Replies

1. 
   10fingers | Jun 19, 2003 08:22pm | #1

   Hello,

   My only real experience with sweet gum is that they make lighter railroad ties than oak.   I have read that sweet gum can look a lot like walnut if stained and is used for secondary wood for cabinet construction.   I looked into it because I was given 5 dead standing trees if I would cut them down.  I had to pass because there were too many electrical wires running through them.   I would recommend that you give it a try.   Free wood is good stuff.

   Chuck

2. 
   jonsherryl | Jun 19, 2003 10:07pm | #2

   Michael, sweetgum is a nice cabinetwood with very good shaping characteristics. It's similar to cherry in density, texture and color and it also occasionally produces some special figures (both curly and/or dark, streaked pigmentation.) It has some problems in terms of stability and is prone to distortion when exposed to changes in humidity...but it's certainly an attractive wood.

   There's an article on sweetgum in the May/June 2000 issue of Fine WoodWorking. If you don't have access to back issues, e-mail me your postal address and I'll send you a copy. 

1. 
   blindau | Jun 22, 2003 04:48am | #6

   Jon, what's the relationship between sweet gum and black gum.  Around here the black gum was use by the old timers for bee hives because the trunk was almost always hollow. I've lived in places that had sweet gum, I remember the seed pods as almost weapon like.

   Bill Lindau

1. 
   jonsherryl | Jun 22, 2003 05:51pm | #7

   Bill, sweetgum and black gum (AKA; tupelo) aren't closely related. Sweetgum is a member of the witch-hazel family (Hamamelidaceae.) Tupelo...while it has been assigned it's own small family of only about 10 species (Nyssaceae)...the truth is it's actually a close relative of the dogwoods (Cornaceae.)  The woods of the various tupelo "black" gums are mostly very fine textured, like dogwood, but not as dense. They make excellent carving woods, especially the softer buttress stock of swamp tupelo, which is a favorite among decoy carvers. Most of the tupelos are blond in color, although they sometimes produce grayish tan streaks in the heartwood.

   The wood of sweetgum, on the other hand, produces a more flesh red heartwood, similar in color to cherry, except usually with a grayish cast. The reddish heartwood and the stark white sapwood of sweetgum are often segregated and marketed separately as "red" gum and "white" gum (or sapgum), respectively. This causes some confusion in the trade, because the sapwood of sweetgum and the naturally blond wood of the tupelos are similar enough to be easily confused...So, when the modifier in the common name gets dropped and the wood is being sold as simply "gum", you can't be sure just exactly what's being offered...at least not until you see the wood. While sweetgum and tupelo are both diffuse-porous woods, the tupelos are noticeably the finer textured and have a more glossy surface luster.

   As was mentioned in an earlier post, a lot of sweetgum gets used in the furniture industry, because it lends itself to counterfeiting other woods with just a little careful staining. Also, prior to World War II, a lot of sweetgum was used as interior trim and shipped all over the country. It was sort of the "yellow poplar" of its day (meaning an inexpensive, paintable, multi purpose hardwood)...Even here in the Detroit area, I'm often asked by remodelling contractors to ID the "strange" moldings they are tearing out of houses built in the 1920s and 1930s. It's almost always sweetgum.

   Nowdays, both sweetgum and tupelo are less commonly seen in the trade. They've become sort of regional woods...more associated with Southern markets. Because of their lack of availability up here, I don't use them much, but for woodworkers further south, they're certainly worthy of consideration...at least as secondary woods or in applications where their better than average shaping qualities would be a plus.     

   Edited 6/22/2003 10:54:41 AM ET by Jon Arno

1. 
   jtandrews | Jun 23, 2003 03:48am | #8

   Does Sweet Gum really have value?

   I have 30 Sweet Gums in my yard that I want to take out for several reasons.  Primarily, I am tired of dealing with the seed pods.  Most of the trees are approaching 12" diameter and some are even bigger.  They have long, straight trunks no branches closer than 20 feet to the ground. 

   I had originally thought about having them milled into boards, but I have been discourage by what I have been told by others.  The article in FW left me thinking that stability was a problem that was insurmountable.

