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Sweet Gum??

Started by flip, November 22, 2005, 02:54:41 PM

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jerry-m

WELL THAT JUST DOES IT :)

Woodbowl, I am going to have to saw me some sweet gum as some as posible... I have plenty of it and have been cutting the little 1 to 5 year olds and using some for fire wood and letting the other rot...


The sweet gum lumber I am familar with is just a bunch of twisted warped junk...

Jerry

Jerry

Daren

woodbowl, I had forgotten how nice it works wet. I have turned a few bowls from it myself, just sent one to my Aunt in Florida a couple weeks ago. I turned a softball bat for a buddy last year too, he is very proud of it. (the blank was dried first, or it would now be a fat hockey stick). The city is removing some trees this month, I told them to bring me the 3 hard maples I saw marked. I guess I will go ahead and take 1 of the sweet gums (I already told them no) and try to get a good spalt next spring.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

Tom

The Boards are pretty too.

http://www.tomssaw.com/gallery/album01/sweetgumstool

Why would you want to dye or stain something like this?  :)

rebocardo

Tom, that stool is unbelievable. Way nice. I would be too afraid to use it as a stool  :) 

Classic sweetgum. I had some boards like that (all black though),  but, they cupped, and the termites got into them before I realized it and turned all my nice wood to trash. I learned never to cover a sweetgum wood pile all the way to the ground with a tarp in GA, the hard way  >:(

Daren

Tom, who would stain something like that... Mother Nature can't be outdone, nice. I popped through a few more pics in that album. Your buddy John Shippy (?) looks like he is getting ready to pull some serious shavings off the blank he is working on.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

Tom

I've seen John with a continuous shaving off of a green blank, shooting up into the overhead and drapingover everything in the shop behind him like a christmas tree garland.  He's good, a lot better than he gives himself credit.   :)

He made that lathe you see him using.  He made several other smaller ones that are on the other side of the shop and has an old store-bought one in the part of the shop to the left of the picture.  He uses them all.  OSHA would have a heart attack in his wood shop.  It's not that he builds sloppy machinery, he doesn't, it's that he builds stuff to get the work done.  You shold see his free-standing tool rests.  OSHA would want him in the other room.  :D


John turns old fashioned, plain bowls.  He also turns natural edged stuff and sometimes glued up blanks, though he doesn't like that kind of turning.   His love is dough bowls.  When he gets some black gum, sycamore, sweet gum or other locked-grain woods, he has me cut blanks for dough bowls.   Some he hand carves with bowl adzes and some he uses a side grinder with chainsaw teeth.  He also has a Log Wizard that he uses sometimes.

Not only is his shop full of bowls but so is his house. :D

What I think is funny is that he wholesales a lot of his bowls in tourist shops in North Carolina and people from Jacksonville go up there, buy them and bring them back home.  :D :D

fencerowphil (Phil L.)

Okay you guys, speaking of Sweet Gum...

I just spent ten hours bucking about thirty or so of these trees at a bridge-widening project.
Loads and loads of fun!   A few of them yielded three 16' cuts, plus one 12' cut per tree! :o
Most of these trees have very little obvious red heart coloration.   Unless I am surprised when
I have this twenty tons or so hauled home,  I expect mostly bland sapwood.

:P    And now to pop the question:

If there is little of the pretty stuff which has been slobbered over in entries above,  what is your vote for the best return for sawing time.    In my area my guess is 2-1/2"  and 3" thick heavy equipment decking first and next dunnage/blocking. 
Your suggestions on what to do with 20 tons of bland Sweet Gum logs:

Phil L.
Bi-VacAtional:  Piano tuner and sawyer.  (Use one to take a vacation from the other.) Have two Stihl 090s, one Stihl 075, Echo CS8000, Echo 346,  two Homely-ite 27AVs, Peterson 10" Swingblade Winch Production Frame, 36" and 54"Alaskan mills, and a sore back.

