In article , "DAN & CINDY" wrote:
This is to all of the wood buffs who can tell the difference in the maples.
1st how many different types of maple trees are there, 2nd how can you tell
the difference. Last but not least , is one better than the other.


There are dozens of species. The ones that grow large enough to have
commercial uses are classified as hard maple (sometimes called rock maple,
for a reason) and soft maple. Hard maple is either sugar maple or black maple.
Soft maple is usually silver maple, but it can be red maple, or in western
North America, bigleaf maple.

How do you tell the difference? By looking at the leaves and the bark. Get a
copy of "The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees" or do a
Google search to try to find some pictures on the Web. It's pretty hard to
describe the differences in a text medium such as newsgroups, but here's a
start: the maple leaf on the Canadian flag is sugar maple. The leaves of
silver maple are much more deeply toothed and notched, and have a pronounced
silvery-white color on the underside (hence the name silver maple).

If you're looking at the lumber, by weight and hardness. Sugar maple and
silver maple wood look similar, but sugar maple is a *lot* harder and heavier.

Whether one is better than the other depends on the purpose to which it's
being put. You probably wouldn't want to use soft maple for a workbench, nor
hard maple for anything that needs to be carved.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

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