Sassafrass. Yesterday I had two 6x6x 4’chunks of sassafrass given to me. Has anyone had any experience working with sassafrass ( aside from making a cupp’a sassafrass tea).I was told that it closely resembles chestunt and is sometimes used in restoration work to duplicate the old chestunt woodwork ,as chestunt is no longer with us. It’s very aromatic when first machined, something like cedar. I was thinking of maybe using it for drawer bottoms if the aroma lingers like cedar. Anybody out there used sassafrass in the past or present?
Be not afraid of going slowly. Be afraid only of standing still. chinese proverb
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Cool Proverb!
I hand planed sassafras in a recent woodworking class I took but I haven't made anything out of it - yet. One thing that was readily apparent was the grain direction can be deceptive when you're surfacing it. But nothing as difficult as bird's eye or anything.
Sassafras is a great wood -- it also goes by the name of American camphorwood because of its distinctive odor. The extractives that give it that odor also contribute to its decay resistance (rated high in that catetory). At 12%MC it has a specific gravity of 0.45 which makes it about 18% less dense than walnut. It is one of the more stable US hardwoods (R=4.0%;T=6.2%). Cherry by comparision is (R=3.7%; T=7.1%). [FSP to 0]
It has a nice silvery luster to it but the greenish grey cast of the wood when finished natural, in my opinion, needs a little burnt umber glaze to give it warmth. As it is a ring porous wood, if you are going for high gloss, you will probably need to fill the grain (something I rarely do).
NIEMIEC1-
Thanks for the info. I thought that sassafrass was probably a shrub tree, but this fellow had several 14" wide planks and a stack of narrower planks. Evidently this tree's not a shrub tree. The tree was just cut last month so it will be awhile before I get to use any of it.Be not afraid of going slowly. Be afraid only of standing still. chinese proverb
Great wood for drawer boxes, stable and lite weight. Not very strong for support members in chairs or tables. Purchased about 300' at auction and used it for kitchen drawer boxes.
Milled a few 16-20'" logs into 8,10.& 12/4 planks x 14'' W x 6' L , air dried them 18mos. - 2 yrs. zero loss to fungus, insects, warp or sticker stain. For the first few mos. the wood shed smelled wonderfull ! used a few bd. ft. for the legs ,aprons and drawer front for a kitchen work center for my sons house. The rest of the unit was white oak. Did use a little light brown pigment stain w/tung oil varnish mix as a wipe on to promote tonal harmony. The Sassafras was silvery tan with light brown hues (no greenish tint) perhaps a geographic bonus. Machined great, planed (hand) beautifully, smelled like root beer barrels. I have also turned some into bowls with verry little distortion (less than walnut or cherry) I love the stuff, always on the lookout for new stock....friends in the tree business. Good luck with your stash, my advise..try to barter a few planks off your bud. Enjoy ,
Gene
Grows wild around my part of the woods.
Makes good corner post for fence - I have heard they used it to make small flat bottom boats on one of the local rivers hear in Arkansas.
I have turned some" it may just be me " the dust from it irritated my eyes.
Smells good - should make good drawer bottoms- not a very pretty wood gray green
The Sassafras discussion reminded me of a wonderful book on trees and wood. "A Natural History of Trees" by Donald Culross Peattie. Any one interested in traditional uses for wood should seek out a copy.
Bron, I'm a big fan of Peattie. His writing style is almost poetic and he was one of the 20th century's great naturalists. A true lover of trees...I'd certainly second your suggestion that his several books are well worth the reading.
Jon,
Another guy in terms of traditional uses for different woods, is the painter and author, Eric Sloan, though he focus more on the tools themselves.
I heard a "rumor" that a lot of basswood is going overseas, specifically to Japan. Any info. I use a lot of basswood.
Bron
Bron,
Yes, Sloan's pen and ink drawings are outstanding and he's another author with a reverence for trees. Peattie leans more to the botany side of the subject, which appeals more to me...but they're both excellent writers.
...As for the Japanese buying up our basswood, I was unaware that this species was their latest target. They've been heavy users of our maple and some of the western softwoods...and they've also been very generous buyers of our paulownia, which I understand is their traditional wood for making cerimonial boxes of some sort. Maybe now that their economy is on the skids, they are buying the more plentiful and less expensive basswood for similar purposes.
