Frozen Taps

For 20 years, I have been using threaded 3/8" white or light gray HDPE supply line for spiles: drill the hole, remove bit from drill, put spile in drill and spin it into the tree. NE Tennessee is frozen up. We are getting very little sap. While bemoaning this, it occurred to me that black "tappies" might take in enough solar energy to promote thawing the hole area. Anybody else think this might be significant? Are the metal spile and bucket guys counting on conductivity from the air to warm the tree and start a run earlier?

Lynwood Wagner
20 years putting on a maple syrup festival
15 taps, RO system
stainless pans doubling from sorghum

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Originally Posted by Mean_Oscar

For 20 years, I have been using threaded 3/8" white or light gray HDPE supply line for spiles: drill the hole, remove bit from drill, put spile in drill and spin it into the tree. NE Tennessee is frozen up. We are getting very little sap. While bemoaning this, it occurred to me that black "tappies" might take in enough solar energy to promote thawing the hole area. Anybody else think this might be significant? Are the metal spile and bucket guys counting on conductivity from the air to warm the tree and start a run earlier?

Lynwood Wagner
20 years putting on a maple syrup festival
15 taps, RO system
stainless pans doubling from sorghum

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Just my opinion, but I think not a chance. The sap dripping from the spile has to run down from the crown of the tree. And the ground has to defrost for the sap to get pulled up into the crown. Neither of those will be affected by the spile. Maybe you might melt out an inch or so of wood, but that's going to give you a few drops of sap.

Gabe

A June 1, 2018 Maple News article I found on Maple Research says that if spile color makes a difference, it is not much.

My thought is that if the tap is frozen, so is the tree, it's not flowing. As it warms the tree, the sap will flow. My question is, what are you using for taps? The part when you say you put the tap in the drill, spin the tap in, that sounds like an extremely difficult way to tap a tree. I heartedly suggest you just buy some 5/16" plastic taps and get new ones every year. Or alternatively, buy SS taps, but the plastic are good for all major producers, so why not you? Additionally I suggest you buy a real maple tapping bit, yes, they are costly, but they are also much better. They are not just regular hardware store bits that maple dealers bought and raised the price a whole lot. The maple tapping bits have 2 major differences. #1, the point angle is 90 degrees rather than 135 degrees, they drill frozen wood far better. 2'nd the flutes are both deeper and spiral out faster, thus better removing all drill shavings. They are designed to perform best when used in a drill at 2000 rpm or faster. If you do get a maple specific bit, never use it to drill anything except tapping trees, save it from year to year, sterilize it before using each year. It will do at least 1000 holes maybe even 2000, unless you're a big producer it might last you the rest of your life. The possible exception is if you tap trees on a dirt road, they tend to get dirt imbedded in the bark and that ruins a bit faster. A machine shop would be needed most likely to properly re-sharpen them because no sharpening rig I'm aware of will sharpen a 90 degree point (the angle across the top is 45 degrees each side of the tip, thus 90 degrees across the tip. Drill Dr and others do just 135 or some also do 118, none do 90 degrees because the maple bits are the only ones calling for a 90 degree tip.

First off, this a 20 tap backyarder speaking here. I do have several of the tap in kind. My taps are 3/8" HDPE plumbing supply line threaded with a 16 TPI die.

Tried some tap-ins for vacuum tapping a sycamore in 2024 and could not get them to seal (sample size one). Mine did fine on the sycamore.

Tried another variety of tap-ins this winter. They broke off when I tried to pull them. Spinners are maybe not as difficult as they sound: drill drills hole (5/16" 135 deg cobalt) and then drill screws the spile to tree. Also it fits directly (usually leak proof) to a 3/8" to x" RO type quick-connect. No hammer needed. Done right, you won't get the spile loose with a hand. Again, this is a Tennessee backyarder who cannot just drive a few miles to a maple syrup supply outfit. AND, thank you very much for your observations.

I agree with others that the color won't likely matter. I realize you've had good luck other years with what you're doing, but I do think you'd get better yield overall with real taps, and you can easily get them by mail order. The reason for this (as best I understand) is that the most sap comes from the very outer rings of the tree, so you don't want to block those any more than necessary (this is why barbed spouts were invented). Threading something into the tree would at least partially block the outer rings from accessing the spout. Maple spouts have quite a bit of taper and sometimes other features to get the most access to outer rings. Although I live 20 minutes from a major maple supply, I got all my spouts from sap-meister on their website. They are stainless steel for forever usage. Its far from being the only option, but its one that would work. Roth Sugar Bush has options. Come to think of it, those barbed spouts could be interesting too. I've never tried them.

If you had leaking taps, the most common reasons are (1) non-round hole. A tapping bit helps a lot (Roth would have that for mail order too, and I think Smoky Lake... they mail spouts too). (2) Hammering the tap in too hard splits the tree causing a leak (listen for the change in sound and then stop). And then the more obvious, not in hard enough (that one's easy to correct) and wrong size drill bit.

Good luck! I suspect finding the right tapping timing in Tennessee is a lot harder than around here!