Natural Live Edge Wood Slabs

Dueling Maples offers live edge kiln dried wood slabs for table tops, counter tops, desks, coffee tables, charcuterie boards and other small projects.

What species of wood do we mill?

Our natural live edge wood slabs are all from locally sourced and salvaged domestic hardwood trees. While we focus much of our attention to Walnut, Maple and Cherry, we mill and kiln dry many others as well. Often available species include:

See our Instagram and Twitter pages to review our most recent milling work, wood available for sale or finished pieces.

Wood is sold by the “Board Foot”, which should not be confused with “Linear Foot” or “Square Foot”. Use the calculator link below for help determining the board footage of the slab you want to buy: Board Foot Calculator

Our Milling Process

At Dueling Maples, we thoroughly enjoy being able to uncover the natural beauty within each hardwood log. We have developed relationships with nearby arborists and tree services that allow our business receive local logs. Each one milled in our yard was brought down by a tree service due to issues such as potential hazard, storm damage, disease, death or new construction. Dueling Maples does not pay for local trees to be harvested specifically for our use. We understand and value the role trees play in a balanced environment. We believe we have a responsibility to be responsible stewards of our local resources.

Our logs are milled using a 36″ Wood Mizer LT15 Wide bandsaw mill or a 60″ Lucas Mill dedicated slabbing sawmill. Built in the USA, the LT15 Wide portable sawmill features the widest in-class cutting capacity for sawing 36″ diameter logs into 35-1/2″ wide boards up to 16′ in length. The Lucas Mill dedicated slabber creates large, natural edges slabs from logs, stumps, burls and root balls with accurate results. Dedicated slabbers use specially designed ripping chainsaw chain to cut smooth and accurately through the largest and toughest of woods. With this mill, we are able to cut logs up to 18′ in length, 60″ in width and 19″ in thickness.

Our Drying Process

After milling is completed, all slabs are meticulously stacked and stickered for air-drying.  Milled wood typically spends 12-18 months air drying before we move it to our Nyle L200M kiln for a 3-4 week final drying and heat treatment cycle. To ensure proper drying, we monitor our slabs regularly. Wood is properly dried when a single-digit moisture content is achieved; ideally between 6-8% moisture content. Our wood and live edge slabs are then ready to be crafted by our clients.

Our Slab Preparation Process

Once slabs are fully kiln dried, the are brought to our Conshohocken, PA location to be stored in a climate controlled environment similar to a home. Most slabs are then flattened in a multi stage process. First, they go up on the 60″x144″ Avid CNC machine. Here we remove any waviness, cup, bow or twist in the slab that happened during the drying process. Next, slabs under 36″ wide are sent through our Buss 44 planer. This piece of equipment has a Newman Quietcut Helical Carbide Cutterhead that leaves a very smooth finish with minimal tear out.