Author Topic: Sweet Gum it's not-Sycamore it is (Read 2498 times)

Double D · « **on:** March 30, 2008, 12:11:11 AM »

Was looking around my sons property and noticed a large sweet gum blowdown. Anybody got any ideas of how to use sweetgum wood for cannnon carriages?

Strong enough?

Any other ideas what to do with with it?

Firewood?

Graybeard · « **Reply #1 on:** March 30, 2008, 03:42:10 AM »

I think fire wood is the best use of sweetgum. It is not all that strong and begins to rot almost before it dies. They do cut a lot of them here in the south to sell for pulp wood and some to the wood chip mills that ship it overseas as it is hardwood and does carry a higher price in that market than pine does.

I once had some cut into lumber and it began rotting before I could even put it to use so I had to burn all of it after having paid to have it sawed into lumber. It's a lousy excuse for wood and not a nice tree to have in the yard either due to thos balls it drops with the stickers. Yeah I have ONE left in my yard only because it's the largest shade tree in my front yard.

Double D · « **Reply #2 on:** March 30, 2008, 12:24:40 PM »

I got over to the tree this afternoon its surrounded by sweet gum , but it is a sycamore. Smooth bark withe jigsaw pussle sclaes. rond soft not spiny seed balls.

I it swood any goog fo gor anything other than fire wood?

lance · « **Reply #3 on:** March 30, 2008, 12:37:04 PM »

Get it quarter sawed and you can make some beautiful furniture grade mortar and cannon projects. PLEASE don't paint them

torpedoman · « **Reply #4 on:** March 30, 2008, 12:49:35 PM »

Quote from: lance on March 30, 2008, 12:37:04 PM

Get it quarter sawed and you can make some beautiful furniture grade mortar and cannon projects. PLEASE don't paint them

beautiful wood when sawed right makes great INDOOR stuff.

lance · « **Reply #5 on:** March 30, 2008, 01:28:54 PM »

Quote from: torpedoman on March 30, 2008, 12:49:35 PM

Quote from: lance on March 30, 2008, 12:37:04 PM
Get it quarter sawed and you can make some beautiful furniture grade mortar and cannon projects. PLEASE don't paint them
beautiful wood when sawed right makes great INDOOR stuff.

Ya mean like un-painted furniture grade mortar and cannon projects.

intoodeep · « **Reply #6 on:** March 30, 2008, 04:23:28 PM »

Quote from: lance on March 30, 2008, 01:28:54 PM

Ya mean like un-painted furniture grade mortar and cannon projects.

lance · « **Reply #7 on:** March 30, 2008, 04:48:10 PM »

Darn,and i just asked Double D not to paint the wood. If the wood was mine, i'd make a nice book shelf to set my small projects on. Might even use linseed oil on it.

Graybeard · « **Reply #8 on:** March 30, 2008, 07:11:07 PM »

Totally different wood and totally different answer. Sycamore is hard heavy wood and I've seen some nice looking rifle stocks made from it. It's tough as nails and should do fine for your use I believe. When I was growing up we had a pair of them on either side of the driveway. Lightning had struck the one closest to the house but it survived it just never grew as fast as the other planted at the same time when my dad was a young boy.

The larger one was perhaps 50" to 60" in diameter and over 100' tall even when I was young. I've not been back there in a lot of years so am not sure if it's still alive or not but if so that must be getting close to being the largest sycamore in our state. It was enormous 55 years ago when I was a boy.

I have a fair size one down by my pond I left when the rest of the trees in the swamp were cleared to make my pond.

Max Caliber · « **Reply #9 on:** March 31, 2008, 02:27:31 AM »

In the winter time we used to like to shoot the sycamore seed pods off with a .22.

Sycamore has an interlocking grain and is very difficult to split. It was used in the old days to make wood plane blocks. Now it is used some as a secondary furniture wood and it is made into veneer. It doesn't work well in board form since it doesn't stabilize well and continues to warp over time like hickory. It is a dense wood that sands and finishes well.

