At the head of each of these beautiful streaks is a pair of tiny holes bored by the adult Ambrosia beetle in which to lay its eggs-and to simultaneously lay down a unique fungus species. This striking coloration is also sometimes called Ghost Maple or Wormy Maple. It has distinctive long, tapered streaks running with the grain, streaks of a contrasting brownish or slightly purplish-grey hue. Though the drying is different, our modular furniture is hand finished with the same clear satin lacquer to match our air-dried upgrade products.Īmbrosia Maple is the traditional name for a form of red maple found locally in Maryland and Virginia. After rough-cutting, this maple is conventionally dried by the kiln used by other furniture makers in the Amish community. The wood used for our striking-looking Ambrosia maple modular shelves and their accessories comes from the same Amish sawmill that sources our maple lumber. Take a look at Ben's impressively equipped shop in our Handcrafted Amish Production Gallery.Īmbrosia Maple Used For Our Modular Furniture Is Locally Kiln Dried Their hand-sprayed satin lacquer finishes handsomely show off the dramatic character of our old-growth Ambrosia maple. The three of them take amazing care to ensured the beauty of their workmanship matches the exceptional performance we demand of our designs. The photo above shows the huge drying shed-with Pierre standing in front of about 125,000 board feet of the selected Ambrosia maple that goes into Mapleshade’s carefully crafted platforms, racks and stands.īen, with his sons Crist and Uri, meticulously plane, bevel, shape, sand and hand-finish all our wood products. Our family of Amish craftsmen oversees this painstaking drying process. We air-dry the sawmill's rough-cut heavy planks for 3-6 years, depending upon the thickness. These slow-growing old trees yield wood of gorgeous character: exceptionally tight and variegated grain, lovely nut-colored contrasts, subtly shimmering curl, birdseye, tiger striped, and spalted grain. We Only Use Ambrosia Maple Air-Dried For 3 to 6 Years For Our Upgrade Productsīecause finding air-dried 2" to 4" thick maple at ordinary lumberyards is impossible, we turned to a local Amish sawmill in 2001.They find us logs of very special maple indeed: 75 to 100 year old local Ambrosia maple that sounds distinctly warmer and clearer than Canadian rock maple. Air-dried maple is less colored and closer to the sound of our master tapes than any other platform material-audibly better than harder or softer or denser woods, and notably better than kiln-dried maple or, worse yet, maple butcher block (excessively damped by its multitude of glue joints). The kiln’s high heat weakens the wood’s fibers, thereby deadening sound. Master instrument builders taught us to always use air-dried rather than kiln-dried maple. When supporting a musical instrument's vibrating soundboard, maple’s sonic superiority over all other woods is old news to every violin and piano maker since Stradivarius and the earliest Steinways. Adding our uniquely shaped brass footers to drain vibration efficiently and cleanly out of your component and down into the air-dried maple doubles the sonic improvement. This is confirmed unequivocally by nearly two decades of head-to-head shoot offs by skeptical customers.
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