Maple in carpentry. Medicinal properties of Clen

Heavy, hard, dense and durable finely porous maple wood has beautiful drawing with narrow dark core rays, which gives it a special decorative effect. Maple wood was used in carpentry for the production of bent furniture, musical instruments, mathematical tools, skis, gun stocks. Bowling pins and baseball bats are made from sugar maple.

When dried, maple board is quite stable, mainly when used for interior decoration. Maple wood material can be easily processed, polished, painted and stained or varnished without any problems.

The main industry of using maple wood is interior decoration and furniture manufacturing. It is most often used as a contrasting tree in the form of edgings and finishing rails. Today, maple wood is used for interior decoration of high-quality furniture.

In the furniture industry, maple is used in the form of lumber or veneer. Maple parquet is very valuable and has a high resistance to abrasion.

Maple edged board is characterized by an attractive texture of pinkish or yellowish tint. Lumber from this tree perfectly holds fasteners (nails, shurpas) - according to this indicator, they are not inferior to such hardwoods as ash, oak, beech.

Laminate Maple perfectly emphasizes the natural natural color of wood. Light, in some places even light brown basic tone is crossed by thin dark veins. This pattern visually expands the space, giving it a feeling of lightness and sophistication. The room in which such a laminate is laid will look much lighter and fresher.

Areas of application for maple

Among hardwoods, maple wood is considered one of the most valuable. Masters have long treated her with respect. For example, the Trojan horse known from Greek mythology was made by the Greeks from maple. Its use is limited only by low biostability and a tendency to discoloration. The last drawback is removed by using various mordants and stains.

Maple wood is used to make furniture. Well dried, it exhibits good shape and dimensional stability indoors, which is why one of its most popular products is countertops, particularly for restaurants and cafes. Together with other valuable rocks, it is used for inlays as contrasting details. It combines well with oak and fruit species (cherry, pear, apple), it combines well with beech, if the parts from these species do not directly adjoin. Combines with metal and glass details.

Sliced ​​maple veneer is widely used to finish parts from less valuable species. Wavy texture, maple burl veneer and bird's eye texture are especially appreciated.

Maple parquet is especially valued for its high hardness and wear resistance. American sugar maple is used for floors in dance halls, bowling alleys, etc.

Maple is very good for the manufacture of stairs and details of interior decoration of rooms.

Veneer and maple wood itself are used for finishing and making musical instruments - percussion, wind and strings - due to their high resonant properties. Some of the details of their famous violins (for example, the lower decks) were made by the great masters from Cremona Andrei Amati, Antonio Stradivari, Giuseppe Guarneri from maple wood. Maple is an excellent carving material. It has a high resistance to chipping, so very thin cuts can be made on its wood, and the cuts are clear, clean and smooth, with a soft glossy sheen. Moreover, they can be done in any direction, almost without fear of chips. Maple was widely used for crafts and kitchen utensils - spoons, ladles, carved and chiseled vessels. Oars, tool handles, pads of hand planers, measuring and drawing tools are made from it.

scientific classification		Physical Properties
Domain:	eukaryotes	Average density:	sycamore 623 kg/m³ Norway maple 653 kg/m³
Kingdom:	Plants	Density limits:	sycamore 530-790 kg/m³ Norway maple 560-810 kg/m³
Department:	Flowering	Longitudinal shrinkage:	0,4-0,5 %
Class:	Dicotyledonous	Radial shrinkage:	sycamore 3.3-4.4% Norway maple 3.2-4.9%
Order:	Sapindoflora	Tangential shrinkage:	sycamore 8.0-8.5% Norway maple 8.4-9.0%
Family:	Sapindaceae	Flexural strength:	Norway maple 114-137 N/mm²
Genus:	Compressive strength:	sycamore 82 N/mm² Norway maple 100-155 N/mm²
International scientific name		Tensile strength:	sycamore 58 N/mm² Norway maple 59-62 N/mm²
Acer L., 1753		Thermal conductivity:	sycamore 0.16-0.18 W/km Norway maple 0.14 W/km
type view		Fuel Properties
Acer pseudoplatanus L.— Yavor		3.75 to 4.1 kWh/kg

Maple species

Four species grow in the European part of Russia:

• Maple Tatar ( Acer tataricum L.),
• Maple white, or pseudoplane tree ( Acer pseudoplatanus L.),
• Field maple ( Acer campestre L.) - is listed in the Red Book of the Moscow Region, through which the northern border of its range passes,
• Norway maple ( Acer platanoides L.),

of which only the last species is widely distributed (to the north - up to 62 °).

