Silver Maple

[adam prochaska]

My neighbor is cutting down a rather large silver maple tree later this month. I am considering taking some of the wood to turn on my friend's lathe. I have never used a lathe and was going to use this as "learning" wood because...well, its free. Has anyone turned silver maple? is this wood that i should try to learn on? Also, once the wood is cut, do i need to seal the ends? If so, can i just use some old latex paint? Any help, suggestions, tips would be appreciated.

Also, if anyone is interested in some free wood in Lincoln, NE, send me your email address. Much of it is being taken for firewood but there will certainly be enough to go around.

Adam

[Dennis Peacock]

Adam,

Welcome to the Turning Vortex. :)

Free wood is the best wood to pratice and learn on. Silver Maple is a nice turning wood, easy to turn and easy to finish. Turn it green and learn tool presentation and turning techniques on green wood....it's easier on the tools and the turner. :D

[Paul Engle]

Welcome and I agree with Dennis, I have a SM in my front yard and I eye ball it every year as it gets older... the coloring in side is sweeeeet .... go for all you can get your hands on.

[Steve Kubien]

Go ahead with the silver maple. I have turned a bunch of it and it can have some amazing swirling grain. In my experience it moves quite a bit when going from a roughed shaped (green wood) to dry and ready to finish turn. AnchorSeal could be your friend on this. I have been toying with alcohol soaking and been careful to fully chgeck it every couple of days to see if cracks have begun to develop. If they have, some thin CA glue helps to keep it together.

HTH
Steve Kubien

[adam prochaska]

He is also cutting down a smaller Elm. Any thoughts on turning elm would also be appreciated.

Thanks!!!

[Dennis Peacock]

Elm?? Get it!!!! Awesome looking wood, turns nice when green but a bit tough when it's dry...but it sands and finishes very nicely. :D

[Steve Schlumpf]

Adam - Welcome! Grab any and all of the maple and elm you can get your hands on! You can turn some beautiful stuff out of it!

You stated you have never used a lathe before... Make sure you have someone there who can show you how to be safe around a spinning chunk of wood!

[adam prochaska]

How do i keep the wood from drying out? I've seen turning wood in wax before but couldn't i just use some old latex paint? If i need to get something special, what would you recommend? Thanks!

[Joyce Baldauf]

Adam,

Yes, you can use old latex paint. If you do two coats, your wood will be okay for some time. Anchorseal is a product that woodturners and others use but it isn't all that inexpensive. Use the paint especially since you are new to this and may have a supply of latex paint (who doesn't?).

Both are really nice woods and if you get enough of it, you can do more that just learn to turn. Pretty soon you will be making some very nice turnings. Use the smaller branches to practice spindle turning. Much of what you learn doing that will transfer to bowl/platter/hollow form turning.

Welcome to the vortex!

Joyce

[Brian McInturff]

Adam,
Me thinks you found a treasure trove. Yeah man - those are 2 great woods to start out with. I had the luxury of starting with oak(that's a bad thing). You will love turning those. If I was close I'd come over and give you a little hands on training. Obviously I'm too far away. Maybe someone close by could swing over and give you a few tips and or training for an hour or so. If not, get a couple videos like Bill Grumbines series and watch those. And then just go practice.

[Ben Gastfriend]

Welcome!

I agree with what has been said above. It is much easier to turn green wood. But in doing that, you run into the problem of drying the things you've turned green. I don't believe you've mentioned what types of turnings you'll be doing, but I'll use bowls as an example.

I take my wet log, and have them chainsawed into a rough round bowl shape. Then I mount the bowl and rough turn it while still wet. If I'm not going to turn the blank for a while, a coat of Anchorseal does the trick. Once it's rough turned, you approach drying. It's a tricky process, because if you don't get it right, crack appear, and widen, and widen somemore. I personally prefer a DNA (denatured alcohol) method. Dennis Peacock has an excellent tutorial for this method on his website here (http://beautifulwood.net/html/bowl_processing.html).

If you would prefer to go another direction, some people have luck microwaving (http://mgorrow.tripod.com/microwave.html) roughed out bowls, and some have luck using soap (http://groups.msn.com/WorldofWoodturners/processinggreentimber.msnw) to dry 'em.

With all the processes, you eventually remount the bowls on the lathe at the end of the drying process, re-turn them to a finished thickness, sand, and finish.

Good luck, and don't hesitate to shoot me a PM with questions.

[Gary Herrmann]

At some point we're going to take down two silver maples in our yard. They're about 30 and 50 yrs old respectively.

I'm reeeely hoping I have a big boy lathe by then.

[Bernie Weishapl]

Welcome to turning. You pretty much got a good bunch of info. Silver maple is a dream to turn. Elm is just about as good. It turns nice, sands well and finish good.

[Brian Poor]

Welcome to the Creek!

Between the Silver Maple and the Elm, you will have enough material for a while. Do use something to keep the water in the blanks until you have a chance to use them.
A nice spread of colors and textures too.

Get together with an experienced turner to watch and ask questions.
Learn to sharpen your tools.
Have fun!

[Mike Ryschkewitsch]

I agree with all the other comments about grabbing the silver maple and elm and turning green. One last warning though if you are turning wood from yard trees --look out for metal! The SM grows fast and leftover treehouse step nails, hammock hooks, etc get buried really fast. I turned a bowl last year and pulled the "last" nail three times. Does bad things to your gouge, not to speak of the catch! If you have a metal detector, that's great. If not look for localized deep black stains from the rusting iron. Also, if the tree has been recently felled (early spring) it can be REALLY wet from the rising sap. A batch I did last year would throw water off the blank during initial rough turning! It quits after a while and you just have to deal with it as it is really hard to let an unroughed blank dry just enough to not throw sap without drying too much and cracking.