Hardest wood I've seen so far

[mass_burner]

I am pretty sure this from my neighbors tree on the cape. This maple is hard as a rock. Those trees were very old maybe that's why. Are some maple species harder than others. I believe this is silver.

 

[Woody Stover]

The hardest stuff is hard Maple ....Sugar Maple. Red and Silver are softer.

 

[mass_burner]

Does this look like hard maple?

 

[peakbagger]

It does look like nicely figured hard maple. The figure makes it more difficult to split

 

[Applesister]

I think the Cape is well within the natural range of sugar maple. Why not?

 

[Paulywalnut]

Silver maple never appeared to me to be a hard wood. Hard maple is very hard of course.
Being dry it would make it hard to split. Dry silver is much easier to split too.

 

[mass_burner]

I split some today, half of the time it just chunks off with a direct hit of the fiskars. Its wicked dense.

 

[BillLion]

I split some today, half of the time it just chunks off with a direct hit of the fiskars. Its wicked dense.

I found sugar maple easier to split with a maul than my Fiskars. Red maple is the opposite.

 

[Soundchasm]

Sugar Maple is also called rock maple. I processed a Hackberry where the last rounds (lowest to the ground) were completely different from the rest of the tree. The concept of grain no longer seemed to exist. It wasn't that hard, but it wanted to chunk way more than it wanted to split.

 

[firewoodjunky]

With sugar (hard) maple, I don't even bother with an 8 lb maul - it just bounces off. I think it just laughs at the Fiskars

Sledge and wedge is the only way to go!

 

[Brewmonster]

A couple years ago I scrounged a yard-grown sugar maple from a tree service. I split everything by hand and this was the hardest, toughest, most ornery wood I ever pounded on. This winter I judged it to be the best-burning wood ever. Very hot and easy to manage in the stove. Great stuff.
That said, I think your pic looks more like silver.

 

[mass_burner]

A couple years ago I scrounged a yard-grown sugar maple from a tree service. I split everything by hand and this was the hardest, toughest, most ornery wood I ever pounded on. This winter I judged it to be the best-burning wood ever. Very hot and easy to manage in the stove. Great stuff.
That said, I think your pic looks more like silver.

Silver would probably make more sense given the trees still on the property now. Is silver the one with the scaly bark that falls off.

 

[Brewmonster]

Both sugar and silver could be described as scaly but the plates of sugar maple bark tend to be larger. Silver maple bark looks more like strips. Silver maple trees have a more unruly, irregular habit of growth and often broken branches on the older ones.

 

[mass_burner]

Both sugar and silver could be described as scaly but the plates of sugar maple bark tend to be larger. Silver maple bark looks more like strips. Silver maple trees have a more unruly, irregular habit of growth and often broken branches on the older ones.

The plates range from quarter size to silver dollar size, some bigger.

 

[HackBerry]

With that figure it would have made a nice sunburst Les Paul.

 

[Enzo's Dad]

I split some today, half of the time it just chunks off with a direct hit of the fiskars. Its wicked dense.

You just raised your MA flag by using "wicked" in a sentence

 

[mass_burner]

You just raised your MA flag by using "wicked" in a sentence

you know its wierd, I never say that word, only write it for some reason. there are also words i never write, but say alot.

 

[Nick Mystic]

Some years back i built a wood drying shed using fresh cut locust posts. It was so hard I couldn't drive a 16 penny nail into it without drilling pilot holes! Another time I salvaged an old oak post that was so hard when I cut it with my cut off saw it gave off sparks! I turned some pieces with it and had to sharpen my carbon steel chisels several times for each piece! Wood can be very hard indeed!