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Cottonwood

John Walls

John Walls

Joined
Jan 20, 2020
Messages
343
Likes
157
Location
Larimore, ND
I've seen a couple examples of items from cotton wood. How is that for turning? I have access to alot of it, we usually push those trees up in a pile and burn it. I tried using some for firewood, although it worked, the ash was terrible. Storm knocked one down close to my house, I'd guess it's 4 ft diameter, been down for about 2 years. They'd love it if I removed some or all of it. Personally, I hate the stuff, when it blooms, my sinus' go nuts on both myself and my better half.
 
Cottonwood can have wonderful figure -- as evidenced by Glenn's pic above.

It is rather fibrous when green which leaves a lot of fuzzy texture behind. A sharp, sharp, tool is recommended. Once dry, it cuts pretty cleanly and sands easily. I've had a fruit bowl on the kitchen counter for 10 years or so and it has held up very well.
 
I just did a forum search, seems like it is all over the place on like/dislike. Sounds like it's good if I can cut the burls/crotch/figured out and burn the rest?
 
It can be very attractive, but my very limited experience with cottonwood hasn't been very good. A large cottonwood was taken down in my neighborhood. I didn't find out about it until about a month later, but I took a few pieces. I didn't have time to deal with it right away so it sat on the driveway for about three more months. By that time what wasn't split was too punky so it went to the dump on a trash clean-up day. The lesson that I learned was that cottonwood unlike mesquite returns to Mother Nature on a fast track. Mesquite can probably last for decades out in the weather.
 
I had a large one blow down a couple of years ago and have been cutting pieces off it and turning when I get the itch. Was hoping to get some good spalting, but it is turning punky before it spalts. Also can get grey (mold) staining very easily if it sits too long.

A little fibrous when turning wet, but not excessive for me. Softer wood and is a blast to turn green - can really take deep cuts if you like. Most of what I have doesn't have great figure, but will make great utility bowls.

This tree blew down less than two years ago and is sitting off the ground, and I need to take what I want before the end of the summer, or it will all be too punky to use.
 
I like cottonwood. I think there are quite a few different varieties but if you have one that's 4' diameter that sounds like the good stuff. Crotches and wood near the base of the tree always seem to have the most figure. If you don't see figure when you're cutting it up you probably won't see it when you turn it either. Aging seems to bring out better color in the wood too. It's my favorite wood to dye. That chatoyance really explodes when you give it a base of black dye and then sand it back and add any other color. There's a few examples in my photo gallery.
 
Sometimes poplar/cottonwood turns nicely and sometimes it's fuzzy and hard to get a good surface. One possibility is that there is variation from one species to another. Certainly aspen (also in the Populus family) turns nicely and is often attractive, though it is soft. Another possibility is the location where it grew. My theory is that dry locations produce better wood than the more rapidly grown wood of wet locations. So folks in Utah, like Curtis, generally get good wood, while folks in the ginormous storm belt of Texas and the midwest, tend to get fuzzier wood. Something growing on a well watered lawn would therefore be fuzzier than something grown in gravel next to an asphalt parking lot.

The base of the tree tends to have the best figure. Since it's a soft wood and an easily broken tree, I personally don't find the crotches especially appealing.

John, you're far enough off the Red River that your non-irrigated, non-ditch bank cottonwoods might be worth a go. I'd try to get them when they're dormant in winter, too.
 
In addition to what Curtis said, cottonwood carries figure in the crotches like nothing else I've seen. Beautiful feather grain. Because it grows fast, it adds a lot weight, and thus a lot of amazing grain deep through the crotches. One huge crotch I cut had two solid feet of feather grain. And yes, leave it to age a little and it darkens, bringing the crotch figure out. Just be certain to cut crotches high enough and low enough that you aren't cutting into the pretty stuff.

Good advice too on the base figure. Once the bark slips, you can often see hints of where the best grain is below. Sharp tools, absolutely! It also sands easily and fast in my experience.

Also NOTE: cottonwood is very prone to ring shake, where the wood separates along growth rings. Inspect the wood frequently, and know that it may be harder to see the separation cracks because of the fuzzy cutting nature of the wood.

And if you leave cotton wood too long, it smells like a horse pasture when turning... :eek:
 
Fresh cut cottonwood stinks. However I do like to turn it when dry. It can be bland or have a nice grain. I’ve got three good size blank form a down tree that are dry and ready for me to turn. The pieces I have do have a nice grain.
 
