Anyone have guesses on what kind of tree this might be from?

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

Beautiful log, will adjust my thinking moving forward at the mill.
My brother is a furniture maker and very good at it, I'll be sure to inform him of this, thankyou

Yeah I saw my neighbor having it pruned once and I thought to myself, if she ever takes that tree down, I want it. Sure enough, I saw a crew high up in it topping it one day and went over and asked her if it was coming down and I could have the largest part of the trunk. I found out too late from another neighbor recently that he was taking down a 70 year old cypress and the crew had already cut it into rounds by the time he stopped by to let me know. It was another 30 inch beauty, I took a few big rounds from it for cookies and smaller projects, but such a waste I couldn't have gotten an 8' section intact from it. I have a very live and let live neighborhood and everyone has seen me milling logs occasionally in the front yard and they're mostly fascinated by it, no one complains. That guy didn't know me but at least he'd seen me milling before and was nice enough to stop by and ask if I wanted any from it, albeit a little bit late.

 

[pdqdl]

I never turned any sycamore into lumber, but I think it is rather prone to checking and splitting. It's definitely wet, heavy wood when green.

"Color/Appearance: Similar to maple, the wood of Sycamore trees is predominantly comprised of the sapwood, with some darker heartwood streaks also found in most boards. (Though it is not uncommon to also see entire boards of heartwood too.) The sapwood is white to light tan, while the heartwood is a darker reddish brown. Sycamore also has very distinct ray flecks present on quartersawn surfaces—giving it a freckled appearance—and it is sometimes even called “Lacewood.”

Rot Resistance: Sycamore is rated as non-durable to perishable regarding decay resistance, and is susceptible to insect attack.

https://www.wood-database.com/sycamore/

 

[pdqdl]

Yeah I saw my neighbor having it pruned once and I thought to myself, if she ever takes that tree down, I want it. Sure enough, I saw a crew high up in it topping it one day and went over and asked her if it was coming down and I could have the largest part of the trunk. I found out too late from another neighbor recently that he was taking down a 70 year old cypress and the crew had already cut it into rounds by the time he stopped by to let me know. It was another 30 inch beauty, I took a few big rounds from it for cookies and smaller projects, but such a waste I couldn't have gotten an 8' section intact from it. I have a very live and let live neighborhood and everyone has seen me milling logs occasionally in the front yard and they're mostly fascinated by it, no one complains. That guy didn't know me but at least he'd seen me milling before and was nice enough to stop by and ask if I wanted any from it, albeit a little bit late.

I throw out 4' diameter logs quite frequently. Too bad nobody wants trees around here.

 

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

I never turned any sycamore into lumber, but I think it is rather prone to checking and splitting. It's definitely wet, heavy wood when green.

Someone was saying here or some other forum how the sycamore they cut sinks in water so must be pretty dense hardwood, and I was thinking, but it's not, how can that be? But then I learned a mistake nearly everyone assumes about wood (including me til recently) which is pretty obvious when you think about all the "sinker" logs that are recovered, especially cypress which is pretty light. Most people talk about "woods that sink in water" as only the DRY ultra-dense hardwoods that sink in water. With enough water content added to the wood density in any wood, it makes the wood heavier than water and it sinks. I thought at first, well you're just adding water, which isn't heavier than water, how does that make it sink? But the combined density of the wood and water is heavier than just water would be in the volume of that log, so yeah, it sinks. I think a large part of why people have so much trouble drying sycamore and cottonwood/poplar is the enormous water content. Take all that water out and the wood is going to want to move all over the place.

Always the way about things going to waste in one place that would be prized in another, shame about having to throw out 4' logs. But I get the economics, if there's no market, there's no market. Found a sawmill in East Texas selling full hickory tree logs for $100 a ton, guess it's just not worth it for them to even mill it. If I had a trailer big enough, would be totally worth loading 12 to 20' logs of 16-20" hickory for milling nice beams from at least. Funny, doing searches no one seems to use hickory for much of anything, couldn't find beams for sale or even much lumber. Great firewood, but I suppose when woods get too dense and hard they stop being practical, just useful for some niche bits of custom furniture. (Pecan, hickory, live oak, mesquite.)