On Far East Russia meet:

• Small-leaved maple ( Acer mono),
• River maple ( Acer ginnala),
• False sibold maple ( Acer pseudosieboldianum),
• Maple-birch or Maple yellow ( Acer ukurunduense) - in Primorye and the Amur region,
• Green maple ( Acer tegmentosum) And
• Maple Manchurian ( Acer mandshuricum) - mainly in Primorye,
• Japanese maple ( Acer japonicum) - in the Kuriles (Kunashir),
• Maple bearded ( Acer barbinerve Max.),
• Maple Chonosky ( Acer tschonoskii Max.) - south Sakhalin region, in Primorye, its subspecies of Komarov's maple grows,
• Maple palmate ( Acer palmatum Thunb.) - in the Primorsky Territory, a microsybold maple was found, close to palmate maple and considered by a number of scientists as part of the latter.

In Crimea, only:

• Acer campestre L.,
• Acer value Lauth.(Acer opulifolium Vill.),
• Acer platanoides L.,
• Steven Maple ( Acer stevenii Pojark).

The Caucasus is very rich in maple species - in addition to those listed above European species, also found here:

• Maple Trautfetter, or alpine (Acer trautvetteri Medw.)
• Acer velutinum Boiss.- in Russia, the species is not recorded,
• Acer hyrcanum Fisch. et C.A. Mey.- Azerbaijan and Dagestan,
• Montpellier maple (Acer monspessulanumL.),
• Colchis maple ( Acer cappadocicumGled.),
• Maple Sosnowski (Acer sosnowskyi Doluch.) is included in the Red Book of the Krasnodar Territory.

Useful tables

Shrinkage

Voltage

Mechanical properties

Plant.
Most species of maple are trees 10-40 m tall, but among them there are also shrubs 5-10 m tall with a number of small branches growing from the base of the trunk. Mostly deciduous, and only a few species from South Asia and the Mediterranean region are evergreen. The leaves are opposite, palm-shaped (finger-shaped) in most species, with 3-9 veins on each lobe, one of which runs in the middle. Only in a few species the leaves are complex-palate, complex-pinnate, with pinnate venation or without lobes.
Maples are widespread in the Northern Hemisphere, from the polar regions of Europe and North America to tropical areas Central America and South Asia. Mostly distributed in temperate latitudes, only a few species are known in the tropics, and in the Southern Hemisphere only one species is Laurel Maple (Acer laurinum), which reaches the island of Timor in Indonesia (10 ° south latitude). In Africa, maples are present only in the very north, along the coast. mediterranean sea, and in South America and Australia are absent altogether. In the territory Russian Federation About 10 maple species are known, among which Norway Maple (Acer platanoides), Tatar Maple (Acer tataricum), Field Maple (Acer campestre) and White Maple (Acer pseudoplatanus) are widespread. They mainly grow in the European part of Russia, and are absent in Siberia. The Japanese maple (Acer japonicum) is listed in the Red Book of Russia.

