Veneer Supervisor Elgin Slayton introduces us to a new veneer each month. This month's choice? Beautiful, light birds eye maple. Read on.
Birds eye maple is not its own species, but rather a figure that is occasionally found in sugar maples. Like some other highly decorative woods, the figure is caused by unfavorable growing conditions. According to The Wood Database, the sugar maple attempts to start numerous new buds to get more sunlight, but, with the poor growing conditions, the new shoots are aborted and instead form tiny knots.
It's these knots, which are said to resemble small birds' eyes, from which the wood gets its name.
Sugar maples, common in our region among maple producers and throughout Northeastern North America, grow 80-115 feet tall and have trunk diameters of 2-3 feet. Sugar maples produce a nearly white to off-white cream color sapwood, sometimes with a reddish or golden hue. It is this sapwood that is used in furniture. Heartwood tends to be a darker, reddish brown.
Our example at right shows rotary cut birds eye maple veneer. Beautiful in book and butt-matched patterns as well as sunbursts, birds eye maple - once far more popular before walnut and oak took over in recent years - makes for beautiful tabletops, centerfields or inlay. Finished naturally it retains it beautiful figure and provides an energizing, light wood often absent in today's corporate environments.
WallGoldfinger in the past has used birds eye on Arbor reconfigurable tables, full boardroom tabletops and as a contrasting accent against dark wood on a desk, as we show at the top of the page.
Pair birds eye with other maple veneers, of which there are many, and a solid maple edge. We have several such tables in our own office and they are highly coveted.
