It's in my yard, not gonna waste it. Next to it 30 feet away is a big tulip poplar, that one is coming down, too. I'll mix them both up good in the same stack, which is going to go uphill a little from the sweetgum stump. I'll burn it. Tulip poplar is the tradeoff, splits real easy like ash, especially dried in the round just a scosh, which doesn't take long either.
Like I said, I won't go out of my way in the woods to take sweetgum for firewood unless I am clearing saplings. Bigger ones you need a loader and do log length, you can sell them then, they make railroad ties from them.
Back in ye aulden days when dutch elm disease hit, there were mountains of it all over heck, splits just as nasty, the big american elms anyway. I burned it then because it is what I could scrounge. Tell ya whut, that's where my axe aiming came from, if you didn't chase natural cracks in the rounds (in addition to a sharp blade) you couldn't do it.