   I have decided that when they come out, I'll just grind them up into mulch.  If they have value, I'll pursue the matter further.  I hate to grind up good wood.

   Jeff

1. 
   jonsherryl | Jun 23, 2003 05:13am | #9

   Jeff, sweetgum is not a very stable wood, but this is not an insurmountable problem. It simply means you have to take this characteristic of the wood into account in your design and selection of joinery. For example, Maple, birch, hickory and beech are also not very stable woods, but they're still useful in many cabinetmaking applications.

   As for your trees, it sounds as though they are a little immature to be valuable saw logs. The fact that they are branch free for 20 feet is a positive feature, but the 12" diameter suggests they need at least another couple of decades to put on some mass. This is especially true of sweetgum (as it is for walnut) in that sweetgum has a rather wide band of sapwood until the tree reaches full maturity and its rate of growth slows down. In fact, there is enough sapwood in a typical sweetgum log that it is sold as a separate wood (white gum or sapgum), usually for less prestigeous applications like pallets and crating, while the reddish heartwood is marketed as the more valuable cabinetwood. 

2. 
   bobhallsr | Jun 24, 2003 05:03am | #10

   When my father rebuilt his burned house during WWII he used red gum stair treads.  I thought that it was superior to the ring porus oak that is commonly used for stair treds but I never equated it with the sweet gum lumber that I see.  Thanks for exposing this mystery that has bugged me since 1944.

   BTW, there used to be a spoon mill here in South'n Murl'n in which sweet gum logs were turned on a veneer lathe and the little flat ice cream spoons were die stamped from the veneer sheet.  It is reported that it was packed up lock, stock, and gum logs and shipped to Korea.

   BJGardening, cooking and woodworking in Southern Maryland

3. 
   jonsherryl | Jun 24, 2003 05:30am | #11

   BJ, sweetgum is one of those sneaky species you bump into more often than you realize. It's been a major veneer source for the plywood industry and it's also been one of our more popular exports...especially to Europe, where they regard it much more highly than we do. One of its trade names over there is "silver walnut." It's a little closer in appearance to the slightly finer textured and lighter colored Old World ("English") walnut...so, over there, it's proven to be a counterfeiter's dream.

4. 
   corners | Jun 25, 2003 04:30am | #12

   The English called it "Satin Walnut". It was a common wood for furniture in western Canada when I was a young woodworker back in the 60's. I still have one small table I made in junior high. I also have a tea wagon my Dad built about 80 years ago and I'm fairly confident it's Satin Walnut - has a beautiful patina after all those years. I wish I could still get this wood but none of the suppliers seems to know what it is these days. We only used the heartwood.

5. 
   jonsherryl | Jun 25, 2003 07:02am | #13

   Thanks for the correction, Corners. Another one of my increasingly more frequent senior moments. SATIN walnut, is the right term.

3. 
   mrles | Jun 20, 2003 08:36am | #3

   Michael

   I live in East Texas and we have an abundence of sweet gum trees. The only thing I have ever known them used for commercially is making baskets. The baskets are made when the wood is green and it is quite pliable. I've never seen a sweet gum board that I know of except the thin slats use in the baskets.

   Gods Peace

   les

1. 
   Biscardi | Jun 20, 2003 08:26pm | #4

   The wood fibers are intercallated so it is nearly impossible to split. Just for amusement you should hit it once as hard as you can with a splitting maul just to see it bounce off.

   I beleive the old timers used to make mallets out of it.

   Frank

1. 
   wop | Jun 20, 2003 11:24pm | #5

        Yeah I remember when I was about 10 years old, my dad cut down a sweetgum and decided to split it into fire wood.....bad idea..... The first piece he started with an ax and then passed to (as normal) wedges and a sledge hammer. Well he got three wedges so imbedded into the chunk that he had to burn them out of the Whole piece just to get the wedges back. After that he bordered the creek bank with the left over trunk pieces. After about 10 years they rotted and one day two pilated woodpeckers (bigass woodpeckers) reduced those logs to pulp in a couple of hours. Sweetgums remain to me ornery trees and ornery wood.

                                                                         Philip