The long game
The long game – some times you just need to give Mother Nature a few years to work her magic. I don’t have “before” pictures, so hopefully you trust me saying that about 10 years ago when I cut these pieces and stuck them in our dirt floor basement under the 1840 house…the wood was pretty much all bright white. Now…it has transformed
Norway Maple – not native here in the US and it is classified as an invasive. It is faster growing than and will outcompete native Sugar Maple. Norway is a “hard” maple…not quite as hard as Sugar or Black Maple, but harder than Silver and Red and much harder than Ashleaf Maple (Box Elder).
Aging…like fine wine and cheese and prime beef! In the 10 or so years that this wood was in the basement it 1) dried slowly and well and 2) developed spalting and other very awesome color variations. Some of this wood I can tell is special just by looking at it due to the external or cut surface irregularities reflecting curl, crotch, and other figure. Some of it is not as obvious on the surface…the spalting and wood color changes.
Irregular chunks – I freehand cut all of this stuff with chainsaw long before I had any idea of using Alaskan mills to precisely mill wood. When we felled these three deteriorating huge Norways, I just couldn’t bring myself to put it all in the firewood pile. In addition to these pieces that I purposefully stored in the basement, I have some massive pieces (up to 5’ wide planks) that I freehand cut and stored dry. The stuff shown today is in a variety of sizes and configurations but all were cut and kept due to some desirable character.
The four pieces that I worked on today were four of the smaller ones from the stash. On each of these four, I planed at least one surface to reveal the figure, colors, and spalting. Frankly, I think that they are stunning! If you are interested in any of these four pieces or any of the other 40 or so chunks, please let me know.