does anyone know what kind of maple HD sells?

[Mike Gager]

i was curious whether its like soft maple or hard maple or something else. is there a way to tell?

[Craig D Peltier]

Guess it might depend where you are. Since we cant tell , its tougher.
Each store varies as well. I heard of a sotre in Ny that carries cherry ply, maple ply etc and here we can only get some crap maple ply. They dont even carry maple up here.
I would take a educated guess thats its eastern, eastern is much more white.Western has a pinkish tone to it. Thye dont even make western maple ply.

[Jamie Buxton]

Yes, it is possible to distinguish between hard and soft maple. Bruce Hoadley's book Identifying Wood (Taunton Press) is a great place to learn about it.

[Peter Quinn]

My orange borg carries a variety I like to call 'Shwag Maple". Its both hard and soft, loaded with mineral stains and sticker stains, twisted, bowed, checked, split, crooked and S4S! And all that quality for roughly 4X what I pay per BF at my hard wood supplier! Occasionally there is a piece of curly or tiger hidden in that mess so its often worth looking but be ware, other wise its no value.

[John Michaels]

Living in the Pacific Northwest I see alot of western (soft) maple. One way to tell is try to dent the wood with your fingernail. Western maple is soft enough to leave a dent pretty easily. Eastern maple is heavier, harder, and generally lighter and more consistent in color.

western maple on the left, eastern on the right

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-11/1108263/DSC07091.jpg

[Guy Germaine]

They just built a Home Depot about 2 miles from me. I've seen both hard and soft maple in the rack. I've also spotted a few pieces of tiger maple in there!

[Larry Fox]

It is tough to tell exactly whether the stuff my local HD sells is hard or soft - it's easy to see that it is crappy though (whatever it is).

[Jack Briggs]

Most of what I see down here in Raleigh is hard maple.

[Todd Bin]

Maybe somebody has already said this but I am going to say that the maple they sell is just like the plywood they sell -- Poor Quality.

[Howard Acheson]

There a number of different species of both hard maple and soft maple. Depending on where the trees were grown, they can look almost identical or very different.

Home Depot buys a lot of their wood from local sources. Therefore, what is sold at one store may be quite different from what is sold at another.

Finally, to know what wood you are buying, insist on seeing their invoice from their source. They should be willing to verify the species. In some states it's required.

[Maurice Ungaro]

If it's ply, HD carries the Chinese import kind.

[Lee DeRaud]

The only "real" wood the local one stocks is red oak and poplar. Everything else is construction-grade stuff.

[Peter Kuhlman]

Here in Louisiana, all I see at the borgs is chinese manufactured plywood. It is labeled as such. Have tried to use it but it delaminates, has plys that are curled over internally which telegraphs through, lots of very large voids. The borgs sure are convenient to use but the quality that was decent say 2 years ago has gone all the way to totally unusable.
Pete