Southern Sweet Gum

[gedderdone]

Has anyone here built any projects with southern sweet gum?

[Steve N]

The wood of a thousand names, and appearances. Gum, Liquidambar styraciflua, is a tree that grows in many places in our country, and possibly why it has so many names. All lead back to it's scientific name though. Cutting it is fine, planing and jointing it is sometimes a challenge due to an interlocking grain.

Characteristics, and workability here


Pics from plane Jane to WOW here.


For comparison it's Janka hardness is 850 so it's just softer than Soft Maple, and Cherry who come in around 950.

[Paul K. Murphy]

I've never worked with it. I do like the marbled appearance though.

[ianab]

Cursed by my sawyer friends from that area.

But that's mostly about the difficulty of keeping it straight as it dries. If you can get around that, or at least cut the boards a bit thicker so you can joint and plane the pieces flat, it's useful wood.

The heartwood of older tress is where the cool grain patterns come from, the sapwood from younger trees is pretty plain.

But if you can get hold of some decent dried boards, sure you can use it. Treat it like soft maple, make use of any figure you find, and go for it.

[Kudzu]

ianab said:

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Cursed by my sawyer friends from that area.

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Local mill told me he didn't cut it often because it would try to 'crawl' out of the kiln. Talked about how hard it was to get straight boards. He said he sometimes cut 2x4's for some local farmers who liked it for rafter in sheds.

[Steve N]

Actually quite a few American hardwoods that seem to be rare as hardwood, but are abundant as trees just because of the way they dry.


Gum is actually easy next to Persimmon, which dries like a barber pole.




Or Sycamore which just goes every which way, but QS is so worth the effort.




Believe me there is a list. OP didn't say, but if source of the gum is free, and it's just hard work to get it stickered, and dried, what the heck, go for it. If it is 6 bux a BD/FT, well I would pass

I will add, that most of the problem with them is initial drying, so if cut oversize you can often work a piece down to a useable size, that is pretty stable.

[TomFromStLouis]

We cut and dry sweetgum regularly; we only quarter saw it just as we do Sycamore and for the same reason: drying issues. Sweetgum and black gum (Tupelo) both carve nicely too.

[Scoony]

I picked up 3 boards of sweet gum from a local sawyer while picking up some cedar. not sure what I will do with them but I could not refuse them for a few $ each.

[Bibliophile 13]

I made a marking gauge out of sweet gum once, and it's still working fine. No reason not to use it for little projects, especially if you can find some nice figure.

[gedderdone]

Thanks for all the info guys. I was given a pretty good stack freshly sawn. It was a pile of logs for some time before but is still damp. It's stickered in a shed now, so maybe in 9 mos. it or some of it will be ready. If they turn out right there are about 6 good boards that I'd like to make an entry table out of. We shall see... Again, Thanks!