Like numerous romances, my relationship with quartersawn sycamore started with a sideways look. Then it obtained sophisticated. I used to be visiting Whispering Pine Farms in North Carolina, a small farm-based operation that focuses on sawing slabs, giant timbers, and quartersawn lumber. Scott Smith, the proprietor, had left me to peruse the planks, which had been organized vertically in aisles that appeared like caves of wooden.
In a single nook, an eruption of ray fleck and flake caught my eye. The determine was so dazzling I couldn’t see the vertical grain. Oak, I puzzled? I eliminated a number of of the boards. Couldn’t be. The grain was too high quality, and there have been pastel tones of orange, pink, and yellow. No matter it was, I wished some. “That’s sycamore,” Scott mentioned, when he returned to measure the boards I had chosen.
After that buy, it took me a 12 months to discover a consumer on this lesser-known wooden. Then the drama started. Once I began milling lumber for the cupboard I deliberate, little chunks appeared to eject spontaneously; it was tearout within the excessive. Sycamore, which is usually known as American lacewood by old-timers, has interlocking grain. Irrespective of the route you chop, you all the time work towards a few of it. If I’d had a helical head on my previous Minimax jointer-planer, it might have helped. However I discovered I used to be in a position to remediate some tearout with lighter, skewed passes on the jointer.
Usually, after jointing and planing, I take advantage of hand planes to take away the machine marks. That’s what I did right here. Once more there was tearout. Inserting the chipbreaker on the very fringe of the airplane iron, so only a hairline of blade was seen, helped. To tame the remaining tearout, I grabbed my card scraper. That labored to take away the tearout, however it left a fuzzy, stringy floor.
I repeated my workshop mantra: “I cannot throw instruments. I cannot throw instruments. I cannot throw instruments.” I spent a couple of minutes at my sharpening station and returned to work. I discover scrapers usually produce poor outcomes on delicate or medium-soft woods like sycamore, but when they’re additional sharp, devotedly sq., solely evenly burnished, and offered to the wooden at a skewed angle, they’ll give a clear reduce. Voilà. Now the sycamore appeared beautiful, much more so after gentle hand-sanding to a excessive grit.
In line with my present provider, C. P. Johnson Lumber in Culpepper, Va., sycamore lumber shouldn’t be extensively accessible principally as a result of sawyers discover it troublesome to supply and complex to mill in a method that yields good determine. And sycamore, a member of the maple household—it’s generally known as Virginia maple—is equally liable to discoloration when drying.
But there’s a robust case to be made for quartersawn sycamore, even past its spectacular appears. The wooden is supremely secure (although solely when quartersawn). The timber are considerable within the jap U.S. They develop shortly and grow to be large—so huge that some early Colonial settlers lived within the hollowed-out trunks of large sycamores earlier than constructing their major shelters.
My recommendation about sycamore? Beg your provider to be extra adventurous. Don’t let that interlocking grain deter you. Quartersawn sycamore has its challenges, however so do different wonderful woods. Sapele, as an illustration, with its interlocking grain, is equally liable to tearout. However don’t purchase sycamore plain sawn. It’s simply … plain.
So get out your scraper. Sharpen it judiciously. And set to work with sycamore. Within the course of, you’ll learn to cope with any figured wooden, in case you don’t know already. And maybe you’ll start an affair of your individual.
—Blake Davis builds furnishings in Richmond, Va.
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