opened a sugar maple crotch

[John Daugherty]

I started cutting this sugar maple crotch a couple of days ago. It's right at 4' long and 38" at it's widest. It had three limbs growing out of the side so I decided to cut them off so I could get a flat spot to start cutting on. The first few pics are of the figure that I found underneath. The last is about the 3rd slab in. The flame crotch is really starting to show.

[matt tennessen]

that is awesome and I am jealous. what are your plans for it?

[Dave Gaul]

that is awesome and I am jealous. what are your plans for it?

Almost exactly what I was gonna say!

That is some goreous wood!

[ken gibbs]

If your sugar maple is green, best turn it before it dries. There is a very good reason that paper companies who make paper presses out of sugar maple with steel inserts. That stuff gets very hard very fast. Of course, you can turn it with a carbide cutter but it would still be hard across a crotch piece like the one in your picture. Very hard maple will chip out on you when you turn it.

[Mike Cruz]

Hehe, Ken, I was about to warn John not to let the "turners" here see that slab or we would all hear an eerie distant wail from coast to coast from all the spinny wwers. But you opened that up already...

John, beautiful wood you've got there. Not sure of your intentions with it (flat boarding or turning), but do it proud either way...and keep us posted with pics of it when you are finished making bowls...I mean finished making it into, um, something.