What is figured wood?

What is figured wood?

In wood, figure refers to the appearance of wood, as seen on a longitudinal surface (side-grain): a “figured wood” is not plain. The figure of a particular piece of wood is, in part, due to its grain and, in part, due to the cut, or to innate properties of the wood.

What causes figured wood?

Figures in wood can be caused by many things, including disruptions in the normal grain, color and form of the wood from injury, molds, insects, and fungi. Most figured wood originates from burls, which are large, tumor-like growths found on trees.

How rare is figured maple?

Finding spalted maple is fairly rare, but its popularity is growing. You’ll see it more often in small projects like the bowl above, but it does get occasional use in furniture. As one might imagine, it’s a real challenge to find boards with this type of figuring that are sturdy enough for larger applications.

Is figured maple a hardwood?

The term Figured Maple means that the Maple hardwood contains a unique design or pattern, or a distinctive mark on its surface. Regardless, one fact remains: many woodworkers and instrument makers seek curly maple lumber as a primary wood for making fine furniture such as dressers, bookshelves, and jewelry boxes.

What causes Birdseye in wood?

Comments: Called birdseye maple (sometimes written out as bird’s eye) because the tiny knots in the grain resemble small bird’s eyes. The figure is reportedly caused by unfavorable growing conditions for the tree. Being tiny knots, the birdseye figure is most noticeable and pronounced on flatsawn pieces of lumber.

What causes curl in wood?

Curl is compression grain perpendicularly crossing the face of a board producing alternate stripes of hard and soft board fiber. This phenomenon creates a chatoyantcy in the board varying in strength depending on the degree of compression leaving the viewer with the illusion of a three-dimensional surface.

Is birdseye maple rare?

Birdseye maple, one of the rarest kinds of wood on the planet, has a distinctive pattern that looks like tiny, swirling eyes disrupting the smooth lines of grain.

Is curly maple rare?

“Curly figures are rare in maples,” Taran states. “Soft maples only have curly figures in approximately 3 to 5 percent of the trees cut, and it is even more rare in hard maples, with approximately only 1? 2 of 1 percent yielding curly maple or any kind of a figure.”

What causes Birdseye?

It is not known what causes the phenomenon. Research into the cultivation of bird’s eye maple has so far discounted the theories that it is caused by pecking birds deforming the wood grain or that an infecting fungus makes it twist.

What Woods can be curly?

Curly figure can be present in many species among them koa, all maples, walnut, ash, oaks and even ebony. The trees that are figured tend to be rare mutations as I have found woodlots with trees from the same seed stock, soil, water supply and sun exposure where one tree is curly and all of the rest are plain.

Is birdseye maple expensive?

Uses. Bird’s eye maple may be expensive, up to several times the cost of ordinary hardwood. When working with bird’s eye wood, it is advisable to take care in what tools are used, so as to prevent grain tearout. Also the more “eyes” there are in lumber, the weaker the wood tends to be.