Glanceblamm · « **Reply #10 on:** March 31, 2008, 02:51:50 AM »

Quote from: Graybeard on March 30, 2008, 03:42:10 AM

Yeah I have ONE left in my yard only because it's the largest shade tree in my front yard.

Yes to having a bunch of those sticker balls (we call um piney balls) We usually have to rake up four to six 55gal bags of them every spring. Looks like we got lucky this year as there are None!. I think that this was due to the extreme cold snap we had in April 07. We also let this tree survive because it is also the largest shade tree in our front yard.

Graybeard · « **Reply #11 on:** March 31, 2008, 03:17:41 AM »

Quote from: glanceblamm on March 31, 2008, 02:51:50 AM

Quote from: Graybeard on March 30, 2008, 03:42:10 AM
Yeah I have ONE left in my yard only because it's the largest shade tree in my front yard.

Yes to having a bunch of those sticker balls (we call um piney balls) We usually have to rake up four to six 55gal bags of them every spring. Looks like we got lucky this year as there are None!. I think that this was due to the extreme cold snap we had in April 07. We also let this tree survive because it is also the largest shade tree in our front yard.

You might be right about that as ours also didn't produce the balls last year and we too had a hard freeze that killed all the fruit and berry crops here and then a drought on top of that.

accuratemike · « **Reply #12 on:** March 31, 2008, 06:12:18 AM »

RE: sweetgum, you folks figure a use for the "monkey balls" and I'm a millionaire. I have a bunch of sweetgum on my lot, I usually pick up a ton of balls from my yard every year. I have many more tons available out in the "woods". 3 of the 4 shade trees in my yard are sweetgum. I keep them around for the money the shade saves me in the summer. Otherwise I HATE them. I've heard that you can use the sap to make witch hazel. I've been thinking of running the balls through a chipper and trying the stuff in a pellet heater. If you sift through them and pick out the biggest ones, they make "wiffle balls" for the golf ball mortar. They pile up so deep behind the house that the lawn tractor gets stuck in them like driving on marbles. They are time released from the trees, rake today, wind blows, rake again tomorrow. My nemisis. Next I have to find a market for poison ivy and multiflora rose. Then I'll quit my job. Good luck, MIKE

Double D · « **Reply #13 on:** April 03, 2008, 05:29:22 AM »

Quote from: lance on March 30, 2008, 01:28:54 PM

Quote from: torpedoman on March 30, 2008, 12:49:35 PM
Quote from: lance on March 30, 2008, 12:37:04 PM
Get it quarter sawed and you can make some beautiful furniture grade mortar and cannon projects. PLEASE don't paint them
beautiful wood when sawed right makes great INDOOR stuff.
Ya mean like un-painted furniture grade mortar and cannon projects.

Application, application, application...

Cat Whisperer · « **Reply #14 on:** April 03, 2008, 04:02:16 PM »

Indoor application: potential LUMBER (can make good boards).
Outdoor application: Not good LUMBER, but OK for WOOD (wood burns well).

Lance would be able to explain the technical reasons for the above.

How many pieces of furniture have you seen made with sycamore? That should be a BIG hint.

lance · « **Reply #15 on:** April 03, 2008, 06:08:18 PM »

Double D,sorry for the corny wood jokes! quarter sawed Sycamore is too pretty to paint. I'd even go out on a limb

,and make a mortar base out of it. It's got good shock resistance, but no rot resistance.

Graybeard · « **Reply #16 on:** April 03, 2008, 06:39:11 PM »

Quote

It's got good shock resistance, but no rot resistance.

I would tend to disagree with that based on my personal experience of having a sycamore tree in my yard most of my life. The wood is no less rot resistant than any other wood native to the south other than perhaps cedar. I know of no other wood than cedar that grows here in the south you can put into the ground as a fence post say and expect it to last any length of time. I'm sure that would apply to sycamore as well but I've seen limbs of it lay above ground but on the ground or in piles that lasted without rotting for many years.