Fla._Deadheader

All truth passes through three stages:
   First, it is ridiculed;
   Second, it is violently opposed; and
   Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

fencerowphil (Phil L.)

Hey Tom

If most of these logs are predominately "Sapgum,"  and I'm using a 10" Peterson WPF,
whachathimk?
:P
Best return?    By the way, I do plan to set up a retail/internet wood store
of sorts, and would plan to air dry this carefully and immediately, if that route
would be best.  Wondering if selling it green off the stickered piles wouldn't
be best, however as decking/blocking/dunnage, etc. 

(I doubt I'll find anyway to move it green soon enough to avoid stickering it.) :(

Phil L.
Bi-VacAtional:  Piano tuner and sawyer.  (Use one to take a vacation from the other.) Have two Stihl 090s, one Stihl 075, Echo CS8000, Echo 346,  two Homely-ite 27AVs, Peterson 10" Swingblade Winch Production Frame, 36" and 54"Alaskan mills, and a sore back.

lamar

If the logs are around 28" shouldn't there be mostly red in the lumber? The general overall color in mine are light brown with dark brown mixed in. The 1/4 sawn is more even looking  but is much flatter. I don't see much sap or lighter color in it. Now small to medium dia. logs seem to be almost white when green. Also wont exposure to the elements make it short lived?

Daren

You guys southern gum must be different from the stuff I am familiar with. A 28" log only has about a 3"-4" red heart and the rest is light, kinda almond colored with a hint of pink in the grain. Are we talking about the same stuff? Sweet gum is no good for exterior stuff like trailer decking, it turns black in a week of rain and I would think it would need to be anchored to the frame like crazy or it would curl and twist something awfull. Fresh sawn it may seem bland, but for finished work the grain is very cool when stained/dyed right. I like it but I don't see a great deal of value in it, it is neat in little doses, 20 tons I can't offer any advice.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

woodbowl

Quote from: lamar on November 25, 2005, 09:56:23 PM
If the logs are around 28" shouldn't there be mostly red in the lumber? ........................................... Now small to medium dia. logs seem to be almost white when green.
 That seems to be the way a lot of this southern sweetgum is. I'm not sure if it gets a red heart when it gets older or if there are several species with different characteristics. I do know that some small and some large sweetgum trees have a brown heart.  Maybe Swampdonkey can straighten this out.   HEEEEEEY........ Swampdonkey!
Full time custom sawing at the customers site since 1995.  WoodMizer LT40 Super Hyd.

J_T

I make tyes and2x8's Got to many to play with and it is fast turn over ???
Jim Holloway

rbarshaw

I've got a 3"x3"x10' piece of white sweet gum that I cut 2 years ago and left standing against a building, it's turned dark grey, is very light, hard as a rock and straight, the part that was in contact with the ground has rotted about 6" up the stick, but the rest is in very good shape.
Been doing so much with so little for so long I can now do anything with nothing, except help from y'all!
By the way rbarshaw is short for Robert Barshaw.
My Second Mill Is Shopbuilt 64HP,37" wheels, still a work in progress.

Tom

Sweet Gum isn't very rot resistant.

Blocking might be a good choice for a market, but, I have a bit of it cut an planed to 5/4 that was mostly sapgum and it's pretty too.  It gets mottled and the locked/twisted grain shows.  Two pieces about 14" or 15" inches make up my computer desk top.  I just rested them across two, two drawer fileing cabinets.  They were planed and rubbed with Johnson's floor wax.  I haven't had a bit of trouble from it.   

I don't know what one would do with a large quantity.  perhaps a market could be developed if woodworkers saw the end results.

I don't think I would try to sell it green. It's a little difficult to dry and a customer might not understand the difficulties.

SwampDonkey

Everyone in the thread pretty much touched on everything I've researched about sweetgum. But, here's a little blurb I obtained.

