the log on the cherry.