# Do you have Sweet Gum?



## neverbilly (Feb 19, 2016)

It's mostly a southern tree. Beautiful fall foliage, but those pesky spiky sweetgum balls make them a nuisance in your yard. Plus, hawks like to nest in them, they grow fast and real tall and small birds eat their seeds, so, I won't cut them down. They reach really big size, including diameter.

It seems I recall that the wood does not burn hot like oak. Anyone have experience? Are they hard to split for you? Any tips? How does it burn for you? How long to dry?

I see blowdown gums around here. They used to not be a valuable tree, but now, they are being harvested in timber operations for hardwood pulpwood, I guess.

Although... I have spotted a number of dead oaks I can harvest, so, this sweetgum-for-firewood might be a moot question except for the time one blows down or dies in my own yard.


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## Longstreet (Feb 19, 2016)

Worst tree native to the South.  I murder every one of those devils I see on my property.  There isn't a single thing they do that another tree cannot do better.  My advice for splitting?  Hit yourself in the head with your maul so you have to go to the hospital.  Trust me, that would be more fun than splitting gum.

It is heavy as crap when wet.  Drys to light as a feather because it contains few btus.  Smells like a toilet when burned.  Has interlocking grain so it cannot be split - you literally tear the grain instead.

It's only use is a pallet stock.  The interlocking grain makes it pretty stable once dried is my understanding.


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## PA. Woodsman (Feb 19, 2016)

> My advice for splitting?  Hit yourself in the head with your maul so you have to go to the hospital.  Trust me, that would be more fun than splitting gum..




That made my day, great stuff!


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## StihlKicking (Feb 19, 2016)

Longstreet said:


> Worst tree native to the South.  I murder every one of those devils I see on my property.  There isn't a single thing they do that another tree cannot do better.  My advice for splitting?  Hit yourself in the head with your maul so you have to go to the hospital.  Trust me, that would be more fun than splitting gum.
> 
> It is heavy as crap when wet.  Drys to light as a feather because it contains few btus.  Smells like a toilet when burned.  Has interlocking grain so it cannot be split - you literally tear the grain instead.
> 
> It's only use is a pallet stock.  The interlocking grain makes it pretty stable once dried is my understanding.


I 100% agree with Longstreet. Sweet gums are horrible piece of crap trees. I kill as many as I can on my property. Sometimes I'll chunk sweet gum into my OWB to heat my water in the summertime.  An OWB is the only thing I would attempt to burn sweet gum in.


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## neverbilly (Feb 19, 2016)

StihlKicking said:


> I 100% agree with Longstreet. Sweet gums are horrible piece of crap trees. I kill as many as I can on my property. Sometimes I'll chunk sweet gum into my OWB to heat my water in the summertime.  An OWB is the only thing I would attempt to burn sweet gum in.



Is it hard to split as the other guy said? I burn a lot of campfires outside.

I would venture to say that sweetgum is about as prolific a tree as exists in my region. There are a bazillion of them. Obviously, they have their bad points for humans, but they sure do make nice fall foliage. Incredible, actually. No other native trees in this area have as much color.


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## stevea621j (Feb 19, 2016)

I had a few fairly large dead sweet gums, and since I don't like it to go to waste I cut it and split it. Like others have said, it doesn't really split, it kind of just tears apart. Eventually I ended up kind of partially splitting a lot of it, leaving clusters of 3 or 4 splits partially attached to each other. I figured they were split enough to dry out, and I will treat them like little pre-stacked bundles of splits when I burn them. I haven't tried burning any yet.


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## Wood Duck (Feb 19, 2016)

I haven't burned Sweet Gum, but I  agree it has some nice qualities. In the late fall they are full of birds eating the seeds. They grow really large and can be beautiful trees, and as the OP wrote, they are among the best fall color trees in the deep south.

Sure, they are prolific and may be hard to split (I haven't tried) but they aren't all bad.


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## StihlKicking (Feb 19, 2016)

neverbilly said:


> Is it hard to split as the other guy said? I burn a lot of campfires outside.
> 
> I would venture to say that sweetgum is about as prolific a tree as exists in my region. There are a bazillion of them. Obviously, they have their bad points for humans, but they sure do make nice fall foliage. Incredible, actually. No other native trees in this area have as much color.


I agree that the fall colors are pretty, we have a lot of sweet gum where I live too. Yes it is as hard to split as the other guy described. If you don't use a gas powered splitter your in for a long day. It's near impossible to use a maul on it and if you try a wedge your gonna have to burn the log just to get your wedge back!


