Just wondering ?
- Thread starter wireball2
- Start date
I suspect if a customer asks for birdseye, he gets birdseye. If another customer asks for curly maple he gets curly maple.
Kelly
There is very little difference, if any, in cost. You use what people want. You like Birdseye, which is fine. I do like real intense Birdseye but I, myself, like Fiddle-back much more than. To each their own.
Dick
Cost is pretty much the same. However, really good curly is harder to get than birds eye as it's not nearly as abundant. I don't know any supplier who regularly has really good hard curly in stock. They get some here & there, but it's a come as it may kind of supply. Birds eye is more common. I don't think there's fewer trees with curly figure than birds eye. But it gets veneered or milled to different dimensions. It usually gets cut along with normal maple, so it's the typical 1 inch lumber. Only after the fact is it realized that it's curly. I know one mill who runs LOTS of hard curly & doesn't care, just sells it along with all the other logs they cut as pallet lumber. You can buy it from them for $.50/BF all day long, though it's rough cut & not dried. Birds eye can be seen in the log, and set aside for special treatment. Curly is only seen after it's cut.
My guess is Birdseye has been used so much people are wanting something different and now that coring is popular, Tiger Maple is easy to use without warping. So the trend now toward Tiger is to get a different look, coring has made it stable and really high figured Birdseye is getting a little harder to get.
wow my connections are the opposite next time you head north on a wood buying trip lets get together
myself i can find great curly but only good birdseye
i may have to pay $ 13 a board foot but too much work goes into
cue building to save $ 2 dollars on a cue and use mediocure wood
ironically this is what caused me to start cue building i grew up building gunstocks in my dads gunshop and couldnt believe the piece of maple
Joss used on a $700 special order cue so i said to myself i could do better
10 years later and countless pieces of wasted maple i was right
Heck, my birds eye supplier asks me if I want lots of eyes or few eyes, big eyes or little eyes, lots of swirly or not so much swirly, white sap wood or darker heart wood, top grade is this much and b-grade (which is better than most everybody else's top grade) is that much. But when it comes to really good curly, it's hit or miss whether anybody has it or not and it's a crap shoot on how good it'll be. I can get PLENTY great curly red maple. What I want is sugar maple. If you can get a lot of it, let's hook up & trade some wood.