Sycamore Wood

[Slim Pickins]

I have a high end mando Maple & Spruce. I am looking at and older Monroe that has sycamore wood. I just want a 2nd mando. Any opinion on sycamore? First one I have seen.

[Spruce]

Do you have a pic of the "sycamore"?

I think we're talking English Sycamore, Acer pseudoplatinus, better known as "German Maple"--a wood that has been used for centuries in fine musical instrument construction...

[grant_eversoll]

I have a morgan monroe with sycamore back and sides...I like it and it sounds fine to me.

I have never played a Loar or been around one so I can not compare a great mando to a cheap one but for the money a Morgan monroe is a good little mando

[barry k]

hey Mando Dude, i have built several mandos with sycamore...its works very well,and I will have another ready in about 3 weeks, maybe sooner, post again if your interested and we'll talk....

[Dale Ludewig]

I hope you guys keep talking about this- sycamore. Here in Illinois it is really really wet when cut and warps all over the place. I'm curious to know if after it settles down it stays put. From the bowls and hollow turnings I've done with it, it looks like it stabilizes.
I'm not talking about the wood that Bruce is- the is what we call sycamore. Great figure, not curly, but with that little brown striping everywhere.
I have access to it all the time but I've never even thought of using it on an instrument.
Keep talking, please.

[jessboo]

I have a Bulldog Barry made out of sycamore it's very stable and a hoss of a sounding mandolin http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

[delsbrother]

Paul Hostetter had Santa Cruz guitars make one of their Model Hs out of Sycamore - it is one of the wildest looking guitars I've ever seen! Even the neck is made of Sycamore.

http://www.lutherie.net/H670.8.jpg

More pix on his Model H page. (http://www.lutherie.net/model_h.pix.html) Neat stuff. It'd be cool to have a flatback mando made with that stuff..

[whistler]

Delsbrother - The guitar in the photo looks like it is made out of the *other* sycamore. It is what, in England, we call 'Plane' or 'Lacewood' (Platanus hispanica). I believe the term 'Buttonwood' is also used for the North American species (Platanus occidentalis). Wild stuff, indeed. I'm using it for bindings and end graft on a mandolin. I think a whole instrument made out of it would send me crosseyed.

The sycamore that everyone else is talking about is a European species of maple, and is similar in appearance and properties to other maples - light in colour with very close grain and a fine ray pattern. In density and hardness, it falls somewhere in between the hard (rock) maples and soft maples of North America. It exhibits many of the common figure abberations seen in other kinds of maple.

Just to confuse matters, in Scotland, the term 'Plane' is used to refer to the English 'Sycamore'.

[whistler]

Also, being native to Southern Europe (not England - although it has been naturalised there for centuries), including Italy, sycamore has become the traditional wood used for violin bodies and necks. That is surely a recommendation.

[Leftyman]

I have a Thomas Buchanan flat back mandolin made in the Highlands of Scotland using local sycamore it has a very attractive flamed back and sides,and the tone is very bright.Iam very pleased with it,and glad Thomas convinced me that sycamore is as good if not better than maple as a tone wood.

[sunburst]

The guitar in the photo looks like it is made out of the *other* sycamore. It is what, in England, we call 'Plane' or 'Lacewood' (Platanus hispanica). I believe the term 'Buttonwood' is also used for the North American species (Platanus occidentalis).
Here in USA we call Lacewood (Platanus hispanica) Lacewood, and Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) Sycamore.
American sycamore can look like that guitar looks, and being made here and called Sycamore, it probably is.

I have a portable saw mill. I sawed a bunch of Sycamore boards to use as shelving. Sycamore has an average moisture content of 114% when green, so it shrinks a lot while drying, and needs to be carefully stickered and dried. It is fairly stable when dry, not much different than red and sugar maple.

[oldwave maker]

That santa cruz guitar may have been platanus racemosa, california sycamore. Old wave heavy industries mando facility is just a mile upcanyon from the AFA certified largest arizona sycamore (platanus wrightii). That tree #is a tad smaller than the 1945 measured santa barbara racemosa champ. Its little sister shed a 30" diameter branch in 1990 which I had woodmizered on the quarter. Built half a dozed mandos and octaves before deciding it was an unsplittable tone sink. Pretty stuff for binding and peghead veneers, as whistler notes. This one just returned home after a decade:

[oldwave maker]

Planning someday to remodel the kitchen with petrified oregon sycamore(on right) countertop tiles and quartered arizona sycamore(on left) cabinet faces. Im sure it would be stable when dipped in poyurethane!

