Sweet Gum is no joke...

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chilly460

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I just cut down a dying 23" DBH sweet gum in my back yard. I'm new to cutting firewood so haven't split a great deal, helped a buddy cleanup 5 large red oaks and split 5 cords of that by hand. This sweet gum is a whole other animal, I'm having to wedge 10" logs, the maul has no chance. I sort of knew this from it's reputation, but I figured the pieces with no knots would be ok. Not the case.

I assume let it dry for a couple months then give it another shot? I split one 20" piece and it took forever, I'll be out there til June trying to split the rest at this pace.
 
You have a few choices. You could roll it out to the curb and hope someone else takes it, fight it by hand, rent a good splitter, or noodle it.

FWIW: I've never dealt with gum but from my dealings with American Elm I've learned that if you leave it out in the elements for about 2 years it gets to the point that it will split with a good mail.
 
From my experience, svk and hedge hog are both on the right track. I got some decent sized sweet gum blocks at a scrounge that the guy already had cut, and from the bark and sawn ends it looked like oak. Once home, the stuff was a stringy mess trying to split with my hydraulic splitter, most pieces needing to be "torn" by hand after going through the splitter, or chopped with an ax to break the remaining fibers if too tough to pull apart. I tried burning a few pieces this winter and the other wood burnt around it while the gum was laying there in the middle like a big ol' charcoal briquet hours later. For what I already have split I'll try again next winter to see if it burns any better, but in your case I'd say the payoff isn't close to worth the effort.
 
Pain in the arse to split. I never had a problem burning it though. If I get stuck with any, it usually goes into the boiler without being spit. It will spit better as it seasons but it also rots quickly in the round.
 
I will echo what everyone else says- I have a pile of sweet gum that I am simply letting rot, as the poor burning is not worth the energy to split or stack and dry it. Its not even good in a firepit. Get rid of it, give it away for free on CL, dig a hole and bury it...don't waste any sweat trying to turn it into firewood.
 
Best i can do for bark pic right now
IMG_0098.jpg

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Here's a split from one of my piles, showing the bark and how stringy the wood is. This was split about 6 months ago.
 

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I was just wanting a picture of it to compare to a tree I took down that I'm not sure of species I will try to post pictures of bark of tree I'm talking about later
 
First one of the 2 above. That's a little stringy but it's actually split. Usually sweet gum rips the entire length of the split.
 
I just cut down a dying 23" DBH sweet gum in my back yard. I'm new to cutting firewood so haven't split a great deal, helped a buddy cleanup 5 large red oaks and split 5 cords of that by hand. This sweet gum is a whole other animal, I'm having to wedge 10" logs, the maul has no chance. I sort of knew this from it's reputation, but I figured the pieces with no knots would be ok. Not the case.

I assume let it dry for a couple months then give it another shot? I split one 20" piece and it took forever, I'll be out there til June trying to split the rest at this pace.
noodle or throw it away, it will rot inside the bark if you try to outwait it
 
Here's a split from one of my piles, showing the bark and how stringy the wood is. This was split about 6 months ago.

I don't think that is sweetgum either. Yes it is surely stringy, but gum grain is not like that...it pulls apart in chunks- the grain is not strong enough to split as nicely as that.
 

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