Sweet gum is a bit on the soft side, and tends to be fuzzy after
turning, but sands out nicely. Given a short time, it will spalt
nicely. Most of what I have gotten was pretty plain white in color.
robo hippy

On Jan 4, 8:52*am, mac davis wrote:
On Sat, 3 Jan 2009 15:58:25 -0600, tom koehler

wrote:

Tom,
I think Gerald is saying that from the time he cuts a blank and it starts
drying/cracking.degrading is pretty short with that particular wood at that
temperature..
Not sure WHY, though, as he's in Georgia and I'd guess that the humidity is high
there?





On Sat, 3 Jan 2009 13:54:12 -0600, Gerald Ross wrote
(in message ):

Since Christmas I have been cutting bowl blanks. A friend called me
that his son had cut a large sweetgum tree. It was large enough that I
could cut an 16 inch bowl blank off each side leaving an 8 inch slab
with the pith. From this I can make two 8 inch bowls on each side of
the pith making 6 bowls from each section. So far I have 24 large
blanks and uncounted small ones. There is nearly that much left but
with the 70 degree weather I can only keep at it a couple of hours.

Anybody ever used sweetgum for bowls? It is beautiful brown with tans
and oranges mixed in. Looks sorta like petrified wood.

sounds like you hit a wood bonanza! am mildly puzzled about the reference to
70 deg. weather, and thus only able to "keep at it a couple of hours" I'm
thinking this is a gentle jab at us snowbound folks who would be willing to
do *anything* all day long, if it were 70 degrees... not just for a couple of
hours. Humor. That's it, it must be humor. I guess I'm chuckling a little.
heh.

If the roads are open tomorrow, I might snowshoe into the back 40, and get me
a few chunks of frozen birch to mess around with.

Good catch on the sweetgum! (I don't mean "catch" like might could happen
with a chisel, I mean you done a good thing)

tom koehler

mac

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