[sunburst]

Cool kitchen idea! Maybe you could use some fossil ivory trim with the fossil sycamore. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[WaywardFiddler]

Sycamore has an average moisture content of 114% when green

OK, dumb question time. What is the reference point for moisture content in wood. 114% sounds to me more like a tub of water with some bits of wood floating in it. I must be missing something... like maybe education... :-)

-dave

[Slim Pickins]

The mando I mentioned with sycamore is a Korean made Morgan Monroe. So would it be Asian Sycamore? Is Asian differnt than our sycamore. Better or well, not good?

[webers]

Check out Fine Woodworking, #110. Jon Arno has a good article on American sycamore,
Platanus occidentalis. Quartersawn sycamore looks like lacewood; slabsawn is
not very exciting. For furniture and musical instruments, sycamore must be
quartersawn for stability. Lack of stability has kept it from being a premier
cabinet wood. According to Arno, a 7% rise in moisture content
will cause a 12 inch wide board
to expand .14 inches radially and .25 tangentially. It compares with maple
in overall shrinkage with drying (14.1% sycamore, 14.7% maple), but for some
reason it is less stable once "dry". I wonder if this has to do with its
growth rate, cell size, or habitat.
I salvaged a few chunks from Pennsylvania while visiting in-laws and plan to
build a fiddle with the wood. I assume if it is quartersawn and not used
for large panels, it will be fine. I really like the figure.
Before I sold an instrument made from sycamore, I'd like to let it
sit around the house for a few years and see if any cracks develop,
particularly between the back and binding, and I might hestitate if
the instrument is going from an upper midwest winter to Florida for
vacation and back again.

[delsbrother]

Hi, yes whistler, I understood the original poster was thinking of a different wood; I was following Dale's hijack post about "another" sycamore.. IMO it's more interesting to talk about, LOL. But looking closer at the link I referenced, I see Paul identifies it as California sycamore (Platanus racemosa). I don't know where that falls on the wood stability scale (or on Bill's tone sink scale http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif ). I'll email Paul and see how that guitar's been holding up. As I said, even the neck is sycamore:

http://www.lutherie.net/H670.5.jpg

[delsbrother]

Here's Paul's response:

Hi Darrell -

Sycamore of the genus Platanus is a supremely stable wood. The woodcutter who milled this wood said he has never, in 30-some years, ever seen a tree which, when milled and stickered, has 100% yield. Not one check, not one warp or twist - it just lays there and stays flat until the water is gone. Every board is usable.

Fortunately he lets luthiers get first crack for the prettiest grain. Cabinetmakers queue up for this wood too, he sells every shred he can get. Sycamore has traditionally been used for drawer side and backs, because of that stability. Eastern sycamore is a bit denser than the California Platanus racemosa, but they're definitely similar in looks and working characteristics.

My own guitar is doing extremely well, as are several others I know of made form this wood. It has never needed a trussrod adjustment, is also astoundingly stable in the sense that it's always in tune, and can make trips to gigs and come out of the case ready to go.

All the best,

# # # #ph

[sunburst]

Webers,
I don't know where John Arno got his information about wood movement with Sycamore and Maple. Maybe he physically measured a representative sample of 12" boards and actually saw a difference between sycamore and maple, but if I use the formula in Understanding Wood by Hoadly, (page 76) I get these results for American sycamore, red and sugar maple with a 12" wide board and a 7% change in moisture content:


sycamore, radial= .15"
sycamore, tangential= .252"

red maple, radial= .12"
red maple, tangential= .246"

sugar maple, radial= .144"
sugar maple, tangential=.297"


That just doesn't seem like much difference to me.

