Made some curly maple kindling

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bioprof

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While I was on vacation with my parents, my dad asked me to help him cut down the trunks of two alder trees in western Oregon that the power company had cut the limbs off of. One of them was rotted out in the top. Well, we proceeded to cut them down and cut them into 18" pieces. Some of them were too big to haul to the wood splitter, so we left them lay for a while. While I was gone taking my girlfriend to the airport, he ripped the butt pieces with the chainsaw into small pieces so he could load them up into the cart. When I got around to picking them up this morning, I noticed that every piece was solid quilt. In hindsight, it looks like from the stump that it was a big maple tree, not an alder. There are some pieces that could be sawn into blanks for pistols, but that would be about it. I don't know if it would be hard enough to make gun stocks anyway, as it was probably bigleaf maple which is pretty soft. Is it worth messing with (the tree was probably 18" in diameter).
 
If it were me, I would keep some of the larger pieces for pistol blanks. :)

The pistols I'm familure with don't have much if any carving and I think some nice curl always makes them look "classy".

Not only that, but if you make a pistol or two out of them, years from now they will remind you of the old days. Not a bad thing when you think about it.

Zonie :)
 
Turns out it is alder. Some of it still had some leaves on it. I didn't know that alder could have so much curl. I'm planning on saving some of it for woodworking projects. Has anyone heard of making gunstocks from alder? I know they make a lot of furniture from it.
 
I slabbed a piece with a chainsaw and ran it through my dad's portable plane. It does have a lot of figure. I'll definitely use it someday. Here's a photo:

Alderwood.jpg
 
Whew! :haha: When I saw the topic title I feared it was a horror story of a ruined stock... congratulations on your find :)
 
Box Elder is a member of the maple family, Alder is not. Almost all woods can have curl, or quilting in them, depending on the weather, soil, and genitics of the trees environment. Box elder, and Elm were used for the hubs of wagon, wheels because of their twisted grain, Hickory, or red oak was generally used for the spokes, and white oak or ash for the rims. Useing each of these woods for their particular strength, and versitility, which dosen't make any of them very good candidates for gunstocks, except the Black Ash. They would however make good Hawk handles.
 
Bill, white ash was also used for utility grade gun stocks like barn guns and muskets (American Revolution use mostly).
 
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