Sweetgum logs

I cut down a young sweetgum tree recently.  These trees drop little spiky balls on the ground, and those things just suck, and the tree is in the shadow of a much larger sweetgum tree anyway, so the younger tree served no good purpose.  It had to go.  It was about five or six inches in diameter, so I was able to handle it myself instead of needing the services of a tree surgeon.  Once it was down, I chopped it up into manageable pieces.  I now have several sweetgum logs.

I've decided I'm going to try to make a pair of wooden mallets from a couple of the logs.  I used my angle grinder and a flap disk to debark the logs.  (This worked pretty well, by the way.)  At first glance, the debarked logs look like good pieces of wood.  No internal rot or anything like that, though I won't know for sure until I start cutting into them.

Sweetgum isn't typically used by novices like me for woodworking projects.  It's a hardwood, but it tends to warp more than other hardwoods as it dries out.  Its commercial value is in things like plywood and veneers.  I have no idea if these logs will dry in a satisfactory manner or not.  They might crack and split all over.  We'll just have to see.

Right now, though, they're handsome pieces of wood, so I'm cautiously optimistic.