Sycamore wood harvested – best way to proceed?

[bruce d]

Hi all.

Last week we cut down a healthy sycamore tree. I have set aside some good straight lengths (enough for six lifetimes) of varying diameters and the rest is seasoning for firewood.

What is the best way to season the pieces I am keeping for modelmaking?

Storage facilities are limited: I could put a couple of small lengths in the garage but the only place I have for the rest is under shelter outside.

So, leave it as cut? Remove the bark? Or what?

I have found contradictory instructions online and think the MSW collective experience will produce the best answer.

 

Thanks in advance,

Bruce

[Jaager]

If the terminology follows tradition, you have a species of Maple there.  It is close enough to Hard Maple for the differences to be academic.  It is also a local commercial hardwood for you.

Harvesting, seasoning, and milling your own wood is tricky to do and a lot of work if it is not a part of your usual work.  The rewards generally match the necessary investment in time, equipment, and skills if the species harvested are those which are not to be had by any other means.  This would most often be a fruitwood, box, if lucky, hawthorn, Cornus and the like.

 

That editorial caveat out of the way, It needs air circulation to dry before a fungus gets it.  It needs protection from rain and snow. It needs protection from borrowing insects.  The rate of water loss from various surfaces needs attention.  The wet finger rule is seasoning requires 1 year per inch of thickness.

 

The water will leave much more quickly from areas of open end grain: cut ends and where branches are cut off.  Left uncontrolled, the difference in rate of water loss will produce internal stresses. 

The wood will split and check.  In the worst cases, the result is toothpicks.  The open ends must be sealed. This needs to be done concurrent with harvest or soon after.   There are many materials that do this, but quick and dirty is a THICK coating of leftover latex house paint.  Recoat as any splitting there shows there is not enough of a barrier.

 

Bark slows the rate of water loss from the side grain and there also may be eggs or larvae of wood eating insects in it back from when it was standing.  Leaving the bark on invites insect damage, a slower rate of drying, and not discovering any existing rot, which would result in a wasted effort.

Air circulation around each piece is important.  Pieces of wood are generally used for this.  Over here, these are called stickers.  The process of stacking the drying wood using the stickers is termed "stickering".

 

It speeds drying time, making handling easier, and may save on loss to splitting if the logs are immediately reduced to billets.  One inch thick is OK if you do not need stock for larger scale POF frame stock.  Two inch is better if you do need this.  Getting logs into billets is most efficiently done using a band saw.  It is a royal PITA otherwise and generally involves serious loss to kerf.

 

Length,  from the lumber yard, the boards generally come in 8 foot lengths.  My first outing involved the yard bisecting to 4 foot.  This is still impractical. For a while, I cut them into 16" lengths for my bench.  It is a bit fiddly and short, and now I find 2 foot lengths to be my sweet spot.

 

Does your garage have rafters/ trusses?   Is there room there for drying wood?  Is there an attic in your home?  Otherwise, your outside stack will need a blue tarp and probably a new one every 6-12 months.

Edited March 20, 2021 by Jaager

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  If you leave the wood as sections of logs (you mention various 'diameters'), the wood will 'check' (develop serious cracks) as it dries.  Living wood has a high moisture content.  Once cut, the water starts evaporating - and as it does so the structure of the wood (cellulose) has to shrink.  In cylindrical form this will happen by splitting radially (looking at the ring pattern of growth) and will be uncontrolled.  There are other complex distortions that will also occur and most likely the sections will end up good only for firewood.

 

  What needs to be done (and fairly soon) is to have the wood 'slabbed' - that is - cut into boards.  If you have access to a bandsaw with enough clearance (and the diameters are not too big) you can do this yourself.  Big logs really need a sawyers slabbing mill.  Now it is possible to split a log (manually with wedges and sledge, or with a log spitter) 'down the middle' to get two halves, and if the height of the halves fits under a bandsaw, you can proceed.  The bark and some of the sapwood can be trimmed off the domed side to make the piece fit the bandsaw.

 

  Note that there is 'sapwood' and heartwood, and you often can see the difference between the two by looking down at the end of the log.  The central area may have a slightly darker color (in some species a BIG difference, like in black walnut or locust), and this is often the better wood.  Generally speaking, the outer third (from the center of the log) will be sapwood.  In other kinds of wood, there is less of a distinction - like in many fruitwoods.  I once was given a couple of 8" diameter pieces from an apple tree, so I was able to use a table saw to accomplish the initial 'halving' of the logs.  Then I tried to 'quarter saw' from there.

 

  Many prefer quarter sawn wood, so you should google that and you can find the sort of cutting practices to get it.  However you arrive at cut wood approximately an inch thick (or so)  you want to seal the end of the boards with latex paint (some use wax) to prevent splitting from the ends.  Then stack the boards, and you can also google how to do that - generally with thin strips ('stickers') between the board laying one on top of another.  If stacked outdoors, be sure to place an overhanging piece of sheet metal or plywood on top.  The stack can be in a garage or shed - or even in an attic that has adequate ventilation.  It takes at least a year to air dry (2 or three is better), but the moisture content will still be a tad more than desired for indoor use if dried outdoors.  The boards can be moved inside after initial drying and stacked or even leaned vertically in a basement or where convenient to acclimatize.  

 

  All this fuss is avoided in commercial lumber production by 'kiln drying' in special ovens.

Edited March 21, 2021 by Snug Harbor Johnny

[bruce d]

1 hour ago, Snug Harbor Johnny said:

What needs to be done (and fairly soon) is to have the wood 'slabbed'

 

2 hours ago, Jaager said:

open ends must be sealed. This needs to be done concurrent with harvest or soon after.

Thanks to you both. This just about covers my questions.

 

Regards,

Bruce

[michael mott]

It is always nice to use wood that you have prepared for yourself, and by air drying it it retains a particular character that kiln dried wood does not. Good luck with the stickering. I have used paraffin wax on the ends, the same stuff used for canning, just heat it up in a saucepan and paint it on with a pastry brush. If you cut it into thinner slabs than 1 inch it is good to put some weight on top or straps around the bundle to help with the drying flat.

 

Michael

[bruce d]

Job done, now to wait a year. After cutting I sealed the ends with PVA and cleared a bookshelf in my study.

Recently I said in another post 'I have too many vices'; well, look at picture #2 and see that I put some of them to use. 😇

 

 

 

Many thanks to all for the advice.