working notes: sycamore

Back when we first started this exploration of domestic hardwoods, my experience did not go much beyond the oak, maple, walnut, and cherry that can be found at any dealer. I am still discovering aspects of the domestics that we carry and I want to share what I learn with you here when I can.

Very early on I discovered two domestics that deserved way more attention: sycamore and osage orange. I will discuss osage another time; today we are looking into sycamore.

We always quarter saw sycamore for two reasons:

1) It is incredibly unstable when drying and can warp huge amounts. (Sycamore is a bottomland tree and holds large amounts of water). Quartersawn wood dries with less degrade. I have not noticed any movement problems once dry, especially with the QS stuff.

2) One look at the medullary ray pattern on QS sycamore will convince you that you are looking at one handsome domestic hardwood. Lacewood and leopard wood, to mention two much more expensive exotics coveted for their grain figuring, have nothing on QS Sycamore. Here is a glimpse of the grain I am referring to:

An image search will show you much better examples of sycamore's beauty. What I really want to discuss today is how sycamore works. The 2x4 above is made from some 8/4 sycamore that came to us plain sawn (which is why the quarter sawn face is on the edge of the board) which we had used in the rough for the old vertical storage racks. Here I am shaping a piece with a router pass and a large rasp for rounding over the tenons to fit my mortiser's holes. This will become a much nicer vertical board storage rack, along with some oak for the posts. Sycamore's grain is very interlocked, so it is very strong wood for its weight and does not split readily. In fact, of all the stickers we have cut to use air drying wood, the ones we cut from sycamore have held up the best, better than oak. The interwoven grain can be a small problem if your router pass goes against it as it almost inevitably will because the grain reverses itself frequently. But the tear out is small bits, not like the huge hunks that can come out with stringier wood. This means tear-out is an easy fix and thus not really a problem. Another benefit of the strongly woven grain structure is that I do not worry at all about the integrity of the tenon after I peg the joint. I will NOT be blowing out a section of tenon with a firmly wedged in peg. This is good.

The wood shapes beautifully with a rasp, a characteristic I enjoy a lot when I find it. Persimmon is like this: almost no discernible grain direction means it just melts away under a rasp in any direction. Persimmon is much harder and takes a very high polish; sycamore is soft enough to dent from a wooden mallet blow and will always have a matte finish unless you bury it under some shiny film finish.

One other notable trait: the dust sycamore produces is fine and powdery. You can see this in the rasp photo above. I have not experienced any allergic reaction to the dust like I have to the powdery stuff from padouk.

The plain sawn face of sycamore is not unattractive on its own. The color of the heartwood is a soft pink that turns to tan over time and any cut veering towards rift sawn will show tiny hints of that spectacular quarter sawn look.

Beautiful. Strong. Easy to work. And cheap. Try it, you'll like it.