While we're on the subject, a mandolin back is 10" wide. The formula shows that a maple mandolin back, flat sawn (tangential) will move 0.205 inches in width with a 7% change in moisture content. Almost 7/32 ". (As opposed to 0.1" for quartered maple)
That means; if your house is at 40% relative humidity now, and gets to be 75% relative humidity this summer, there are stresses in the instrument from the wood trying to move. That's why we need to control the humidity, and why I prefer quartered wood.

[Paul Hostetter]

I also wonder which sycamore Arno was testing. I would assume it was eastern, which is a bit more like maple in terms of density and so on than the western stuff, Platanus racemosa, that we've used.

Besides its traditional use in drawer parts, another significant use for Platanus is for bass and cello bridges. The cabinetmakers' preference for this stuff comes from the fact that it's very stable and doesn't split. You can read tables in books all day, or you can look at the stuff as it's actually been used historically, and draw some conclusions from that.

To add to the confusion, a great deal of sycamore found in America now is Platanus acerifolia, which translates as maple-leafed Platanus, the European Platanus often called London Plane which is very widely planted as a street tree in North America and which has gone native in the east. It's a lot like the native American eastern Platanus, which is why the early English settlers called it sycamore, without knowing any better. The California sycamore tends to grow with its feet in streams down in ravines, huge twisted trees that don't exactly invite commercial exploitation!

[whistler]

To add a little more confusion, just for the fun of it, the 'sycomores' referred to in the Bible are thought to have been a kind of fig tree (Ficus sp.). It was probably due to a superficial similarity in leaf shape that the English sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) got its name.

[whistler]

...the name 'sycomore' being related to the Latin Morus, the mulberry.

[sunburst]

I have to say, I've learned more about sycamore from this thread than I really need to know! http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[delsbrother]

Yes, but think of how prepared you'll be when the category comes up in Final Jeopardy.

[Nolan]

whistler, what can you tell us about Gopher wood? http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Paul Hostetter]

I have a Thomas Buchanan flat back mandolin made in the Highlands of Scotland using local sycamore it has a very attractive flamed back and sides,and the tone is very bright.I am very pleased with it,and glad Thomas convinced me that sycamore is as good if not better than maple as a tone wood.
On your island, sycamore is maple. Better stop using common names and find out the precise Latin names!

CF Martin once issued a series of marvelous guitars called the J-65, which they advertised as being made of "sycamore" from England. Turns out that, a) of course it was maple, and b) it was maple from Yugoslavia and had only been purchased from a wood broker in England. Whatever the case, they were lovely guitars.

Don't get suckered by common names!

[Paul Hostetter]

Sunburst:
Here in USA we call Lacewood (Platanus hispanica) Lacewood, and Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) Sycamore.

Platanus hispanica is native to Spain. I have never seen it in the US, not in lumberyards or growing along streets. The only lacewood I ever see here is an entirely unrelated tree from Australia. And that one is extremely common in the gourmet lumber biz.

Whistler:
The guitar in the photo looks like it is made out of the *other* sycamore. It is what, in England, we call 'Plane' or 'Lacewood' (Platanus hispanica). I believe the term 'Buttonwood' is also used for the North American species (Platanus occidentalis).

Platanus racemosa (and several other species of the genus native to N. America) is, from a British perspective, the *other* sycamore alright. Buttonwood is a nice name, not too common, and I believe derives from the seedpods.

I wish the Brits who came over a few centuries ago had gotten the picture in time to call our *other* sycamore plane instead of sycamore. Sure would have prevented some misunderstandings.

[delsbrother]

http://www.renaissanceguitars.com/images/uke.jpg

Rick Turner's Sycamore Ukes (http://www.renaissanceguitars.com/ukulele.html)

[Paul Hostetter]

I was just down at Rick's this morning. His ukes are a thing of beauty, and if it hadn't been for Rick, I wouldn't have met my neighbor down the road who was selling that incredible wood. The uke pictured above is made from the same log.

[mandoman15]

i've got a question you're crazy...

i have never read such a knowledgeable report on the sycamore http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

[delsbrother]

Yes, but think of how prepared you'll be when the category comes up in Final Jeopardy.
I **** you not, last night on Jeopardy:

Category: Less is "More"

$1500

A: This tree is also sometimes called the Plane or Buttonwillow.

LOL