Wood.
Sycamore wood is considered one of the valuable breeds wood. Both sapwood and heartwood are yellowish or White color, Norway maple wood has a pinkish color. Sapwood and heartwood do not differ in color or differ slightly. Annual rings are clearly visible, there are unevenly spaced pores between the rings, and rays in the form of spots or stripes are often visible.
This wood has an average density of 623 (sycamore) to 653 kg / m³ (holly maple) and belongs to tree species medium-heavy, elastic and viscous, but at the same time hard and slightly subject to warping. Flexural strength is good. The card contains physical properties wood of the two most important types of maple. When dried, maple wood is very stable, especially when used indoors. The surface of maple wood is well processed, easily polished, stained and stained, and can also be varnished without any problems. This wood can be split. When dried, maple wood is prone to discoloration, so it is recommended to cut the trunks after felling and store them vertically.
Maple wood is used primarily in interiors and for the manufacture of furniture. The veneer of this wood, both with a flat and with a wavy (curvy) grain pattern, especially in the 1950s and until the mid-1960s, due to its natural color, was a favorite material for decorating bedroom furniture, cabinets, tables, sideboards and small furniture. It is also often used as a contrasting tree in the form of piping and decorative slats. However, due to its tendency to yellow, its use as furniture faceplates quickly declined. Nowadays, maple wood is used for interior decoration of high-quality furniture. This wood is used by cabinetmakers to make furniture. self made, also for intarsias.

Acer, or maple, is a genus with more than 150 species of trees and shrubs, widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere, including throughout the European part and in the temperate latitudes of Asia. There are dozens of maple species in Russia. Most of them are unpretentious, shade-tolerant, frost-resistant, love well-moistened fertile soils, but some also grow on poor soils. For the most part, these are deciduous shrubs and trees; there are several evergreen species in Central Asia.

Description

The height of maples reaches 40 m, depending on the species and environmental conditions, but stands up to 10–15 m are more common. The trunks are usually thin, with light brown, brown or gray bark with small cracks, the crowns are dense, round and wide. The root system is powerful and developed, able to penetrate to great depths. These trees live for about 200 years, but in a favorable natural environment able to become centenarians - able to grow up to 500 years.

A distinctive feature of maples is the beautiful shape of the leaves. Most of them are large, palm-shaped - consisting of several blades, pointed or carved. In addition to the usual green color, the foliage of many species and varieties - Japanese, Norway maple (Royal Red, Kimson King and others) - has a purple, bright red or dark pink color. maple blossoms in early spring, inflorescences are thin light yellow or greenish panicles, fruits are double lionfish with seeds, ripen in September.

Maples, thanks to their beautiful decorative foliage, are suitable for landscaping: they are planted in gardens, parks, and in adjacent territories in order to create cozy beautiful scenery, shade, purification of the surrounding air from dust and pollution.

Maple wood is widely used in industry, being a practical and high-quality building material.

Maple types

Among the species diversity of maple, there are several of the most common and popular.

holly

This species is one of the most famous, includes several varieties, grows throughout the European part of Russia. Another name for maple: plane tree or plane leaf - according to characteristic form leaves (pictured).

This species includes many decorative forms that differ in the height of the trunks, the size and density of the crown, and the shade of the leaves. Norway maple is demanding on the composition of soils, prefers moderately moist, fertile, slightly acidic soils, does not tolerate sandstones and rocky lands. In height, such trees reach 20-30 m, have a wide rounded crown. The bark is light gray, quite smooth in young maples, becoming covered with cracks with age. The size of the leaves is about 15–18 cm, they are located on long thin cuttings, have a five-lobed shape with pronounced notches: the middle lobes protrude far forward, the lateral ones are slightly shorter. There are types of maple with or foliage: small, serrated, elongated leaves transversely located on long cuttings.

In autumn, the green maple leaves take on vibrant yellows, oranges, reds and burgundy hues, creating a picturesque natural carnival of colors. The five-lobed maple leaf is featured on the national flag of Canada.

Trees grow quickly, especially in the first years after planting, their life span is up to 200 years. Holly maples are immune to the polluted air of cities, therefore they are suitable for landscaping streets and creating beautiful landscapes. They are planted along roads, in yards, in squares, parks.

The holly maple is distributed throughout Europe, Western Siberia, temperate zone North American continent.

American

This tree is widespread in the northern and eastern regions of the United States, being the official symbol of some states. Another name for the species is sugar maple. It is from the juice of its wood that the famous maple syrup is made, and lumber is used in construction. resistant to cold climates, able to grow up to 30-40 m, has a thick dark bark and a dense crown.

White

The operational characteristics of maple are quite high: it is not subject to warping and deformation, tolerates moisture well, and is resistant to shock loads.

