How to Build With Maple

How to Build With Soft Maple Wood

• 1

  Use sharp blades and tools whenever working with soft maple. This wood is rather easy to trim or shape, but it can still experience "tear out" if you don't take your time and make light passes. "Tear out" is the chipping or splitting of the wood along the grain.

• 2

  Sand soft maple wood to remove rough spots and smooth the finish. Do so, however, with caution. If you sand it too much, the small pores will close. Then, when you try to stain the soft maple, the stain will have difficulty soaking in.

• 3

  Use a high-quality wood glue to secure pieces of soft maple together. This type of wood is fairly easy to glue.

How to Build With Hard Maple Wood

• 4

  Use sharp carbide tools for hard maple. Because it's hard and has close grains, it can be difficult to build with. Hard maple wood can dull tools. To help avoid "tear out," lessen the depth of the cut and change the feed direction.

• 5

  Sand hard maple to smooth it. This can be done with sandpaper or by mechanical means. It will require more effort than soft maple wood because of its hardness.

• 6

  Use a high-viscosity glue to secure pieces of hard maple wood together. Ordinary wood glue won't work well. The hardness of the wood prevents the glue from absorbing into it well. Clamp the pieces together without excessive pressure to help keep the glue from squeezing out of the joints.