Hard Maple - To be MorningWood, It Has To Be Hard

Hard Maple can brighten up almost any room.  It is much harder than Red and White Oak, which provides extra durability for the bigger pets, unruly children who like to throw things in the house, high heels and the butter-fingers.  Standard Grades include 1st GRADE, 2nd GRADE and 3rd GRADE.  You may be asking yourself , "Self, what happened to SELECT, 1COMMON and 2COMMON?  This makes no sense.  Who changed the rules?"  Remember from one of the previous posts we discussed the different associations?  Well, those are the groups that decided the nomenclature.  The basic principles of the grading rules remain the same, it is just the names of the grades that are different:  1st GRADE = SELECT, 2nd GRADE = 1COM, 3rd GRADE = 2COM.  Within the Hard Maple grades, though, color DOES make a difference.  The sapwood (whiter wood) will generally be found in the 1st Grade.  The heartwood (the light-medium to darker shades of tans and browns) will be found in the 2nd Grade and 3rd Grade material.  That is not to say, though, that a piece of flooring could be very white in color and not fall in the lower grades.  This is because there are other characteristics, like mineral streaks (dark brown to black streaks), knots of various sizes, worm holes, checking and torn grain, that are acceptable in these grades.  So when you go down to the flooring store to tell them what you want your MorningWood floor to look like, you now know that you should be asking for Hard Maple in 1st, 2nd or 3rd GRADES, and not the SELECT, 1 or 2 COMMON.

            

                                                            1st GRADE HARD MAPLE 

2nd GRADE HARD MAPLE

3rd GRADE HARD MAPLE

Hard Maple can be difficult to stain, though.  Because of the tighter grain structure this wood has, how it is sanded will make a huge difference in how it will accept stain.  If it is not sanded correctly, the color will look very blotchy, with light and dark areas all over the floor.  Too high a grit will cause burnishing, which will not allow the stain to penetrate well.  Too low a grit will show sanding marks.  Most professional flooring finishers know exactly what machines, what type of grit, mesh, and even sanding pattern to use.  Do not take a drum sander only to it and expect the finished floor to look amazing.  It probably won't.  Also there is this thing called "water pop", which does NOT mean to dump a bucket of water on the floor! Bona Water Popping Process  It is a technique that uses a damp process to raise the wood grains on the surface just enough, after sanding, to allow stain to penetrate evenly throughout the whole floor.  If done incorrectly, best case is a re-sand.  Worst case, it can cause major damage to a floor, and might have to be torn up and started all over.  A very costly mistake. When pricing an installation, plan on a higher cost and more time to install Hard Maple (and Hickory, too) due to the additional sanding and prep work that may be required to get it right.