Sycamore than just pallets and firewood

[bellwetherbull]

lemmie start my first post by stating i am glad/thankful to have found you guys!

when i came across the sycamore project thread, ff had me hook, line and sinker...

anyway,
my question is what to do with these giant sycamores growing on our family farm?

all the local loggers i have spoke with show no interest with the trees,
but i think they were put here for a higher calling than paperwood.

my father and i are looking to buy/build a saw/band mill,
and the project will be special, more about the journey then the end.
but in the end, fetching a premium for our efforts would be nice:)

we have about 20-30 straight sycamores average 24-36" at chest level.
and then we have the oddball shaped ones as well,
but let's just focus on the really tall straight ones for now.
(as they need to either be topped or removed to let in sunlight)

i'll post a photo as soon as i figure out how to get it on here:)

thanks in advance for the ideas.
also, any good links/reads are definitely appreciated.

[beenthere]

Welcome to the Forestry Forum.
Glad you found it.
About posting pics, here is a link to the "Behind the Forum" for pic posting made easy.

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,56957.0.html

For the sycamore, then here is a thread that may help some. With pics too.

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,53886.msg780628.html#msg780628

[dutchman]

Try doing a search for sycamore, top center.
The only way to make sycamore stable is to quarter saw.
Once again search quarter sawing.
It's very light (almost white) with darker ray flecks.
Do not drop the trees before your ready to saw.
Sycamore will rot on the ground in short time.
When Qsawing you get random width boards.
There will be a lot of movement in the boards, so cut slightly over size.

[WDH]

southern uh'hia

I pretty good with geography, but I am not sure about this location?  Ohio?

[paul case]

Spalted, heat stressed sycamore is some beautiful stuff.

If you cut some and leave it out in the sun, up off the ground through the summer the wood will get some spalting and some green and blue streaks in the grain, it is just awesome!

I have been cutting a lot of sycamore for blocking cants. It wants to move some. Drying the logs will help it be more stable. In my opinion it makes good lumber for building, but it wont weather as well as some others.

My advice, if you like work, buy a mill and get some sawdust on ya, then you may not be able to stop sawing any kind of logs you can get a hold of. Be carefull. It is quite adicting.
Paul Case
Dealer in all things burnable.
Cattle, hay, and wood.

[Kansas]

Several things about sycamore. From our perspective.

The first is, there is a good likelihood that they may have shake in them. We have had patches that had no shake, and then where every one is shaky. The color will vary, from white to light red. Quartersawn is indeed more stable. But I will say this. When I built my house, I decided to go through the flat sawn for a wall. We never sold virtually any of it. The top boards of the pile were all twisted and warped. After getting through those, I discovered layer after layer of boards that lay perfectly flat. Granted, some of these got put into the pile that didn't show flake. But some were the first cuts. We qs differently now, so we don't get them. When we go for spalt, its usually by accident. That is, the logs have been laying there because we never got to them. Be careful they don't lay too long. There is a fine line between spalt and rot.

[Okrafarmer]

Sycamore and sweetgum are in the category of trees that have tons of great potential uses, but are slow to be understood well, and slow to be accepted mainstream.

But if you get that lumber quartersawn, and carefully dried, people who see the ray-fleck pattern with their own eyes will quickly learn to buy it.

[bellwetherbull]

 

above: a couple of the sycamores behind the barn,
the one closest to the pig sty is around 30" at chest high.
the top of the sty is about 6-7' tall.

[bellwetherbull]

yep, wdh, they're ohio river sycamores.

dutch, during my search i was blown away by the thought of making a slab bench like piston's creation.

paul, i'm one of those guys who can appreciate hard work, especially when it is profitable:)
does spalted sycamore fetch a higher $$$?

kansas, what exactly is shake?
with my untrained eye, alot of these sycamores look very straight compaired to many i have seen.

okra, gonna stay away from the sweet gum questions on this thread, lol,
i've gotta earn a little respect first:)


another idea i have been pitching, do you think anyone would trade a nice sawmill for a nice 1970 piper cherokee?
(that would obiviously get me up an running quicker vs. the homebuild timeline i am currently on)

also, we have about 60 or so wooded acres that was logged in 1994.
so there is plenty of other wood to choose from later on down the road...