Basically, maple in the parquet is divided into two types: European and Canadian. Initially, their color is almost identical, but over time, the European maple becomes more yellow, and the Canadian maple “leaves” in pinkish. The difference in performance is that Canadian Maple is much stronger, which is why it is often referred to as "Canadian Hard Maple".

European maple parquet is actually forbidden to use with systems warm floor, because this wood reacts quickly to changes in temperature and humidity conditions. Canadian maple is more stable and stable.

There are many references to maple in our literature and poetry. And the fallen, icy Yeseninsky, and that old maple that knocks on the window in the song, and the ditty - the canopy was made of it - new, maple. But maple is not only a Russian literary tree, it is much more famous for its Canadian relatives. I even defined my leaflet for the state Canadian flag. Of course, sugar maple as a substitute for our beet and Central American cane sugar is hardly of interest to us. Maple syrup is American food, molasses we call it, nothing special. But the properties of the wood of this plant delight the inhabitants of any continent.

Botanists distinguish about 150 types of maple - from small "thin" shrubs 3-5 meters high to mighty trees about fifteen fathoms and a girth of six arshins. Only five species are of value as "commodity wood", the botanical names of which in Latin hardly make sense to list. In a speech understandable to consumers, they are more often called sugar, silver, large-leaved, red and black maples. Trees can be up to half a millennium old.

They differ in the properties of wood and areas of use. Hardwoods - sugar and black - have strong, straight-fiber and fine-grained wood. The density of these species is about 0.7-0.6 g / cm³ (in dried form), silver, large-leaved and red maples have a lower density and significantly lower hardness. Accordingly, hardness also ranges from 3.3 to 4.8 units on the Brinell scale. At the same time, maple dries easily, except perhaps for sugar - but these are the problems of Canadians.

Despite the low hardness and density, certain problems sometimes arise in the processing of maple - either the saws begin to "sing", or there is a negative vibration during jointing - but the problems are solvable, and the wood craftsmen cope with them. Perhaps they are connected precisely with the musical properties of maple - after all, it has long played various harps and violins.

Maple belongs to sapwood, its wood is light to white, may have a pinkish or yellowish tint, and has an iridescent sheen. Annual layers on cross section separated by dark stripes, visible at the butt and narrow heart-shaped rays. In a radial cut, these beams form a mosaic of spots and ribbons that give the wood a special silky texture. This “pockmarking” is especially well seen on radial spalls — when it is illuminated from different sides, a shimmering iridescent sheen is visible. In the tangential section, the rays form a kind of lentils, and in the transverse they look like narrow stripes.

The pattern of maple wood can be different - streaky-silvery, curlicue, bubbly or similar to a "bird's eye". Sometimes a maple has a “false core” - if the core is colored greenish grey colour, then this indicates the defeat of wood by a fungus. Sometimes in lots of softwood maple comes across ash-leaved maple - a species that is much worse in quality, its wood is much softer than other species. The use of wood of this type is usually limited to the manufacture of containers and building structures.

Maple lends itself well to painting and varnishing, it can be glued and polished. It is quite difficult to drive a nail or screw a screw into this wood, but it is also not easy to pull them out - they hold firmly. Good for chiselling, turning and planing.

Hard rocks for the most part used for the manufacture of parquet and massive boards for the floor, since they are subject to increased requirements for strength and wear resistance. The most typical use of maple wood of all kinds is: flooring, furniture, musical instruments (string boards and percussion mechanisms of pianos and grand pianos), sports equipment, bowling alley equipment and dairy production. They even make decks for chopping meat, carpentry tools, various turning products, veneer and plywood from maple.

In the Russian national tradition, maple was given important place. It was from it that the comb necessary for combing the linen tow was made - they cut up to two hundred teeth, carefully polished them and impregnated them with linen drying oil for strength. Evidence of this is an old Russian riddle: “I am sitting on a linden tree, looking through a maple tree and shaking a birch tree.” Our contemporary is unlikely to be able to find the correct answer. In fact, this is a spinning wheel - each part of it was made from a certain type of wood. The seat for the spinner - the bottom - was made of linden, the comb (we talked about this above) from maple, and the spindle on which the finished yarn was wound was made from birch.

