The Traveling Lumberjock #6: Georgia again - Sycamore Slabs!

I’m skipping some trips here, but I was in northwestern Georgia two weeks ago. I went out to visit my friends at the Cuzzort sawmill in Trenton, GA and came back with a nice pile of sycamore. It worked out to be about 50 bf. The piece was 3.5” thick, 14.5” wide and 10 feet long. That of course would be quite difficult to get on a plane, so after some quick calculations I had them resaw it to 2” and 1.5” and then we sawed it into three sections (44”, 44”, & 32”). Why so short? Well, with those dims I didn’t have to pay any oversize/overweight checked bag fees. At a buck a board foot and no shipping costs…. This one was a pretty awesome deal.

So, believe it or not, all of this came back as checked baggage on the plane with me. Toting 180+ pounds of lumber through the airport is quite an exercise since it’s a bit problematic to move it in multiple trips. TSA and airport police get antsy about stuff left lying around.


Here’s the three “bags” shrink wrapped to protect the poor baggage handlers hands from splinters, etc.

Can’t see much through the plastic? Here’s the end grain…


OOOHHHH… spalting? Yup – have a look…





This stuff has been air drying for over a year. Normally I’d say it couldn’t be even close to dry, but when we resawed it, I measured the moisture in the center of the inside cut and it was only about 14%. I’ll let it dry up in my 100+ degree garage in Texas and it’ll be “kiln” dried in no time. It’s been a hot dry year. Guess there’s a silver lining even when there are no clouds or rain.