Birds Eye Maple

[sawmill]

I am havinge 80 acres of land cut off this winter and a sawmill bought the saw logs from me before the clear cutters come in. Today the forster came and got me as the lumber grader was here. They figure that there are 8 trees that are birds eye maple and I have 15 or 20 that are veneer grade logs. The amazing part which I never knew was you an tell a birds eye tree from looking at the end. They pointed this out and one has some curl in it also. I had never heard of that before

[reible]

I was told, right or wrong that you can not tell when the trees are in the forest but then I found a fellow who told me that they would leave the trees that were in that condition because at the time the furniture makes considered them unusable and would not buy them. He said the guys could just look and know........

So a couple of years ago I visited a small lumber company that had a sub business that would sell to us lowly woodworkers while most of the company supplied places like Menards. The guy who ran that portion of the business was a woodworker as well and had done all of the trim inside his house with birdeye! He had gone to forestry school at the U of WI so I figured he should know. He said there was no way to tell, you cut down the tree and when it gets to the mill they start cutting and they might find a small bit of it on one piece and then none for the rest of the cuts. Other times the whole thing seems to be that way. They gave up trying to select and just pull it from the other maple if they find it in the cuts.

I tried to find more information online but this seems to be confusion as to the subject. Now this was some years ago so if anyone has anything new please post as I'd really be interested. I actually tried to contact a person at the U of WI but it was summer and that did not go very far and I lost interest after that.

I've also seen lumber that has the patterns on the inside and clear wood on the outside making me think it would be pretty hard to tell if the tree is one or not. This is also a thing that happens in selected areas only. The UP of MI seems to have a good amount being found from what I read.

Ed