White Oak or Maple easier to work with??

[drumpriest]

Definitely test it. I find that what works best with Maple is dye. Transtint, for instance. Gel stains are a good bet, water based stains work ok, but oil based don't do well at all. I've seen pieces entirely refuse to take color from stain.

Dye has always worked for me though.

[Schleeper]

White oak works pretty well...quartersawn white oak is a bit more prone to tearout from planing. Some maple works ok, especially clear soft maple but hard maple is very hard, resists sanding, and doesn't take stain well. Curly maple is prone to tearout from planing....birdseye maple even more so.

That's not the best news I've heard today. My wife and I finally decided on hard maple for our kitchen cabinets, and we intend to stain it. But one of the things that turned her off about some of the other species of wood, is the lack of uniformity of color.

I want to use a Bartley gel stain, probably the honey color. I've been happy with my previous results using their products, and might even consider their gel lacquer.

Sounds like I better pick up a little can of the stain so I can test it out on a hard maple board before I get too far down the line.

[drumpriest]

Jim is right about planing figured wood. You can wet the surface, which raises the grain, and that can help with tear out, good sharp knives are the way to go though. And sending the board through the planer at a big of an angle to the grain creates somewhat of a sheer cut.

I have jointed and planed highly figured maple without issue with very sharp knives, but I also have a handy dandy drum sander available if there is a lot of tear out.

The hard maple that I have used (there are different sub-species of hard maple) is very close in color to the soft maple that I've used. I have not had any grey. All of those maple examples that I posted are with seal-a-cell and arm-r-seal. I have also used water based clear coats on maple, but it really doesn't do any coloring.

[cabinetman]

maple doesn't like to stain evenly if you were planning on using stain. it is very nice to work with. I haven't worked much with white oak. Ash is sometimes a bit cheaper and has a similar look to oak. Oak or maple is nicer to work with than pine.

I go along with Ash or White Oak. Ash is a beautifully grained hardwood, and machines and finishes great. White Oak differs from Red Oak in that it's a closed pore wood. For light woods, another good selection.

If you pick a darker wood and want to lighten it up, you can use an oil base pickling technique which can produce pastel shades showing the grain, to very light almost a painted look, still with grain showing.
.

[gjat]

Thanks everyone for your information. That's why I love this forum. Reading things in magazines is one thing, but advice is a lot more credible when it's coming from real life people outside the controlled atmosphere of a $200,000 magazine shop with all the best tools and the ability to do it 10 times before it's perfect.

I think I'm going to go with the maple since I'm going to use a figured veneer in the panels. I find staining endgrain a little frustrating because working with pine, you have the same problem as popeye points out. I also like the smoother texture because it's similar to pine. I'll be sure to take some pics as it goes.

(and thanks to dkerfoot for the Tool Fast thread that made me decide to build something "nice" before I buy the next tool!)

[JimD]

Nobody has mentioned the tendency of maple to burn. If you have pitch on your blade or router cutter or your feed rate is inconsistent, maple will burn. Oak is much less prone to do that in my experience. The soft maple I have worked with was also ligher in color than the hard. Some of the hard was kind of grey. I clear finish so I did not care for the color of the hard. With machines, none of these woods is hard to machine. Deep cuts on either with the BT3100 (I have done 3+ inches) require a slow feed rate which nearly guarantees some burning of maple. Normal 13/16 lumber can be cut without burning if you have your equipment in order.

I have done more with oak but built a bedroom set for my daughter and some jewelry boxes in maple. The bedroom set had hard maple where it would wear and soft maple with a little figure for drawer fronts. I also made a rifle stock out of the scraps and a walnut scrap (it is 3 layers with the walnut in the middle). I did a whole kitchen, 4 kitchen chairs, and end, coffee, and hall tables out of oak (and also our bedroom set). I like oak a little better but maple is nice, especially if it has figure. Figured wood needs to be sanded more than planed, and the amount you can plane is a function of how sharp your knives are, how small a bit you are willing to take, and how much figure the wood has (more figure = more tendency to tear).