 

[Woody912]

I never turned any sycamore into lumber, but I think it is rather prone to checking and splitting. It's definitely wet, heavy wood when green.

"Color/Appearance: Similar to maple, the wood of Sycamore trees is predominantly comprised of the sapwood, with some darker heartwood streaks also found in most boards. (Though it is not uncommon to also see entire boards of heartwood too.) The sapwood is white to light tan, while the heartwood is a darker reddish brown. Sycamore also has very distinct ray flecks present on quartersawn surfaces—giving it a freckled appearance—and it is sometimes even called “Lacewood.”

Rot Resistance: Sycamore is rated as non-durable to perishable regarding decay resistance, and is susceptible to insect attack.

https://www.wood-database.com/sycamore/

think they call it planetree in England, they quartersaw it to get the rayfleck and use it in cabinet making etc I think.

 

[JSMississippi]

think they call it planetree in England, they quartersaw it to get the rayfleck and use it in cabinet making etc I think.

That's correct to my knowledge as well, all members of the genus Platanus are referred to as plane trees.

 

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

think they call it planetree in England, they quartersaw it to get the rayfleck and use it in cabinet making etc I think.

The London plane is a sycamore and almost indistinguishable but is a hybrid of the American sycamore and the Asian/Oriental sycamore. They're all planes or all sycamores, depending on where you're from. We have lots of London planes in America too as they were planted widely as an urban landscaping tree, because they're resistant to a fungal disease the American sycamore isn't (which apparently doesn't so much kill them as make them ugly as hell).

 

[guym3]

Lots of confusion here over nomenclature.
Sycamore to a Brit is Acer Pseudoplatanus, a non-native, introduced from central europe in the 15th century and so widely naturalised that it takes over many woods from native species.
London plane as mentioned is a hybrid, grown in cities as it tolerates heavy air pollution with ease.
Our sycamore is used for fine joinery and violins etc but is an Acer not a Platanus.

 

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

Lots of confusion here over nomenclature.

Yeah, hate to get science geek-y on folks, but I have learned from my botanic garden arborist friends that the scientific names for trees save a lot of confusion. Everyone has different names everywhere. So-called "cedar elm" here in Texas, ulmus crassifolia, which also has a northern counterpart, ulmus thomasii, has nothing to do with cedar so I call it Texas elm or rock elm most of the time to not confuse people. For that matter, what's called cedar here in the US has nothing to do with true cedar, which grows in the Middle East. We've got western red cedar, thuja plicata, a large evergreen part of the cypress family, and its scrubby juniper cousins - mountain cedar aka ashe juniper (juniperus ashei) and eastern red cedar (juniperus virginiana). It's worse in the fishing world, there are a million things around the world called bonito/bonita, all different from each other.

 

[pdqdl]

You can thank Carl Linnaeus for that scientific nomenclature.

In addition to coming up with the working system of nomenclature, he named an awful lot of critters & plants. Thousands of them.

Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message: "Tell him I know no greater man on Earth."​

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote: "With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, I know no one among the no longer living who has influenced me more strongly."​

Swedish author August Strindberg wrote: "Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist."​

Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum (Prince of Botanists) and "The Pliny of the North".​

He is also considered one of the founders of modern ecology.​

 

[dboyd351]

Scientific names are far from bulletproof too.
Wax myrtle went from Myrica cerifera to Morella cerifera and plants/animals are reclassified fairly regularly.

 

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

Scientific names are far from bulletproof too.
Wax myrtle went from Myrica cerifera to Morella cerifera and plants/animals are reclassified fairly regularly.

Yeah, in fishing too, when I lived in southern Mexico I caught a lot of a rare grouper that hadn't been studied much, that they reclassified to hyporthodus exsul from epinephelus exsul just in the time I was catching them.