[Kansas]

Shake is the separation of wood rings. If you cut a tree down, and you see, or within a week or so, a circular pattern that separates the wood on the end of the log, that is shake. If the end of the log splits across the face, instead of the circular pattern, you are just fine. Being the end dries and the rest of the log doesn't, it has to split one way or the other. If you have shake and cut it up, you wind up with a lot of boards that basically fall apart. I do not know your area, so can't say what the odds are. All you can do is cut one down and see what it looks like inside.

[craigc]

Sycamore was used as drawer side material.  As a teen working in my Dad's sawmill I saw many sycamore that had shake in them so bad they never yielded a single board.  Usually the redder the wood the more likely for sever shake.

[bellwetherbull]

the possibility of shake has caused some concern...

however,
in moving forward,

do you guys think a swing-blade saw would be a better choice for quartersawing the sycamores?

if so, what are some of the better brands of swingblade saws?

if not, then why would a bandmill be the better choice?

not trying to reignite a big 'which saw is best' debate,
just looking for some healthy insight particular to sycamores...

[Magicman]

bellwetherbull, I was out of state when you signed on, so Welcome to the Forestry Forum. 

Since I have no Swingmill experience other than watching one, I can not offer any advice.

I have sawed a fair amount of Sycamore and it handled OK on my sawmill.  It needs what any other species needs; a well tuned sawmill and sharp blades.  I see many limbs on those trees, so you can expect the knots to have a mind of their own when the lumber is drying.

[bellwetherbull]

thanks for the welcome, magicman:)

[Okrafarmer]

Either type of sawmill can do it, but most generally, a swing mill can handle a greater diameter of log than most portable band mills. Using various methods taught on this forum, a band mill may be slightly more versatile at it for all logs within its capacity.

[WDH]

With the bandmill, you can turn the cant to orient the rings just right, time after time.  You cannot do that on the swingmill. 

[Okrafarmer]

With the bandmill, you can turn the cant to orient the rings just right, time after time.  You cannot do that on the swingmill.

Right. A large percent of your wood would end up as rift cut under those swing mill systems. However, if I ever get one of the two major swing mill companies to consider my invention (s), that could change.  ;D

[Ianab]

The 2 advantages that a swingblade has in this scenario

First, it's no more work to quarter saw a log, compared to any other cutting pattern. It's just that you cut a 1x8, or an 8x1. You aren't loading and unloading pieces of log, and repositioning and turning them extra times, and edging off the tapered edges. Recovery should be similar no matter what pattern you are cutting.

Second, you can easily handle larger logs, and those are the ones that are going to have the best quarter sawn material.

Now it's true that only some boards will be 100% true quarter sawn. Some will be close, technically graded as q-sawn, but not having the visual appearance of that exact 90 deg face. And some will be rift sawn. But this is similar to the bandsaw methods, where you also recover the very best and widest boards at exactly 90 deg, then the angle tends to drift off and the boards get narrower as you go.

You are also limited to the width of cut, effectively whatever the mill is built to cut, usually 8 or 10"

So there are pluses and minuses to both type of mill.

Ian

[Ron Wenrich]

Shake usually indicates that some sort of bacteria is present.  You will find it often in sycamore, hemlock, and pin oak.  If its in the stand, you will probably have it in a lot of the trees. 

[bellwetherbull]

With the bandmill, you can turn the cant to orient the rings just right, time after time.  You cannot do that on the swingmill.

wdh, why can you not do that on a swing mill?

[Nomad]

With a swingmill, the log is sitting on the ground, or on bunks on the ground.  To rotate it you'd have to pretty much pick it up, turn it, and set it down again.  Okay for small stuff I suppose, but for the logs swingmills excel at it just isn't very practical.



      

[Okrafarmer]

With a swingmill, the log is sitting on the ground, or on bunks on the ground.  To rotate it you'd have to pretty much pick it up, turn it, and set it down again.  Okay for small stuff I suppose, but for the logs swingmills excel at it just isn't very practical.

As of right now, that is true. Stay tuned.....  ;)

[bellwetherbull]

okra sounds like he's gonna fab up a big ole lazy susan!

[Okrafarmer]

okra sounds like he's gonna fab up a big ole lazy susan!

The only problem is, finding the time! I ought to get the swing mill first, and then I should build my inventions for it.  :

[jwoods]

Bellweather,

I don't know where you're at, but if you can get a log to my place I'll show you how to Q-Saw on a bandmill.  I cut a sycamore like that 2 years ago, beautiful stuff.

Joe

[bellwetherbull]

Joe, just shot you a pm.