Bird's Eye Maple
Curly Hard MapleHard white Northern Maple is Sugar maple, which has the hardest and whitest sapwood of the maple family. It has a brown heartwood, which you should see in evidence in the mill run that we saw in our own mill, and less in evidence in the wood that has been sorted as FAS. It is straight grained with a fine and uniform texture. It turns well on a lathe and machines well. It is heavy strong, stiff, resistant to shock and very hard with a relative hardness of 2330.
The wood is resistant to abrasion and has no characteristic odor or taste. It is often used in cutting boards and was used in the old wooden butcher blocks. It is the only wood that purportedly contains an enzyme which aids in the elimination of food bacteria. This is not information for which we have found scientific proof, but my personal cutting boards are hard maple.
Figuring occurs in hard maple and may be described as birds-eye, curly, tiger, or fiddleback.
Hard maple is used in flooring, furniture, cabinets, cutting boards and butcher blocks, pianos, billiard cues, handles, bowling alleys, dance and gym floors, spools, and bobbins.