My favorites are cherry and walnut but either oak or maple would be a step up from softwoods. Maple and cherry seem more refined to me and oak has more character. Usage depends on what you want. All are reasonable to work with. Plain maple and cherry are a little boring but figured stuff is nicer than oak IMHO.

Jim

[Popeye]

Easier to work with? I've done more with white oak than maple but I haven't had better or worse luck with one or the other. White oak end grain has given me a bit of trouble milling profiles but other than that no issues.
I like the look of oak more than most maple and I don't fill the pores because I like the texture of it.
Just depends on what looks good to you for the piece you're going to make.
That said, I scored a beautiful piece of figured maple that is going to be the center of my new kitchen table which is going to be maple ringed by jatoba. Pat

[Pappy]

Oaks have more of a tendency to split, worse with Red Oak. Also the pores have to be filled to get a smooth finish.

[drumpriest]

I have to agree with knotley, maple is one of my favorite woods. Of course, there are varieties of maple, hard and soft, and curly of each type. Most curly maple is considered "soft" maple, but it's not really all that soft. It really finishes nicely. If you use an oil finish, it will yellow beautifully, like seal-a-cell and arm-r-seal. If you want to tint it, I would recommend trying a water based, or better yet, a dye like transtint. Or a died shellac as a sealer coat before your top coats.

Of all the woods I've used maple consistently gives the nicest, smoothest finish. It's not too hard on the wallet, and I don't mind the sawn smell. You can get some really amazing figured pieces as well.

Here are a couple of projects that I've posted, you can see the color change, etc...

http://www.bt3central.com/showthread.php?t=32922

http://www.bt3central.com/showthread.php?t=11050

http://www.bt3central.com/showthread.php?t=18697

This last set, the bottom project is a small box, it looks unreal but I honestly did not modify the photo. It uses birdseye maple veneer and some figured maple for the top.

Obviously most of these projects include curly maple as a decoration, but straght grain hard maple works very well also. The door on the desk is hard maple, machines wonderfully.

Curly maple can have issues at times with chatter for routing, etc... but the pay off is in the figure.

White oak is VERY hard, I've used it on a few occasions and it's darn near scary at times how hard this stuff is.

[knotley]

Knotley,
What's easier about it? I'm not too worried about the stain as I'll probably just poly it or do a very light stain.

Sands very well, Cuts very,very well. As my wife says - "No splinters in maple". No so with pine or oak.

My kitchen is maple, my tv stand is a Salamander Synergy copy (http://www.salamanderdesigns.com/syn/index.jsp) made out of maple, my kitchen cutting blocks are maple. My Ultimate Tool Stand is made out of maple ply. I manage to get the scrap flooring from new rail cars and make projects out of it - maple again. Maybe because maple is so readily available here in Canada I use it so often. It is the ideal wood for me. I even burn Manitoba Maple ( a "weed maple tree") in my woodstove to heat my house.

I would think that in the southern US maple would be a bit more $$. I would encourage you to try it.

[gjat]

Knotley,
What's easier about it? I'm not too worried about the stain as I'll probably just poly it or do a very light stain.

[knotley]

I have made many pieces out of maple. I find it much easier to work with than white oak.

I actually enjoy the look of the staining on the maple - even if it is uneven. My wife finds it easier to decorate with the various shades of maple.

[Knottscott]

White oak works pretty well...quartersawn white oak is a bit more prone to tearout from planing. Some maple works ok, especially clear soft maple but hard maple is very hard, resists sanding, and doesn't take stain well. Curly maple is prone to tearout from planing....birdseye maple even more so.

[crokett]

White Oak is very hard but otherwise machines quite nicely. If you are planning on screws anywhere, you need to predrill. It also takes stain a little differently than red oak - red oak has open pores on it. I agree that maple is harder to stain evenly. You may need a sanding sealer, prestain conditioner or similar if you are using maple.

[gjat]

I want to lightly stain, like a light golden oak or just a yellow-ey varnish. I'm going to use a figured veneer for the panels and want a straight grain as a contrast. I hadn't thougt of ash, but that sounds doable.