White Hard Maple Dimensional Lumber

Hard maple is denser and heavier than other species from its genus, making it the most desirable maple dimensional lumber. It’s known for making great floor boards, butcher blocks, cutting boards, and other items that need to be impact-resistant. But it can also add beauty and strength to all kinds of woodworking projects.

What You Need to Know About Our Hard Maple Dimensional Lumber

The hard maple dimensional lumber you can buy from North Castle Hardwoods is among the finest quality available. Our boards are sorted with a meticulous grading system that demands quality above the national standards. After cutting and air drying, they are carefully kiln dried to 6-8% moisture content to ensure they will remain as flat and straight as possible during storage and handling.

We offer boards in thick stock of 6/4 (1 5/16”), 5/4, and 4/4 dimensions, down to thin stock that’s only 1/8" thick. We can ship lengths up to 48” to anywhere in the US or Canada. Our dimensional lumber is surfaced on 2 sides to a tight tolerance.

Other Names for Hard Maple

Hard maple wood is sometimes called northern hard maple, hard white maple, or rock maple. As a tree, it is more commonly known as the sugar maple, beloved for its vibrant fall colors and maple syrup production. The scientific name for this species is Acer saccharum. 

Other sellers may include black maple or Acer nigrum in their “hard maple” lumber collections. But at North Castle Hardwoods, we only sell genuine northern hard maple from sugar maple trees.

Where We Source Our Hard White Maple

Not only do we exclude other species from our hard maple offering, but we select only Acer saccharum logs from prime growing regions. Our lumber is all harvested from sustainable forests in the Great Lakes regions of the United States, where “pencil heart” maple grows. These logs have a high percentage of the desirable bright sapwood that gives maple its distinctive color. 

Our maple boards have consistent “white” color and include little to no heartwood. While maple wood typically has fairly straight grain, occasional boards may have curly or birdseye features. Please let us know if you are looking for particular characters in your maple lumber and we’ll see if we can supply that for you.

Common Uses For Hard Maple Dimensional Lumber

Hard maple is known as rock maple for a reason – it’s hard! It’s not the hardest hardwood in the world, but it is one of the toughest that grows in North America. Hard maple has a Janka scale rating of 1450 and weighs about 3.75 pounds per board foot. This density and strength makes it great for the following applications:

• Flooring: Commonly used as flooring for bowling alleys and dance halls, thanks to its impact resistance and bright clean color.
• Cutting boards and butcher blocks: Hard maple is friendly on your knives and will hold up to many years of use. It also resists stains and is easy to clean compared to other woods. We offer hard maple cutting board kits if you want to try making one yourself!
• Turning projects: Its color and durability makes hard maple popular for turned objects that require frequent handling, like chess pieces or salt and pepper shakers.

Working with dimensional hard maple wood requires skill and very sharp tools. But in the right hands, this wood can be turned into fine furniture, musical instruments, or any kind of decorative or artisan creation. And, thanks to maple’s durability, these works of wood art can become lasting heirlooms.