The FINAL Word on All Things Maple

The FINAL Word on Maple, Figured and Otherwise

The recent occasion of making three new bowls out of Maple, two from Ambrosia Maple and one from Quilted Maple, have caused me to review all my multiple entries regarding Maple and to use them, plus some additional outside resources, to create this final word on Maple. In the future, I will without question make additional pieces from Maple, but with this entry I will only need to post the photos for all that needs to be said about Maple will have been said herein, once and for all.

Making the Distinction: Hard Maple versus Soft Maple

In general, wood workers and wood retailers will divide Maple into two broad groups: Hard Maple and Soft Maple.

Most all the time when a wood is referred to, or sold as, Hard Maple it will in fact be Acer saccharum, the sugar maple from which most, but not all, maple syrup is tapped.  Very occasionally, a very closely related species, Acer nigrum, may also be called Hard Maple.  In fact, some experts believe that Acer nigrum is not a separate species at all, but rather a subspecies within the broader Acer saccharum species, which would be therefore known as Acer saccharum subsp. Nigrum.  The so-called “hard” Maple species have a measured hardness that is quite similar to that of White Oak, a hardwood with which many people are familiar.

Soft Maple, on the other hand, might be one of several different species of Acer.  The species most commonly referred to as Soft Maple can include:

Acer macrophyllum  (Bigleaf Maple)
Acer negundo (Box Elder)
Acer rubrum (Red Maple)
Acer saccharinum (Silver Maple)
Acer pensylvanicum (Striped Maple)

As is often the case with domestic woods, where you buy the wood being sold as Soft Maple can heavily influence what species you are actually getting and using.  For example, in the western United States, Soft Maple is most likely to be Acer macrophyllum, but in the eastern United States Soft Maple is much more likely to be either Acer rubrum or Acer saccharinum.  It also tends to be the case that those who commonly work with these woods will assert the relative superiority of the wood they are most regionally familiar with.  So, an Oregonian wood worker is likely to claim that Big Leaf Maple is far superior to that eastern stuff.

There are three other Acer species that one might encounter and those are: Acer campestre (Field Maple), Acer platanoides (Norway Maple) and Acer pseudoplatanus (Sycamore Maple).  All three of these Acer species are native to Europe and to some extent far western Asia.  This makes it unlikely that a wood worker in the United States would commonly encounter these species, but some of these species have been occasionally planted in the United States as decorative trees and it is therefore possible that wood from removed trees might come on a local market.  But, this isn’t a highly likely scenario.  While none of these species are quite as hard, as determined by the Janka test and scale, they all are on the upper end and would likely be considered contenders for Hard Maple status.

Within the Soft Maple group that one is likely to encounter in the United States, the order of hardness stacks up as follows, from lowest to highest:

Acer saccharinum (Silver Maple)
Acer negundo (Box Elder)
Acer pensylvanicum (Striped Maple)
Acer macrophyllum  (Bigleaf Maple)
Acer rubrum (Red Maple)

Now, to be sure, the differences amongst these five are not incredibly large at all.  The difference between the two extremes is only 250 pounds per square inch which really isn’t a huge amount at all on the Janka scale.