crazy electric maple

[clearance]

Today we went out to cut down some bigleaf maple trees beside a 60kv transmission line, no big deal I cut down trees all the time but get this! People had made these trees dangerous by cutting slabs and chunks out of them for the "curly" maple. In one case they had tried to fall a 70" maple that would have hit the line had it not been stopped by a big cedar. We got a bull rope in it and turfed it over, all the holding wood had been cut off with a big dutchman in the undercut, tree fallers they were not. A huge old maple that would have not hit the line had to go too cause it would have fallen across the road. It had huge chunks taken out of the butt. The utility manager told us people get a lot of money for this wood, it is used to make instruments. I can see people stealing wood but someone will get killed because of this eventually. Anyone hear about this, and should I be out getting maple for myself (safely of course) in my spare time?

 

[RedlineIt]

Clearance,

Yeah, people make instruments and other expensive wood work from bigleaf.

I did some tree pruning work for customer just last week who makes custom guitars from bigleaf maple. Cut on the bias, the same elongated cell structure that make these trees 'pop' and barber-chair and makes working on them them hell for us, makes for really pretty grain for an artisan.

You can check some of his work out at, www.robertandersonguitars.com

He showed me one of his latest, with a Sitka spruce top and bigleaf maple back and sides. The photos on his website don't do his work justice.

I hadn't heard of people poaching this wood. It's hard to drop if you don't know what you're doing. Someone is going to have a big barberchair, get hurt and then get charged, if they regain conciousness.

 

[clearance]

Thanks for the information, cut down some big ones today that hadn't been molested, just potential failure do to lean and shallow roots. You are right, they just suck to cut down, glad they were not to close to the line.

 

[jamie]

burr

we removed a few old elms, lots of burr on it, we couldn't lift all the timber one day, came back the next, the logs left had been stripped of burr. the boss bid low as he was going to make the money on the burr instead. needless to say he was a bit touchy

jamie