It is certainly far more rot resistant from my experience than woods like sweet gum and pine and no less so than oak or hickory.

lance · « **Reply #17 on:** April 04, 2008, 08:21:02 AM »

Graybeard, i can only share my personal experiences with putting wood in the ground, and working sycamore lumber. Down on the family horse farm along the North Carolina/South Carolina border,there was only two woods that were ever put in the ground,that was cedar and cypress. Up here in Virginia alot of black locust is used for fence post,most people claim it outlasts cedar by 20 years. My experiences with sycamore lumber is that it don't take much for fungus to start eating on it. I've made some beautiful wood turnings out of sycamore,but i don't think they would stay that way outside, for any length of time.

Graybeard · « **Reply #18 on:** April 04, 2008, 01:05:39 PM »

Agreed I'd not want to use sycamore for fence posts around here only cedar survives that unless specifically treated for the job. With proper treatment pine works fine in that application. I suspect treated the same so would sycamore but not if untreated.

Now I don't really know enough about how you guys treat your mortars or cannons and have no clue whether they are left sitting on bare ground for extended periods. I believe that if you put on some type of clear coat like varnish or such the type of wood wouldn't be an issue unless you plan to store it on the ground thru out the seasons. Maybe that is what you do with them I dunno.

I've also heard of black locust as an excellent fence post but we don't have it here so I've never seen it. Cypress isn't avialable in the wild here either. Commercially available fence posts for the most part are treated pine.

lance · « **Reply #19 on:** April 04, 2008, 03:35:35 PM »

Graybeard, i can't speak for others,but all my cannons and mortars stay in the shop building. Up here we have an excessive dew problem, most mornings and evenings, anything left outside gets soaked. Speaking of black locust, some of the old timers up here can show you fence post that they put in as boys. I don't know the reason for it, but most of the locust post are square 5"x5".

Cat Whisperer · « **Reply #20 on:** April 04, 2008, 04:17:13 PM »

Quote from: lance on April 04, 2008, 03:35:35 PM

... but all my cannons and mortars stay in the shop building.
....

MOST of mine are in the living room - in and among my wife's dolls. (A good working arangement.)

Terry C. · « **Reply #21 on:** April 04, 2008, 05:33:30 PM »

Mine are all well-sealed oak and technically should be weather-resistant, but they stay inside in the living room. The biggest piece is the ¼-scale Napoleon field cannon and it's not quite three feet overall. There is a faux fireplace that was built when the original fireplace and chimney were removed. It has a good-sized slab of marble for a hearth. Large enough to park the field gun, ¼-scale Coehorn, and golfball mortar.

I don't get to use the mantle, it's covered with Pam's figurines. Angels, faeries, dragons, and unicorns.

The gonnes, linstock, and all bulky accoutrements are stored in another room with the long guns.

Double D · « **Reply #22 on:** April 05, 2008, 10:22:58 AM »

Quote from: Double D on April 03, 2008, 05:29:22 AM

Application, application, application...

I mean if the wood is going into a piece of cabinetry or a custom gunstock then the highlighting and enhancing the grain to add to the beauty of the over all package is justified. This includes highly figured wood with brightly polished barrels and brass hardware on a presentation cannon. There is a very fine line here that is easily crossed from a fine work of art to a pimp mobile. I am reminded of a guy I went to gunsmithing school with. For a MILSURP restoration project of a GEW 98 he did a 600 grit jewelers rouge polish on the metal and a shiny clear cote finish on the stock. UGLY!!!

To varnish a bog standard straight grained oak carriage and have standard black paint metal work on a cannon that had a painted carriage, smacks of poor taste. And, before all you guys who have done this get your undies twisted in a knot and fire back at me, that it is your gun and you can do what you want--you are right-- But try painting a carriage the correct corresponding color and see if it doesn't look a darn sight better.

My inquiry about what to do with this piece of sycamore was to learn if the wood would be suitable as base wood for my 6 PDR 1/4 caliber Confederate Mortar. This base will be linseed oil finish.

Based on your feed back. I am going to recommend my kid get this log slabbed to see what he has, and set it aside for future woodworking projects. Thanks everyone.

Double D · « **Reply #23 on:** December 29, 2010, 05:35:12 PM »

Well the son has been too busy working and making baby's to take care of this tree for old Dad. This tree has a bullseye on it and will be moving to Montana this spring.