# Manitoba Maple



## Daninvan (Oct 22, 2009)

Picked up 10 slabs in three hours today from a short log of Manitoba maple. Using a pair of Husky 2100's with homemade mills on 36" bars.







I was totally astounded by the colour when I opened it up after the first cut. Looks like a painting by Monet or something. The ends did not reveal anything like this, I think the log had been sitting for a while. I ended the session with a huge pile of flaming red/orange/pink coloured sawdust. It looked like I had bled all over it.






Loaded my wife's Subaru to the gunnels and drove home slowly. Rough guess is that each of the larger pieces is about 15 bf, total haul was about 100 bf. 






The colour is a bit weird in this one, the first pic is truer.

It rained like crazy on me for the first hour, but was OK after that. The sawdust sure likes to stick to everything when it is raingin!

One of the saws was giving me trouble, the tension adjusting screw kept getting loose and the chain would then get loose. I think the problem is the little clip washer that captures the end of the screw. Anyone know if this is an easy to find part?

Dan


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## gr8scott72 (Oct 22, 2009)

That is beautiful wood!!


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## BobL (Oct 22, 2009)

gr8scott72 said:


> That is beautiful wood!!



It sure is!!!

You must have a very understanding wife, there's no way I'd be allowed to put that timber in her Subaru!


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## dave k (Oct 22, 2009)

As the others said great colour and grain, And Im wondering if the Subaru is looking a bit bow legged after that lot in it !


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## excess650 (Oct 22, 2009)

I've never seen maple with color like that!:yourock:

The best maple here is curly and used for fancy muzzleloader stocks.


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## MotorSeven (Oct 22, 2009)

Wait....what's Manitoba Maple doing in BC?

RD


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## Andrew96 (Oct 22, 2009)

Maybe it's not Manitoba maple. Must be BC maple with grain like that. BC Maple isn't a real tree...I just made that up. Really cool looking grain though. What are you going to do with it?


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## discounthunter (Oct 22, 2009)

awesome color. looks like flame box elder.


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## Brmorgan (Oct 22, 2009)

discounthunter said:


> awesome color. looks like flame box elder.



That's because it _is_ flame box elder. Manitoba Maple is just a common Canadian slang term for Box Elder. Not really sure which name makes less sense.

I've been searching high and low for some of that stuff. I'm at the city's wood waste site almost daily with the yard care business but so far haven't seen any show up there yet. I think the logs usually have to sit on the ground for a while to get really good coloring like that though, don't they?


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## discounthunter (Oct 22, 2009)

learn something new every day. it would be worth the trip to see if more was laying around. 

like forrest gumps momma allways says "trees are like a box of chocolates...."


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## Brmorgan (Oct 22, 2009)

Ain't that the truth. Every one is a new adventure.


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## MR4WD (Oct 22, 2009)

Brmorgan said:


> That's because it _is_ flame box elder. Manitoba Maple is just a common Canadian slang term for Box Elder. Not really sure which name makes less sense.
> 
> I've been searching high and low for some of that stuff. I'm at the city's wood waste site almost daily with the yard care business but so far haven't seen any show up there yet. I think the logs usually have to sit on the ground for a while to get really good coloring like that though, don't they?



I don't agree with that. I have what quite a few people have called a manitoba maple at my house and the leaves are quite different than what turns up on the interweb for flame box elder leaves, or even box elder leaves.

Edit: I mean that unoffendingly. I'd like to see some literature to help me identify both properly, if you have some available.


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## Brmorgan (Oct 22, 2009)

MR4WD said:


> I don't agree with that. I have what quite a few people have called a manitoba maple at my house and the leaves are quite different than what turns up on the interweb for flame box elder leaves, or even box elder leaves.
> 
> Edit: I mean that unoffendingly. I'd like to see some literature to help me identify both properly, if you have some available.



No offense taken. Every region has its own names for trees (and everything else) Some folks down south in BC here refer to Ponderosa Pine as "Bull Pine", when that is a more common name for southern Loblolly Pine, which admittedly is very similar. Likewise a lot of folks around here call Lodgepole Pine "Jackpine" though they are two distinct species.

I can help out with the literature though. This is taken from my "Field Guide to Trees of North America" book, which was well worth the money:






I'm a transplanted Easterner from Ontario, and "Manitoba Maple" was a common name for it back there too, so it's not a Western thing.


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## MR4WD (Oct 22, 2009)

Brmorgan said:


> No offense taken. Every region has its own names for trees (and everything else) Some folks down south in BC here refer to Ponderosa Pine as "Bull Pine", when that is a more common name for southern Loblolly Pine, which admittedly is very similar. Likewise a lot of folks around here call Lodgepole Pine "Jackpine" though they are two distinct species.
> 
> I can help out with the literature though. This is taken from my "Field Guide to Trees of North America" book, which was well worth the money:
> 
> ...



I'll take a picture of the immature tree at my place referred to as manitoba maple. It LOOKS like an immature birch, but clearly has maple leafs. Almost like a willow. Multiple leaders and fairly spindley...

As far as bull pine, that gets confused with mature stands of white pine around here. Blister rust hasn't quite gotten all of them yet and they are similar from a distance. I prefer neither. I usually grimace when people refer to lodgepole as jackpine though. Or point at any conifer and say "pine" in any capacity.

Where you from in Newfou... Er Ontario?


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## Daninvan (Oct 23, 2009)

This is the second one of these I have cut up. The first one, a couple years ago, had far less colour in it. That first one was just a few large branches from a tree though, this I am pretty sure was a trunk. Both were street trees that the city had taken down, that's how a Manitoba maple winds up growing in BC!

Here's a picture of the log before I cut it up. You can see the bark pattern, but the colour is a bit lighter than what is shown in the Field Guide, and the bark seems less heavily ridged.






This one had been lying on the ground for "a while", I meant a few weeks perhaps. I think most of the colour came while it was still living. 

Western bigleaf maple is the local native species. It is common for it to spalt, but you don't get the flame pattern like this one has.

I don't have any specific plans for it, other than I will sticker and stack it for a couple years, then see what it is like. I know there is going to be some splitting and that the colours will fade with exposure to light.

Dan


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## MNGuns (Oct 27, 2009)

Daninvan said:


> Picked up 10 slabs in three hours today from a short log of Manitoba maple. Using a pair of Husky 2100's with homemade mills on 36" bars.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Those slabs are very impressive. Just the kind of thing I need to show to my "finance officer", to convince her we should by a small mill......


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