"Shake" in maple.

I was asked to build 4 maple handrails.. today.. An emergency for a contractor .. anyway.. not the question..

So I agreed as a favor.

First rail went fine.. straight.. good..

The next three had what I call " Shake " in the face of the maple.. I dont know if that is the right word.. Random checks in the edge and face grain..

This is eastern maple.

So what was to be a simple process, turned into a nightmare.. I ended up veneering 3 edges and one face .. added hours to the project..

As it is .. only 3 of the 4 handrails are done.. Its 11:15 and I stopped because of noise.. I feel bad.. they needed this done for the morning..

So why .. why does this maple have these random checks.. or split flakes ?

Could be that the tree had some storm damage during its life.

Or (less likely) after being cut into logs, it was dropped hard onto a hard surface.

It could get a lot of cracks from being kilned wrong. I've seen maple riddled with short cracks with the grain.

Generally checking due to shake is fairly consistent through the log (think of the log being distored so bad that it shears). "Random checks" are usually a drying defect, caused by too much heat or too high a rate of drying when the wood is above 35% MC.

Thicker boards are more susceptible to drying related stresses than thin ones; since these are handrails I presume that your stock started off as 12/4 or 16/4?