Due to the special homogeneity of the structure, maple wood conducts sound in a special way, so it was used (and is still being used) for soundboards of musical instruments and even for making especially sonorous variety wooden spoons! Other folk instruments cannot do without it - shepherd's pipes and pity pipes. Maple is also associated with obscure sometimes for modern man an epic mention of "spring guselki". Our ancestors made a psaltery, hollowing out the body from a single piece of straight-grained spruce or pine, and on top they put a deck - a thin plank made of white maple, or sycamore maple. Gradually, the name yarvichatye in folk speech was transformed into yarovchatye - and this is how the combination of the words “yarovchaty guseli”, incomprehensible to our contemporaries, turned out.

In places of forks - and there are enough of them on the maple trunk - the wood has a special serpentine structure, such fragments of the trunk are called "gafel" - which means pitchfork in Dutch, bifurcation - came from the name of the element of the mast of sailing ships. The sliced ​​veneer obtained from these maple fragments is used in intarsia and furniture production.

Maple is also used for details of fine modeling in woodcarving, the manufacture of skis and gun stocks, as well as billiard cues. It is also used in woodcuts - as an alternative to imported "palms".

In addition to using maple wood, the sap of the Canadian sugar maple is used to extract maple sugar and maple syrup, an essential ingredient in many American dishes. The Indians also began to produce sweet juice, and the settlers adopted this technology from them, making evaporated maple juice a national American product. Raw materials for making syrup and sugar are obtained by "leaking" maples - just as we do with birch when birch sap is taken from it. A mature maple produces over a hundred liters of sweet juice during the spring.

The sophistication of the shape of the leaves and the amazing range of colors determine the demand for maple in landscape design. Its leaves are often painted in bright pink and purple colors in spring, in summer they are not entirely green, but are whitish and pinkish. The autumn palette includes all shades of brown, yellow and red.

Growing in the territory Soviet Union native and introduced species of maple are of great economic importance.

Maple wood is of great value for the timber industry. In terms of physical and mechanical properties, it approaches oak wood, its qualities are higher than coniferous wood. In a series of hardwood species, maple is in the first place, its wood is hard, heavy, smooth, elastic, easily processed, its texture in a number of types of maple is beautiful, varied, well processed and polished.

High quality wood due to fine porosity, uniform structure without cracks provide first-class material for sawmill production. Sawlogs are used for the manufacture of wooden parts of machines, turning crafts, rifle butts, toys, cooperage, etc. A beautiful texture without defects, cracks, amenable to polishing, is used for making furniture and souvenirs. Solid with a uniform arrangement of growth rings, smooth-grained wood is suitable for the manufacture of musical instruments. Dense, healthy, knot-free wood with straight fibers is used for the manufacture of truck bodies, railway cars, and home interior decoration.

Wood of a uniform structure with low beams that do not break off on sharp corners, without cracks, suitable for the manufacture of art objects: figures of animals and people, caskets, picture frames, cases for watches, etc. Fine-laminated maple wood that perceives paint is used to make standards for printing chintz, wallpaper, letters capital letters. It is also suitable for the preparation of rubbing parts of mechanisms and bearings. The short-grained maple wood is used to make pulp. For this purpose, it is mixed with softwood cellulose and prepared into paper, staple fiber, rayon, dressings, etc.

Small-leaved maple wood can be used for the production of higher grades of plywood. Plywood logs of this maple yield 1.5-2 times more high-quality veneer than birch logs. Maple plywood is valuable not only for its physical and mechanical properties: due to the large number of preventive shoots, it has a beautiful pattern and therefore, along with plywood from Manchurian ash, walnut, velvet, dimorphant, it should be classified among the materials suitable for the production of high-quality furniture, artistic decoration of buildings etc.

The wood of the sugar maple is highly valued in the USA and Canada; it finds a wide and varied application in industry and construction there. Especially appreciated for turning and artistic products are the influxes on wood (“bird's eye”). Burlap influxes are sometimes found in silver maple, more often in significant quantities on red maple wood.

Silver maple has a light brown wood color, it is fragile. In terms of quality, red maple wood is second only to sugar maple. Most of the wood comes from sugar maple. The wood stock of this species of maple is 3/4 of the total US maple wood stock.

To obtain wood that is distinguished by the beauty of shades and patterns, experts subjected maple trunks to staining or pickling by exposing the fibrous system of these trees to various chemicals, in particular, various iron salts, which act on the tannin juices in the wood. Over the years, artificial coloration gradually fades and becomes yellowish-brown with a bronze tint as a result of exposure to chemicals. Thus, etched maple cannot replace those varieties of maple that naturally have a wonderful color and are distinguished by a special pattern of wood. Of the minor varieties of maple wood, a significant amount is burned in kilns to produce wood acetate and coal.

The bark of various types of maple contains tannin, tannins and sugary substances. The bark of the red maple has a dark red hue. By boiling, a purple dye is obtained from it, which, when mixed in a certain proportion with sulfate, then becomes black. From the leaves of the Ginnala maple in China, a black paint called "sinca" is extracted.

Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR found that in early summer the leaves of the ash-leaved maple contain a lot of vitamin C, especially in green leaves. It is less in the green part of the variegated leaves, even less in the white part of the leaves. The least rich in ascorbic acid are white leaves. Maple leaves, harvested and dried in the summer, can be successfully used for livestock feed, especially for sheep and goats.

All maples growing in the natural conditions of our country are, although to varying degrees, honey plants. Of the Far Eastern maples, the main honey plants are false sibolds, Manchurian, to a lesser extent warty and small-leaved. During the flowering period of the maple favorable years the daily weight gain of the control hive reaches 3-4 kg of honey.

One of the important sources of income from the exploitation of maples is the extraction of maple sap, which is obtained by tapping a tree. Juice does not flow immediately after tapping. As a rule, it flows faster and more abundantly during the day, and faster in the middle of the day than in the morning and evening. Adverse weather can weaken the flow of juice, and with favorable weather it can be restored. At the beginning of the season, the juice is transparent and clean, and during the budding period on the trees it becomes cloudy and yellow-green, such juice is not suitable for making sugar. With careful processing of syrup (even sour), sugar can be obtained from juice.

An almost colorless syrup that is boiled until its density is greater than the juice of the syrup is maple honey. Maple wax is obtained by boiling the sap until its density is almost the same as the syrup from which hard sugar is made.

The decorative dignity of maples lies in beautifully dissected or lobed leaves, which turn golden yellow, orange, pink and crimson tones in spring, summer and autumn. Separate garden forms of maples with their fine dissection of leaves resemble delicate, beautiful and graceful ferns.

Maples have long been used for green building and are valued for their decorative qualities. These large trees with a large, rather wide, dense and powerful crown, they provide shade and coolness on hot days. In addition, they are very durable, winter-hardy, easily tolerate transplantation and perfectly put up with the gas pollution of city streets.

Almost all types of maples have one important positive feature - their leaves emit into the air. a large number of phytoncides that kill pathogens and promote healing environment. However, pollen from male ash maple during flowering can cause a human disease called hay fever. Maples are widely used in field-protective afforestation; they are suitable for mountain-ravine and agroforestry works, where their powerful root system strengthens slopes and reduces water erosion of the soil.

Representatives of the maple genus, diverse in their ecology, decorative qualities and properties of wood, need a differentiated approach when used in forestry and green building. For cultivation in forest cultures in order to obtain wood, such types of maples as sharp-leaved, false platanus, small-leaved, sycamore, field, Manchurian, false-sybold, majestic, Hyrcanian, silver, sugar, red, etc. are suitable. To create protective plantations in arid regions of the steppe zone - Norway maple, field, Tatar, Ginnala, Semenov, Turkestan, ash-leaved and some other species.

The use of maples in green building should be differentiated depending on the purpose of decorative plantings, winter hardiness and frost resistance of maples, which we considered earlier.

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