Box Elder (Acer Negundo) by Tony Manella
Awhile back I was looking for turning wood so I
called a friend of mine who is a Landscape Architect. After asking me what woods I was looking for,
he listened quietly, as I listed a few woods I was hoping to find. When I mentioned box elder I heard
some chuckling on the other end of the phone. "Box Elder, what do you want that for?" he said, "It
doesn't even make good firewood". Well box elder may not be good for many things but it is an excellent
and highly sought after turning wood here in southeastern Pennsylvania.
Box elder is a native
species usually found along streams with sycamore and willow or along roads beside sugar maples and ashes.
Routes 22 and 378 are practically lined with them. Box elder has a short life span, rarely passing
75 years in age. The tree can grow to a height of 70 feet. Its trunk, which may reach 30 inches in
diameter, is usually short, poorly formed and divides into several main branches. Box elder is considered
a weed tree. It has a dirty habit of dropping seeds over a long period and is susceptible to wind damage,
heart rot and insects. The bark is light grey to brown with many narrow ridges and fissures becoming
deeply furrowed as it ages. Flowers on the box elder are very small, yellow green in color and clustered
together. The box elder is a maple and it has the typical winged seeds, which are 1 to 11/2" inches
long, pale yellow in color, and wrinkled. Seeds appear paired in long chains and stay on the tree well
into winter. Unlike the typical maple tree leaf, the box elder's leaf resembles that of an ash giving
it the common name of ash leaf maple. The leaves are 2 to 4 inches long, 1 to 2 inches wide and coarsely
toothed. The combination of the seed and leaf make this a very easy tree to identify.
Wood from
box elder trees has never had any common uses, which leaves a lot of trees for us turners. The wood
is a softer hardwood having a hardness rating of 540 lbf (pounds per foot) green and 720 lbf dry. The
heartwood is yellowish brown with the sapwood offering minor contrast. The most attractive asset of
box elder wood is the stunning red streaks that can appear in the trunks of larger specimens. These
red streaks are the pigment from a fungus that enters the tree from insect holes or splits. The wood
is light, weighing only 32 pounds per square foot dry, soft, porous, close grained and weak. Occasionally
an old trunk will develop large burls. Box elder seasons well without checking, but because it shrinks
twice as much lengthwise as crosswise it does warp some.
As a turning wood box elder cuts very
well with gouges. Scrapers also work well but sometimes cause tearout on end grain. Due to its susceptibility
to wind shake some pieces can be difficult to cut with any tool. Sandpaper cuts quickly into box elder
with 400 being the finest grit the wood will accept. If a piece of box elder is void of red streaks
you can make it more interesting by either ebonizing with a propane torch or by using wood bleach to
whiten the wood prior to finishing. Any finish works well on box elder.
If you're given the chance,
turn some of this wood. Any turning with the red stripes is bound to become a conversation piece.
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