Quilt or quilted maple refers to a type of "figure" in maple wood. It is seen on the tangential plane (flat-sawn) and looks like a wavy "quilted" pattern, often similar to ripples on water. It is a distortion of the grain pattern itself. Prized for its beauty, it is used frequently in the manufacturing of musical instruments especially guitars. Quilted maple is an end grain figure that shows a circular pattern on flat sawn material. There are many terms that describe the shape and pattern of quilted maple. Aka popcorn, tubular, sausage, bubble wrap, angle step.
High quality (3A grade or above) quilted maple can be extremely expensive. A standard guitar billet made of 5A (premium) quilted maple costs a few hundred dollars.
Famous quotes containing the words quilt and/or maple:
“this quilt might be
the only perfect artifact a woman
would ever see, yet she did not doubt
what we had forgotten, that out of her
potatoes and colic, sawdust and blood
she could create ...”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)
“We had not gone far before I was startled by seeing what I thought was an Indian encampment, covered with a red flag, on the bank, and exclaimed, “Camp!” to my comrades. I was slow to discover that it was a red maple changed by the frost.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)