It's doubtful that Jackie Gleason had sugar maple in mind when he used to make that proclamation; nevertheless, the classic New England tree certainly deserves that praise, in more ways than one.
Who isn't familiar with (real) maple syrup, maple cream, or maple sugar candy (if you fall into that group, I do feel sorry for you) ?
But this is about figured sugar maple wood, and it sure is pretty stuff. Think birdseye, tiger stripe, quilted, fiddleback, and curly maple (not to mention burl). Tiger, fiddleback, and curly all refer to essentially the same kind of parallel stripe-like figure; some would say fiddleback stripes are closer together (more stripes per inch) than curly. I don't know of any scientific explanation of what causes a tree to
create figure in its wood; different theories have been voiced (insect
damage, physical stress, growing conditions, etc, etc), but are
unproven.
Ray Asselin's woodturning shop in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. See Ray's work at these websites:
