Soft Maple for Framing Lumber?

[YoungStump]

 I'm wondering how soft maple works as rough framing lumber. 
 I have an old bank barn on my property that needs a lot of work and one of my projects is framing in and insulating a 16'x16'x8' section of the hay barn for a small work room. My plans were to use tulip poplar for most of the framing, I would be building green and allowing to dry in place. 
 The problem is that most of the poplar I have available is on the smaller side, fine for 2x4 2x6 etc but I need something for the 2x12x16's I need for floor/ceiling joists. I have access to plenty of decent soft maple logs they're low grade with bigger hearts and some worm but gunbarrel straight and free of large knots. 
 I'm wondering if these would be a viable alternative or not? And just in general the characteristics of soft maple when used as framing lumber compared to say hemlock, pine, or poplar which is what most around here use when building with rough lumber.

[chet]

I don't know about your area, but around here I would worry about powder post beetles.

[woodman52]

Around here (western NY) there are 150+ year old barns whose entire framing, including posts and rafters, are made from hardwood.  Mostly Beech but a mix. I would use fresh cut logs and not leave any bark. No dead trees or logs that have been on the ground for any length of time. 

[YoungStump]

 I hadn't thought of powder post beetles. I'm not sure on the exact age of the barn but best guess is late 1800's. It's framed with mostly hardwood, chestnut, oak, beech maybe a few others, hemlock siding. 

[Don P]

Borate everything you use, they like poplar just as much as maple.
If we are talking about red maple, it has excellent strength properties for framing use. I talked to one of the Forest Products Labs technicians at a display of red maple trusses one time. He showed me the test results and they were very good. Connection capacity was... on the hook. Where truss plates tear out of most wood, the truss plates never let go in red maple, the steel plates tore. That will translate to good nail holding as well. It is in the beam calcs in the toolbox here and as 2x material it is in the lumber span calcs on the awc.org site as well. I would not use any of those green.

[woodman52]

My opinion is that you definitely want to use them green. As long as you account for the wood moving.  It's a barn.  Unless you want to drill all your nail holes Green is the way to go. I have built a number of structures using green hardwood lumber. It is much much easier to work with. You just have to realize it is going to move. Don't load any floor joist heavy for awhile. 

[YoungStump]

Thanks a lot guys. Very helpful information. I was messing around with the span calculators and definitely didn't realize how well soft/red maple actually does.

[cutterboy]

This thread reminds me of a story my father told me many years ago.
Back in the 1950s one of my uncles was building his own house. Well, my father and another uncle owned and ran a small saw mill and gave him some dry red maple lumber which he used for the roof. Now, my aunt was pestering my uncle to hurry up and finish the house so he hired a crew to shingle the roof. My father said there was a lot of swearing coming from the roof while the crew nailed the shingles to the dry red maple. Dad said he could hear it from half a mile away. :D :D

[jpassardi]

As stated above, nothing wrong with hardwood rough cut framing - other than nailing that is. If done green it's much better. If it's white oak, my framing nailer won't always get through it even green. Red maple isn't terribly hard so a good choice if you have it.