There is only one sweetgum in the US, but surprisingly it is in the witch-hazel family.  ::) I have no idea how, since it's flowers are imperfect, whereas witchhazel flowers are perfect (male and female parts together). But it is often refered to as hazelwood in the trade. Sapwood is marketed as hazel pine in England. Figured sweetgum resembles Circassian walnut (Juglans regia) and is marketed as 'satin walnut' and often re-imported back to the US in furniture. ;D If you take and quarter saw interlock-grained stock, you get a ribbon stripe figure in the lumber.

It is one of the most widespread species of the south. Mostly mixes with hardwoods, but also with baldcypress and southern pines. It reaches maturity at 200-300 years. It will stump sprout prolifically as well as producing root suckers when cut or injured. Many new stands are from root suckers. It is very important species in the US in the manufacture of utility and decorative panels. It is an important pulp species in the south. It is also present in Mexico, and the highlands of Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Resistance to decay is slightly nonresistant. Rainfall and latitude affects the fibre length, which increases from north to south. The longer the fibres the better the use for paper making.

Sapwood (sap-gum)is white or frequently pinkish (often discolored by blue sap stain), heartwood (redgum) is carneous gray to varying shades of reddish brown, frequently with darker shades of reddish brown pigment figure. Dull yellowish to brown discolorations in 'redgum' indicate early stages of decay (spalt), and should not be confused with figured 'redgum'. The wood has no characteristic odor or taste, frquently has interlocked grain (hard to split), moderately heavy and fairly hard (sp gravity 0.46 green, 0.54 dry).

[source: Textbook of wood Technology]
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

lamar

Good info, Now all I have to do is make something with it or sell some eh?

fencerowphil (Phil L.)

Well, according to the on-line log volume calculator,  I still need to
come up with a plan to handle a least 6000 bd. ft. of Sweetgum, so lesssee:

As Swamp Donkey says, the coloring of the heat wood is more due
to the gradual breakdown of the wood than anything.   Although an
older tree may have more chance of coming down with the malady
which yields redgum heart wood,  only two small ones in this particular
stand have any to speak of.  (The stench comes from the decay action.)
These were healthy trees, but perhaps not as valuable because of it.

J_T seems to be in gear with what I see in my area, namely thick stuff and
railroad ties.  Unfortunately, I bucked for maximum yield of board footage,
eyeing the slight crooks in the trees to decide on 12', 16' and 18' cuts.  If
I had been thinking ties up front,  I would have gone with 9' and 18' only - in
other words, making no cuts which couldn't have made the 8'-9" tie length.

Tom,  I think the only green selling I would do would be if someone was planning
to drill and bolt it to a trailer immediately.    Any that I saw and stick will get a
fungal treatment, so that I can dry slowly.

:P  So far it seems to make sense that I ...

   Cut thick,....     1-5/8" X 6",  and 2-1/4"and 3" X 8"
   Treat to ward off mildew and mold
   Sticker it all on 18" centers for controlled air drying
   Use a little weight on top and use some shadedry or equiv.

This plan takes advantage of what you all have pointed out.  Thanks guys,  learned
a lot! ;)

Phil L.   P.S.   I do have two yard tree gums which are completely redgum....   Yummmm!
Bi-VacAtional:  Piano tuner and sawyer.  (Use one to take a vacation from the other.) Have two Stihl 090s, one Stihl 075, Echo CS8000, Echo 346,  two Homely-ite 27AVs, Peterson 10" Swingblade Winch Production Frame, 36" and 54"Alaskan mills, and a sore back.

LumberBuck

If someone on this thread has about 250 BF of this Red Gum lumber for sale and is somewhat close to Ohio, I'd like to hear from you.

Daren

Quote from: LumberBuck on March 12, 2007, 08:28:58 AM
If someone on this thread has about 250 BF of this Red Gum lumber for sale and is somewhat close to Ohio, I'd like to hear from you.

Welcome. We have a "wanted" section, someone may be able to help you out.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

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