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## StihlKicking (Feb 19, 2016)

Wood Duck said:


> I haven't burned Sweet Gum, but I  agree it has some nice qualities. In the late fall they are full of birds eating the seeds. They grow really large and can be beautiful trees, and as the OP wrote, they are among the best fall color trees in the deep south.
> 
> Sure, they are prolific and may be hard to split (I haven't tried) but they aren't all bad.



They will get huge and the bigger they get the weaker they get and the weaker they get the more likely they are to fall on something you don't want them to fall on. Like your house, this happened to me once. Man F those trees[emoji1][emoji1][emoji1]


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## Longstreet (Feb 19, 2016)

neverbilly said:


> Is it hard to split as the other guy said? I burn a lot of campfires outside.
> 
> I would venture to say that sweetgum is about as prolific a tree as exists in my region. There are a bazillion of them. Obviously, they have their bad points for humans, but they sure do make nice fall foliage. Incredible, actually. No other native trees in this area have as much color.



Even more reason we should massacre them.  They are weeds and they coppice like crazy.  If you want nice fall foliage in a tree which grows big and tall, plant some tulip poplars instead.  Much better of a tree all around.

Plus, cutting every sweetgum to the ground and planting better trees would be GREAT for nature.  Not only would the trees rot and provide bugs for birds, the new trees provide MUCH better habitat.  The number of animal and insect species supported by sweetgums is tiny compared to oaks and other trees.  Do it for Mothernature

Plus, did I mention that even after you buck, split, stack, and dry sweetgum, it will rot before you get a chance to burn it?


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## hickoryhoarder (Feb 19, 2016)

Nice strong shade trees.  Ours shades the whole east side of the house.  We took off some big limbs three years ago.  Those things take a long time to season!  Wasn't too hard to split.  Does not burn hot.  I never put it in the stove the first hour or last hour.  Good BTUs.  Not my favorite firewood, but it was free.


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## Grateful11 (Feb 20, 2016)

I hate them. They make a lot ashes when burned and don't put off a lot of heat. Good wood for when it's not very cold but like someone said it stinks. Late FIL used to call them "lightning strikers" because they always seem to get hit more often by lightning than any other tree here on the farm.

Here's a Gum log that still hasn't been cut up yet.


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## Oldman47 (Feb 20, 2016)

The only time I see any gum around here is when I look at yard trees. It sounds like I have something to be thankful for.


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## stevemd (Feb 20, 2016)

My neighbor has a sweet gum and I have to rake up many   bags of "GUMBALLS" every  year.Does anyone know how I can kill one without anyone knowing it?


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## Rebelduckman (Feb 20, 2016)

stevemd said:


> My neighbor has a sweet gum and I have to rake up many   bags of "GUMBALLS" every  year.Does anyone know how I can kill one without anyone knowing it?



Check with Harvey Updike


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## Fred Wright (Feb 20, 2016)

The BTU value of gum is poor when compared to red maple, which typically grows in the same area as gum and is much easier to process.

Sweet gum has some qualities... lovely fall colors, can withstand strong winds and they do provide seed for wild birds. Mushroom growers swear by sweet gum wood. Forest sapling logs make fine rails to stack your firewood on. That's about all it's good for. Gum is usually considered a junk tree, or a giant weed.

It grows like weeds in this neck of the woods. I used to take a couple down every winter for shoulder season heat when I was cutting wood. The stuff really isn't worth the time and effort needed to process it into firewood. No one wants it, can't even give the stuff away. As of this writing we're burning off the last of our two-year-old gum stash.

Gum is a real bear to split. You need a good hydro splitter to manage it.  It doesn't truly split; tears and mangles is a better description. Doesn't bust too badly when it's been left to set in the round a few months, though you'll still have to slab off the sides of your rounds first. Will burn after a year stacked, 2 years is better. Yup, it does leave a lot of ash in the stove and stinks to high heaven when it burns.

I don't cut gum for firewood any more.


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## Paulywalnut (Feb 21, 2016)

It is the appropriate name for it. Think Gum when splitting it.


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## planner steve (Feb 23, 2016)

I'll side with the sweet gum haters.  I had one cut down and splitting was every bit as bad as stevea621j described.  Not particularly great btu's for the work.


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## ptman (Apr 4, 2016)

i just tried to split some from a tree i had cut down about a month ago.  it was horrible, even w/ the splitter.  it just tore apart and took forever.  im just going to throw away the rest of it.  noway, ill get through all of it w/o messing something up


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