Ambrosia Maple, AKA Red Stripe Maple

[Todd Burch]

What's a fair price for this wood in your neck of the woods? This is the wormy soft maple with the grey streaks and block worm holes. Isn't this a fairly sought-after wood?

Todd.

[Anthony Yakonick]

For turning or flat working?

[Todd Burch]

Flat. (My message must be at least 10 characters long, so I added this...)

[Jim Tobias]

Flat. (My message must be at least 10 characters long, so I added this...)

Todd,
I have used Wormy Maple fairly often and it seems readily available around here(N.C.) for around $2.20 BF for 4/4. I am attaching the site where I often purchase it.

http://www.walllumber.com/map.asp

Jim

[Mike Mastin]

What's a fair price for this wood in your neck of the woods? This is the wormy soft maple with the grey streaks and block worm holes. Isn't this a fairly sought-after wood?

Todd.

Todd,

Wormy soft Maple is a wood that can either be breathtaking or flat out ugly. The gray streaking is sap staining and is ugly to most folks. I personally do not care for it. If it has the worm holes and the associated brown staining that accompanies these little rascals and black pencil line spalting (harder to find in soft Maple than it is in hard Maple) it can be some good stuff, IMO. When you start discussing this type of "uniqueness", usually fewer folks see the value and specialness that I see in it :-)

[Bill Grumbine]

Hi Todd

This is one of my favorite woods to work, flat or round. My local sawmill usually has a good supply of the stuff in 4/4 and 8/4. I don't remember all the prices off hand, but 4/4 under 8" wide is usually $2.10/bdft and $2.30/bdft for over 8". Often the stuff I get has lots of curl in it as well as the worm holes. I really like mixing it with walnut.

Wednesday I was in our "local" Woodcraft. As I was walking in, another customer was checking out, and practically cackling to himself over his wood purchase. I stood by idly, checking out what he had picked up. It was some okay looking ambrosia maple (which is what we call it around here), lots of bug holes, but not a single curl to be seen. It was S2S, and it looked like they used the Ruffles potato chip machine to do it. One of the men working there was explaining to this customer that it was planed because it was just too hard to see what you were getting from rough boards. I went over to the bin to see what they nicked him for - I almost fell over! This guy walked out the door with roughly 25 bdft, paying the princely (or is that pricely?) sum of $8.40/bdft!

I felt bad for him, but he is happy, at least until he meets up with someone who knows, and knows him as well.

Bill

[Jim Becker]

I just bought a 7.5 bd ft piece of Ambrosia Maple from my local supplier ("just because"...I liked it) and it was $2 bd ft...slightly less then he sells cherry to me.