Shopsmith Forums

Is silver maple any good for turning or making small boxes?
We're going to have our 40 year old tree cut way back and I'm wondering if I should keep a few of the larger branches for wood working.

Silver maple is known as one of the soft maples. Lumber from the soft maples has been used for RR ties, boxes, crates, pallets and furniture (I think the upholstered kind). The wood should be a light almost white color.

Sure you can make some boxes from it. I would recommend you get your wood from the vertical growing parts of your tree, avoiding limbs or more horizontal growing branches. The limbs will exhibit a lot of reaction wood which will warp and twist just to surprise you. As you probably already know, silver maple branches are prone to breaking. If vertical parts of the tree are too large for you to handle in your shop, split them first. The split wood will follow the grain.

It will take a about year of drying 1' boards, before they would be good to use. If you start with 1" boards, you'll be able to machine out a lot of warp, twist and cup to get smaller boards for your small boxes.

Good luck!

Silver maple is a good turning wood, and you can use smaller pieces from the tree for this, including some of the branches.

I don't know how much you know about turning, but you can turn the wood while its still green (its fun to turn green wood). You just have to plan ahead on what you want to make. If it's bowls, you can rough shape them and then let the wood dry, and then finish turn them. You can also turn it all the way and watch what happens as the shape of the bowl changes. There are books about turning green wood if that is what you really want to do. There are special ways to speed up the drying process and putting a finish on the piece.

The great thing about turning green wood is that its soft and the chisels will glide right through it, making super long shavings, and getting you a little wet in the process.

Have fun with the wood.

Here was a branch from the Ice storm in OK. I turned it green and it worked great. You have to be careful the soft wood will tear grain quickly if your tools are not sharp,

Sorry the picture has a problem I will try to post it tonight from home. Won't work from here at work.