I wouldn't be surprised if once ginkgo gets better established here, they'll be cruising around for it as well. I think it has some religious significance in the Orient...Maybe, with a little Yankee enginuity, we could coax them into buying Ailanthus (tree-of-heaven) from us someday. It's a popular cabinet wood over there...and it's an ever-lovin' pest here.
It was a rumor i heard at the lumber yard I frequent. They were trying to explain a dearth of wood, though I think the bean countrs have taken over this co., and I'm just a small customer, and surprisingly, the only one buying basswood as lumber rather then carving blocks. Ah, well. Maybe need to switch lumber yards.
Bron
Wow! He who hesitates is lost. That's me. I could have had what I wanted of the sassafrass but had no idea what it was good for, so I just opted for those two chunks. It's located about a 4 1/2 hr. drive from me and I don't think I'll be down that way again in the near future. Oh well ! Maybe next time..........Be not afraid of going slowly. Be afraid only of standing still. chinese proverb
Lostarrow, sounds like you've gotten some good feedback on the porperties of sassafras; light weight, good decay resistance, very stable, very attractive, chestnut-like figure and pleasant, spicey scent.
I can add just a couple additional points: Sassafras is a very good soundboard wood for making musical instruments. I often use it in dulcimers because it has such good tonal qualities. I suspect the reason it does is that it is exceptionally rigid and brittle...so it seems to transfer vibrations very well. The downside here is that it splits quite easily.
Another feature of sassafras is it is very buoyant. Tradionally, it has been a favorite wood for making fish net floats and to some extent in boat building.
How would it be for windsor chair seats? I build a few with natural finish, (not traditional but people like them), and butternut is getting hard to find and expensive. With cherry turnings, red oak bent parts and hickory or ash spindles, they look pretty nice.
Napie, I'd be a little concerned with using sassafras for the slab seat on a Windsor, because of its tendentcy to split...but you might be able to design around this weakness by cleating the underside of the seat.
The ideal wood for slab seats is American elm (or its cousin hackberry.) Woods in the Elm family are very rugged in that they have very high resistance to splitting...And their figure is extremely attractive...especially on a scooped out (shaped) chair seat. American elm is also relatively light in weight, which is a nice feature in a chair, if it doesn't mean giving up strength...and with elm you don't.
The traditional English wood for making Windsors was beech. I think primarily because it was plentiful and cheap in the London area where these chairs were first made...but also because its high shrinkage helped to lock the joints when the dry splindles were tapped into a slab seat with higher moisture content.
Thanks Jon. How about hardness? I know it's not like the white pine I use for the painted chairs, but this is all hand tools and I'm not looking to kill myself. And these are scooped a lot deeper than English windsors. (being an evil conservative, I look for maximum gain from minimum input, i.e., see the cafe).
Napie, American elm has an average specific gravity (green volume, ovendry weight) of 0.46...so, It's slightly softer than cherry (o.47.) If you've ever worked with sycamore, its specific gravity is identical to that of American elm. (Incidentally, sycamore would be another good option for slab seats, especially if you use quartersawn stock with its attractive ray bands.) Hackberry is slightly heavier than American elm (0.49)...but both elm and hackberry are softer than some of the woods you say you're using, such as white oak (0.60) and white ash (0.55.)
Elm doesn't have the greatest shaping characteristics, but it's certainly no worse than the more ring-porous oaks in this respect. American elm isn't as plentiful as it once was, but when you can find it, it's usually pretty cheap...as is hackberry.
What about Catalpa for the same application?
Napie, catalpa is another one of my favorite woods for light duty cabinetry (clock cases and display shelves, etc.)...It's average specific gravity is only 0.41...but worse still, it would be a real loser as a slab seat, because the porous earlywood tissue tears out too easily. It has very poor wear properties.
We have a lot of sassafras here in Tennessee and on the farm it was used to make gates, porch swings, and most anything outside in the weather. I've used it to make several small pieces of furniture with cherry mouldings for trim. Try orange shellac as a finish it gives a warm tone. The pleasant smell of sassafras goes away very quickly unlike another Tennessee wood - Red Cedar.
Ron
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