Sweet Gum Wood Flooring

From professor gene wengert sawing and drying forum technical advisor.

Sweet gum wood flooring. Amberbaum american red gum satin walnut sweet gum noyer satiné liquidambar. Paticularly usa and mexico. Overall the wood shrinks about 15 in drying which is much higher than most other hardwoods. The wood is heavy strong and even grained.

Liquidambar styraciflua commonly called the american sweetgum sweet gum alligator wood american storax bilsted red gum satin walnut or star leaved gum is a deciduous tree native to warm temperate areas of eastern north america. Further flatsawn red gum as well as flatsawn sap gum from smaller trees has a tendency to. This one surprised me. You can try 12 sticker spacing and also very fast drying.

Black gum is tupelo has a large tendency to warp especially over small distances so gluing will not work well when the. The often beautifully figured stock can resemble walnut. The sapwood and the heartwood are sharply separated. The sapwood is broad and whitely mostly with reddish shimmer.

The excessive warp with gum is why it is not a commonly used wood. Used for flooring veneer and cabinets. North and central america. And when quartersawn it passes as the costly circassian walnut fancied for fine furniture and gunstocks.

Wood color and texture old trees and even some younger trees have relatively large heartwood called red gum in the trade. The variegated material with darker streaks is called figured red gum the wood has interlocked grain and when quartersawn produces a ribbon stripe. Let me know what can be done with this wood it s beautiful. Sweetgum redgum is the heartwood lumber name and sapgum is the sapwood name.

The sweet gum tree was to pioneer youth the rustic equivalent of a gum ball machine. The splitting you mention is commonly seen in red gum the heartwood but also is a problem in sapwood sap gum. Sweet gum wood though has been another story. That is it warps.

Sweet gum should make a nice floor similar in hardness to yellow poplar.