After a little time off, I got back to sawing again and was halfway through a load of Ambrosia (wormy) Maple and thought I'd snap this picture. I always like sawing this stuff, it sells real well, and the striking colors and pattern made up for the nasty, cold rainy day.
YH
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21488/Ambrosia_Maple.JPG)
Will it change the color after going in the kiln?
WOW! That log is loaded with it. I see it in red maple sometimes, but never as much as that.
That is a nice looking log. Hope it fetches a good price for you.
Absolutely stunning contrast, and I knew you would be back soon! glad to see it! 8)
Such a shame that log is spoiled
You can throw them nasty boards on my firewood pile
I don't want you to hurt your new hip
Just trying to help you out . . .
Quote from: Peter Drouin on November 16, 2014, 08:20:11 PM
Will it change the color after going in the kiln?
No...Our KD wormy looks just like that.
WOW!!!!!!
WOW!!!!!!!!!
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!
Quote from: Peter Drouin on November 16, 2014, 08:20:11 PM
Will it change the color after going in the kiln?
Only if I screw it up. Here's some I did a few months ago.
YH
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21488/IMG_1108.JPG)
and curly figure to boot! That stuff is sweeter that honey on a sugar plum! I'll be sending my beetles down your way to learn how do the ambrosia thing the right way. ;) :D
Nice! If you have a market for it, it can be like gold. ;D
DanG....you never said that you have some curly ambrosia maple 8).
Hope it doesn't twist with that spiral grain. :(
Super cool if it works. ;D 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) :snowball:
curly grain in maple and yellow birch is prized stuff. ;D
Sell me the curly stuff, please ;D.
Wild Bill might have some he will sell you. ;D
:D :D
It ain't his no more.
I have to admit, I really like working with this wood. It saws very fast, yield is high, logs are big with minimal heart check, and the boards are usually well behaved and dry straight. There is very little waste. Sticker stain is a problem with this species, and we lost some money with zebra striped boards, but once we broke the code on that, we can crank out a kiln load in a week with no stain at all. I probably sell 3 or 4 times as much of this as clear, unmarked maple. When we get a few logs in, we trim them to length and sell the sealed cut offs to wood turners; this is a favorite for them, and very little goes into the burn pile. We get some with really nice patterns and colors, too.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21488/image~72.jpg)
This is us getting the logs ready to saw, bucking them up and Anchorsealing the ends on a cold day as it was getting dark.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21488/image~81.jpg)
YH
That is some mighty fine ambrosia maple.
Wow! I don't think there is anything quite like that up here in Maine! Beautiful! I've sawn some DanG fine curly maple, but none with anything near that amount of stripe. Occasionally mineral stain will be strong in areas, which is always interesting.
Is there any way to tell from the outside of the log whether the Ambrosia will be inside? Or can you tell from the ends? A lot of big maples came down in a recent storm and I'm trying to get people to saw them up rather than turn them into mulch......
Ambrosia is more commonly found in soft maple, i.e. red maple, Acer rubrum, than in sugar maple.
YH. what did you do to stop the sticker stain with your stickers? I'm now sawing red cedar for my stickers, but I just air now. Hope to build a solar kiln next year.
xlogger,
Airflow, airflow, airflow. The air must be moving immediately after sawing. Fans are a must if it is even close to hot and humid.
Nice looking Maple. I cut an old half rotten maple last week and got some nice boards. Not sure what I will make with them.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/37117/photo_1.JPG)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/37117/photo_2.JPG)
Beautiful!
Flatrock58, that's some nice maple.
Quote from: xlogger on November 18, 2014, 05:47:48 PM
YH. what did you do to stop the sticker stain with your stickers? I'm now sawing red cedar for my stickers, but I just air now. Hope to build a solar kiln next year.
Quote from: WDH on November 18, 2014, 08:14:35 PM
xlogger,
Airflow, airflow, airflow. The air must be moving immediately after sawing. Fans are a must if it is even close to hot and humid.
WDH is 100% on the money. smiley_thumbsup
I have run some experiments and determined that the greatest chance of sticker stain in red maple occurs in the first couple hours after sawing and tapers off after a couple weeks. Surface moisture and high temperatures on the boards greatly increases sticker stain potential and everything must be done to dry it immediately and keep it cool, even though the board itself still has moisture in it. In addition to accelerated drying, lots of air blowing over the stack causes evaporative cooling and greatly reduces surface temperatures, especially in the warmer months.
So I do several things specific to ambrosia maple that I don't necessarily do with other species due to its tendency to deep stain to the point where it won't plane out and the wood is ruined. Here's what I do:
1. Big fans running on high for about two weeks, as soon as the wood is sawn. Butt the fans right up to the stacks and get the air moving over them. I wont even saw red maple unless I have some fans ready and waiting.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21488/Fans.JPG)
2. "H" stickers to minimize surface contact with wood.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21488/H_Sticker.JPG)
3. I don't spray these boards with insecticide because it wets the boards under the stickers and I want their surfaces dry immediately. I sterilize the wood later in the kiln.
4. I spread the boards liberally out in the lumber stack, putting at least a half an inch between edges. I want the air moving vertically in the stack as well as horizontally. I don't want any dead spots.
5. Every couple days, use a hammer to move a few sample stickers in the stack and see if any stain is forming under them. If it starts to show, I beat all the stickers about an inch to the side to let the wood under them dry out.
If you go to all this trouble, it will be worth it as the boards will dry without any sticker stain at all, and will be bright with no gray or fade. I sell the ambrosia maple starting at $4 per bdft, so a kiln load represents a significant profit and discovering a load of sticker stain is the start of a very bad day.
Also, if these fans are used in this method with green oaks and other similar species, the boards will crack and be ruined. The air velocity is too high and the wood will dry too fast.
YH
Yellowhammer
Do you have to keep air flow on the maple even with cold temperatures?
thanks,
Steve
Quote from: flatrock58 on November 18, 2014, 11:26:05 PM
Yellowhammer
Do you have to keep air flow on the maple even with cold temperatures?
I do, it's cheap insurance because even though the risk of sticker stain is greatly reduced in cold weather, I did stain some last winter with no fans running, so now I run them 24/7 and let the fans rapidly dry the wood to a point where it likely won't stain if I get a warm damp spell. A fan's drying effectivness is proportional to the wetness of the wood, so the wetter the wood, the better the fan's high velocity airflow over the wood removes moisture. That's why after a couple weeks I remove the fans or move them to a different stack because the wood is dry enough where the fans lose their effectiveness and the maple is out of the danger zone as fast as possible.
Normally, two barrel fans will cover 1200 Bdft of lumber, 600 Bdft on the suction side, 600 Bdft on the exhaust.
YH
I slab up a red maple log about 5-6 weeks ago into 2" slabs. I just put them under a shed with stickers no fan. I'll have to see how they turn out. I don't do much volume here, wonder if I do another maple and stood it up on edge under the shed how would that work?
Thanks WDH and YH for the great tips !
XLOGGER, I stood up maple in my shop to dry, it cupped and bowed. Your mileage may vary.
Frank
My experience is that slabs have to be dried in a herd. A single slab standing under a shed is totally exposed on all sides and can dry too fast for its thickness. The thicker the slab, the worse the outcome. I have found that it is best to sandwich the slab with stickers under two layers of boards, one on bottom and one on top of the slab, or I sticker a number of slabs together and then cover the top layer with stickers and another layer of other, non-slab, boards. This helps keeps the drying under better control. The moisture evaporating from the slabs keeps the neighbors from drying too fast.
There is nothing fast about drying thick lumber using conventional processes.