Couple of Questions About Gum Tree Wood

[Cluttermagnet]

I was given one odd piece of Gum tree by a neighbor recently. It was a lower trunk piece which had been thrown in the woods, probably due to having ants in it when cut. The core was hollowed out about an inch or so. I took it home and cut it in half with my chainsaw. Yielded two rounds about standard length. I'm near positive I have it correctly ID'ed as Gum because of the distinctive bark, which breaks up into thin little chips about 1/4 to 3/4 in diameter, sort of like jigsaw puzzle pieces without the tabs. The bark also looks very much like Dogwood, which gets the same finely segmented bark. This was way too big to be Dogwood, and is definitely a different wood than the pale white you see with Dogwood. More light amber brown. Anyway, it was too big- around 12-14in dia and even bigger near ground level.

I took my 8lb maul and was able to hand split it. It wasn't extremely stringy. It was pretty straight grained. It was harder to split than Oak, but OK for the maul. It took some work to get it all split, but I managed. Looks like it would split easy on a hydraulic splitter. FWIW it seemed pretty dry upon splitting. This was a pretty fresh piece, but no idea how many months it sat.

My questions are: if you have burned this East Coast version of Gum, how long do you think it needs to season? Also, do you have a sense of where it falls on the BTU/cord scale? This stuff seems pretty hard like Oak or Sugar Maple.

I have heard a lot of folks say that Gum is too hard to split and they avoid it. This stuff wasn't too bad.

 

[Wood Duck]

There are at least two common trees called gum. Sweet Gum is a common tree in the south, as far north as NJ, and has a reputation for being a pain to split and not especially long lasting on the ground (rots fast). Black Gum is found in forests through much of the east. I think this is the tree you have. I think a lot of what we hear on this forum about Black GUm might be really about Sweet Gum. I don't think the two trees are closely related, and I personally don't know much about the wood of Black Gum. Tupelo Gum is closely related to Black Gum. it is found in swampy woods in the south. I don't recall anyone posting about Tupelo Gum wood on this forum. Unfortunately, this is all just my long way of saying I don't really know the anwers to your questions.

 

[Cluttermagnet]

Thanks, Wood Duck. Black Gum sounds about right. Maybe someone knows more about this stuff. So far, it looks pretty good both for splitting ease and BTU's.

 

[johnsopi]

I had Black Gum a few years back could not split it with a maul or wedges. Had to use a rental. Then after a year it rotted.

 

[Cluttermagnet]

I had Black Gum a few years back could not split it with a maul or wedges. Had to use a rental. Then after a year it rotted.

Thanks! Well, I'd heard about the hard splitting and also the rapid rot. Don't know what to think. I'm pretty sure it's some sort of Gum I have here. But this stuff just doesn't seem near as bad as that.

 

[Hurricane]

Pictures would help

I had some sweet gum last year that I could not split with the maul or wedges and they were 8 in rounds. I put them on my buddies splitter and they just shredded, dried quickly and burned quickly too. Not worth the effort IMHO, next time I would burn them whole in the outdoor fire pit of leave them in the woods.

 

[Cluttermagnet]

Thanks! OK, I'll get some photos up in the next day or two. The bark is distinctive- it has these thin little round islands of bark everywhere. Looks a lot like the bark of Dogwood, but I'm very sure this is not Dogwood. FWIW this stuff is dense and straight grained. Believing that it was Gum, I did not expect it to split by hand, yet it did. I had to hit it pretty hard, but there's no stringiness to the splits at all.

 

[DiscoInferno]

My recent tree-service dropoff included a couple stray logs that I thought might be a really big dogwood because of the bark, but the wood was more colorful with a pink hue. Somewhat hard to split due to twisting grain, but not stringy like elm. I finally decided it might be sycamore - although most of the bark on an sycamore has that distinctive camouflage look, the base can look like dogwood.

 

[wsorg]

It should burn if you can split it, but may spark and pop.

 

[Cluttermagnet]

Here are 4 photos of the wood I presently believe to be Black Gum.

Distinctive bark reminds me a lot of Dogwood. It's definitely not Dogwood.

The wood has a reddish amber color. Dogwood is a much paler white color.

The possible Gum wood is only the line that starts center screen, top layer only,
and angles up to the upper left hand corner. Ignore all the under layers, which are
Poplar and Cherry, mostly.

The wood in question is only the top layer of 6 pieces that angles from center
screen and up towards the upper right hand corner. That whiter piece with dark core
in the middle is not a part of the group. That's Poplar.


So far, I'm still thinking that Wood Duck has it nailed as Black Gum.

 

[Cluttermagnet]

My recent tree-service dropoff included a couple stray logs that I thought might be a really big dogwood because of the bark, but the wood was more colorful with a pink hue. Somewhat hard to split due to twisting grain, but not stringy like elm. I finally decided it might be sycamore - although most of the bark on an sycamore has that distinctive camouflage look, the base can look like dogwood.

Yeah, I can see how you'd think Sycamore on your odd wood piece, but that is more of a mottled grayish green and off white colored bark. This stuff has smaller, more regular sized little round 'islands' of thin bark, just like Dogwood.

 

[FLINT]

yes, the bark does look like black gum

can't remember what black gum wood looks like or how it splits - its been a while since i've cut any.

Sweet gum is the stuff thats crazy hard to split usually - totally unrelated to black gum.

also, its not impossible for a dogwood to be 12" across - We cut up a pretty big standing dead one last year. Dogwood is SUPER hard/heavy/dense wood

 

[WoodPyro]

Def not black gum, black gum's (or tupelo) wood is actually rather whitish inside it and there is no way it will split that cleanly, I have cut and split a fair amount of it.

 

[cptoneleg]

That is not black Gum I posted pictures On that other thread about Gum I think Sweetgum score