A local bowling lane is selling off their lanes for $20 each. It's gotta be good solid stuff...what is it typically?

Useful for scales?

It's usually maple. You can buy much nicer maple for slabs than that stuff. It's intersting though I'm always scrounging stuff to "make other stuff." Buddy of mine had an uncle who bought an old navy boat. The decks were three inch thick teak...wow. Anyway he planed them down and floored his whole house in teak.

the chef

I used to hunt in a camp owned by a fellow who built and repaired bowling alleys.The wood is different in different parts of the alley .The hardest is in the area where a ball may drop onto the wood .That certainly is the best hard maple .I can't remember if the rest was just maple cut differently or maybe soft maple.The camps 12' long dining table was made of 3" thick hard maple bowling alley material !!

Heck if it's 3" thick I might have a new workbench !

12'x4' slabs for $20 is too good to pass up I think...

Thanks guys!

You can check Lee Valley tools they sell maple work bench tops. A 3X5 piece of laminated maple 1 1/2 or something like that is I think $350. Sooooo.... your 20 bucks would be well spent.

the chef

No shit if its 3 inches thick it would be well worth buying for a work bench.I just built me a new reloading bench and would have loved to top it off with a solid wood top instead of formica.

If its that thick it would also make some great butcher block counter tops.

The stuff I bought was "rock maple". The alley went out of buisness and sold off the lanes for $8/lin ft. These lanes had heart pine at the end of the alleys and that was $5/lin ft.

I bought a 10' chunk and three 5' chunks of rock maple. $200 for 25 lin ft of 42"W X 2 1/4" thick pieces. My guess is about 1000 lbs of the stuff or more.

Can't help you on the scale question because I am looking to eventually build a kitchen countertop out of them.

The lanes were much longer than 12' each. I'm thinking 40'?