Red Mapel

What are your thoughts? Workability, staining, and how does it compare to hard maple? Pics please, we all love to see those beautiful rifles. Thanks

I'm waiting for the red maple in my front yard to mature a bit more to figure all that out. Currently it's about 1" diameter, so it will be a while.

Kibler's use red maple for many of their kits.

Penske said:

Kibler's use red maple for many of their kits.

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Oh wow, I had no idea.

Red maple, I think that's what my .50 is stocked in.

Red maple is softer than hard or sugar maple, it will show dings and scratches more readily. Just my experience working with it

At least 2/3 of the curly maple stock blanks out there are red maple. It often stains more honey and molasses than warm reddish tones with aquafortis.

Shorthanded said:

Red maple is softer than hard or sugar maple, it will show dings and scratches more readily. Just my experience working with it

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That's good to know. Thanks

rich pierce said:

At least 2/3 of the curly maple stock blanks out there are red maple. It often stains more honey and molasses than warm reddish tones with aquafortis.

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Gorgeous rifle, thanks for sharing.

I have some friends who are working with red maple. One of them is skilled in the art and says that the red maple stock he received is too soft to take nice raised carving without a lot of extra care compared to sugar maple. The carving on the Rich Pierce gun looks excellent from here.

The Crisco Kid said:

I have some friends who are working with red maple. One of them is skilled in the art and says that the red maple stock he received is too soft to take nice raised carving without a lot of extra care compared to sugar maple. The carving on the Rich Pierce gun looks excellent from here.

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True but from the looks of it Mr. Pierce is a master. Me... not so much. Thanks for the info.

I think this is how the hardness scale works out.........Hardest is Chestnut maple , next...Sugar maple, then.....Hard red maple , med. hard red maple , soft red maple. Black maple parallels red maple. , Finally......White maple , it comes from those huge maple trees growing near water , and in damp areas. All can be curly , or plain , or anything in between. The hardest , chestnut maple , can have birds eye , tortoise shell , quilted , and curl , or all in one blank. In a half century , I've seen only a half dozen Chestnut maple stock blanks. Chestnut maple is heavy , dense , beautiful , and miserable to work. I hated buying some , 40 yrs.ago , but I did. Live and learn..

I didn't realize there were so many varieties of maple. In Oregon we had the big leaf maple (Acer macrophylum). It's a pretty soft wood but can have some beautiful quilted grain. When I was younger in the early '70's I worked in a small hardwood mill. I pulled a few really nice pieces off the green chain and managed to talk the boss out of a couple so I could make coffee tables for friends.

oldwood said:

I think this is how the hardness scale works out.........Hardest is Chestnut maple , next...Sugar maple, then.....Hard red maple , med. hard red maple , soft red maple. Black maple parallels red maple. , Finally......White maple , it comes from those huge maple trees growing near water , and in damp areas. All can be curly , or plain , or anything in between. The hardest , chestnut maple , can have birds eye , tortoise shell , quilted , and curl , or all in one blank. In a half century , I've seen only a half dozen Chestnut maple stock blanks. Chestnut maple is heavy , dense , beautiful , and miserable to work. I hated buying some , 40 yrs.ago , but I did. Live and learn..

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I think this may be a case of "common" names not being particularly accurate.

As I understand it, there are two "hard maple" species in the US -- sugar and black maple (acer saccharum and acer nigrum, respectively). Those are the only two I would consider using for a stock. The red maple that grows around the great lakes (acer rubrum) is much softer and much weaker and prone to dents/dings than either of the two hard maple species -- and I would seriously doubt that any gun maker actually uses that. It would be almost as bad as making a gun stock out of poplar or pine!

Does anyone know the actual genus/species of the "red maple" supposedly being used by Kibler?

I can find no references to "chestnut maple", and suspect it's not actually a maple (acer genus).

David Veale said:

I think this may be a case of "common" names not being particularly accurate.

As I understand it, there are two "hard maple" species in the US -- sugar and black maple (acer saccharum and acer nigrum, respectively). Those are the only two I would consider using for a stock. The red maple that grows around the great lakes (acer rubrum) is much softer and much weather than either of the two hard maple species -- and I would seriously doubt that any gun maker actually uses that. It would be almost as bad as making a gun stock out of poplar or pine!

Does anyone know the actual genus/species of the "red maple" supposedly being used by Kibler?

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Acer rubrum is the only red maple. It varies a lot in hardness, some of it overlapping sugar maple’s range of hardness. A lot of top makers use red maple, and carve it exquisitely. Keep in mind that walnut and red maple overlap in hardness and American walnut was THE gun stock wood in the cartridge era.

This is the wrong string but it’s among builder lads. I mentioned etching steel using a battery charger. This early sample took around 30 mins to etch away you just need salt water , battery charger 12 v , a steel workpiece and and a steel bar And paint whet you don’t want the steel etched

Yes the back was totally etched away

rich pierce said:

Acer rubrum is the only red maple. It varies a lot in hardness, some of it overlapping sugar maple’s range of hardness. A lot of top makers use red maple, and carve it exquisitely. Keep in mind that walnut and red maple overlap in hardness and American walnut was THE gun stock wood in the cartridge era.

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I've noticed a difference in the cost of figured red vs hard. Thanks for your input on this thread.

I have used both for stocks and furniture you won't notice much difference.

There's sugar maple, which we call hard maple; and red maple. There aren't really different classifications for red maple; and both species vary in their density. I've worked with sugar maple that has soft spots, and red maple that's pretty dense. Red maple is a little harder than walnut, in my experience.

Sugar maple is much better if you're going to do some carving. And, for the figured wood, I've found red maple is easier to get a good contrast with the figure. I build from a blank, and don't do relief carving... and I prefer to use red maple.

The first gun is one I made for my brother, using sugar maple. This piece of wood was very dense... and gave me an education. The second is my personal gun, Miss Sally. I built her six years ago, and used a grade 4 red maple blank. The third is one I finished a year ago, and it also has a grade 5 red maple stock. The last is an early plain gun with a grade 3 red maple stock. I'm currently finishing a gun on which I used tanic acid for the first time. It has a grade 7 sugar maple stock, and I'm pleased with the tanic acid's ability to create a better contrast with the figure.

I don't worry about hardness when it comes to scratches and dents. I take care of my guns, mind them in the field, and don't fall down much. So it's not worth fussing over.

All stock wood species vary in quality. The qualities vary depending on where it was grown. Each piece of wood needs to be treated like an individual. The variations are more important than the subspecies. In other words, you can have some red maple that is harder than some sugar maple.