"Shake" in maple.

[Rick Fisher]

I was asked to build 4 maple handrails.. today.. An emergency for a contractor .. anyway.. not the question..

So I agreed as a favor.

First rail went fine.. straight.. good..

The next three had what I call " Shake " in the face of the maple.. I dont know if that is the right word.. Random checks in the edge and face grain..

This is eastern maple.

So what was to be a simple process, turned into a nightmare.. I ended up veneering 3 edges and one face .. added hours to the project..

As it is .. only 3 of the 4 handrails are done.. Its 11:15 and I stopped because of noise.. I feel bad.. they needed this done for the morning..

So why .. why does this maple have these random checks.. or split flakes ?

[David Thompson 27577]

Could be that the tree had some storm damage during its life.

Or (less likely) after being cut into logs, it was dropped hard onto a hard surface.

[george wilson]

It could get a lot of cracks from being kilned wrong. I've seen maple riddled with short cracks with the grain.

[Scott T Smith]

Generally checking due to shake is fairly consistent through the log (think of the log being distored so bad that it shears). "Random checks" are usually a drying defect, caused by too much heat or too high a rate of drying when the wood is above 35% MC.

Thicker boards are more susceptible to drying related stresses than thin ones; since these are handrails I presume that your stock started off as 12/4 or 16/4?