Pillow Quilted Maple

I’m a big fan of figured maple. In general, maple turns very well. The grain is tight and takes a good finish. There is a great range in the types of figure you see in maple. Names like “blister”, “cloud”, “sausage” “flame”, “tiger”, “fiddleback” and “quilted” are all used to describe the different grain configurations in maple. Big leaf maple from the pacific northwest and hard (or sugar) maple from the northeast and midwest seem to have a higher likelihood of figure but even southern maple can be highly figured.

One of the more rare types of figure in maple is the pillow quilt. I have no idea where the name came from and the research I’ve done has offered no clue. If I were to name it, I’d call it bubble quilt. It looks more like bubbles than pillows to me. In the photo below is a piece of pillow quilted maple. It has been planed (not by me) and you can see all of the tear-out in the “pillows”.

Pillow quilted bowl blank showing tear-out.

All of the pillow quilted blanks I’ve turned were very difficult to turn without getting the same kind of tear-out. Very sharp tools and very shallow cuts are necessary to keep from having deep tear-out. It takes me twice or three times the time and effort to get a high quality finish on pillow quilted maple. You can see in the pictures below that the extra work is worth it.