What’s Up With My Wood?
Through the years, the premium skate deck market has seen wide ranging verbiage in the way that skate deck materials are identified, labeled and marketed by skate brands and retailers alike. Terms like, “100% Canadian Maple”, “Hard Maple”, “Hard Rock Maple”, “7 ply Maple” have permeated skate deck packaging for as long as I care to remember. What does it all mean? Is there a difference? If a deck is not labeled, does that mean it’s not Maple?
We’d like to try and shed some light on what some of it means.
ALL MAPLE IS NOT CREATED EQUAL
https://www.wood-database.com/hard-maple/
Hard Maple is a commonly accepted term referring to Acer Saccharum, or Sugar Maple. This species is widely considered to be the standard used in premium skate deck manufacturing since the activity exploded in popularity in the 70s and 80s. It’s unclear exactly why Hard Maple took center stage in skateboard manufacturing, but it stands to reason that the hardness of the material coupled with the ease of access to the logs (Sugar Maple only grows in the Northeastern region of North America) [for all you lazy people that didn’t read the link], made it a slam dunk as the go-to material of manufacturers and skaters. That is not to say that some other Maple species are not “hard”, they just technically are not Hard Maple.
Here’s a quick read from Baillie Lumber about the differences between Hard vs Soft Maple.