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William Rogers said:
Fresh cut cottonwood stinks. However I do like to turn it when dry. It can be bland or have a nice grain. I’ve got three goos size blank form a down tree that are dry and ready for me to turn. The pieces I have do have a nice grain.
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When I was a pre-teen / teenager Dad had a sawmill. Not one of those band saw sawmills, a real old timey sawmill. It had a 4 ft diameter blade with replaceable teeth. Exposed flat belt pulleys and an auger to remove the sawdust.

Early on we cut a lot of cottonwood, green cottonwood because Grandpa had a lot of them growing at his farm. I can remember the blade throwing a rooster tail of water as it cut through the logs. The lumber was fuzzy... and stunk.

Dad used a lot of the cottonwood to build a pole barn, even made his own trusses.

1972 Simmons Sawmill 009.jpg
 
Cottonwood can have beautiful figure if you get into the "right" part of the tree - crotches and anything that gets stress: the base of the tree and branches near a crotch. I think it's the stress (wind, gravity) that yield the figure. Someone also told me that trees that grew faster (like near a stream) might have better figure because the tree "grows faster than it can organize its cells" or something. Don't know about that one.

Cottonwood does love to tear out - it takes sharp tools and good technique. Because of that, pieces of wood without great figure make excellent practice wood. Just turn something and keep cutting and experimenting till you get a clean cut. If you're not trying to end up with anything, there's little reason to stress about the tear-out. Just keep working till the cuts are clean. Experiment with tool presentation and sharpening and scraping vs cutting etc. If you can get clean cuts on cottonwood, you'll be well set for almost anything else you might chuck up.
 
The few pieces of cottonwood I have tried all smelled like some one threw up on it. I commented about that to some forestry students up at Oregon State and they said they didn't like taking core samples of it because of that reason. Years ago, Woodshop News had an article about it in their magazine. Only commercial use for the boards was for horse stalls because apparently it tasted as bad to the horses as it smells to us....

robo hippy
 
robo hippy said:
Years ago, Woodshop News had an article about it in their magazine. Only commercial use for the boards was for horse stalls because apparently it tasted as bad to the horses as it smells to us....

robo hippy
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A few years ago I researched uses for it and came up with the same answer - evidently it is very resistant to horse urine and was preferred for use in stalls. Couldn't stand the smell turning it wet and wound up burning what little I had.
 
Thanks for all the info! Guess when I get back out to the farm I will have to explore one in particular. It was cut down by the power company several years back, was not storm blow-down like the one close to my house. Don't know if it has any burls or not, but I'll cross my fingers. It is laying on the ground so hopefully the termites did not tear into it real bad. I have access to quite a bit of cottonwood, ash and elm. Some maple but not too much.
 
Owen, I think you will find that all wood has the same btu/lb/specific moisture content, except woods that contain "stuff" like pitch which makes them a tad higher in btu/lb.. Dry cotton wood is almost like paper, but I will use it in my stove when that is all there is. Just have to make more trips to the wood pile!
 
John Walls said:
Guess when I get back out to the farm I will have to explore one in particular. It was cut down by the power company several years back, was not storm blow-down like the one close to my house.
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Lying on the ground with the bark on for 3 years, it's pretty unlikely that cottonwood is turnable as it will be well along in the rotting process. No harm in taking a look, but don't be disappointed if it's all punky and soft.

BTW, I'm fairly conscious of the smell of different woods and I don't recall turning any poplar/cottonwood that smelled bad. Maybe it's species/locale related.
 
Our first year in this house, 9 yrs back, I was given a couple cords of cottonwood. It did not smell bad when burned but it did burn fast and left a bucket full of ash daily. We went though the pile pretty fast as it took alot more to keep the heat up. I hope that tree is not punky but, if I want, I can cut down a couple more still standing strong. I have not touched any of it since our first year as I figured the work required to fell/split was not a great deal considering I had access to all the red oak I could cut/haul. Now that I have a lathe, I will take a closer look for some with burls but my main focus will probably be ash/elm (firewood) as I no longer have access to the oak trees.
 
As some one said about using cottonwood for fire wood, 'You get warm twice. Once when you cut it up and split it, and when you shovel out the ashes.' I don't even know if you can split it though...

robo hippy
 
Glenn C Roberts said:
Owen, I think you will find that all wood has the same btu/lb/specific moisture content, except woods that contain "stuff" like pitch which makes them a tad higher in btu/lb.. Dry cotton wood is almost like paper, but I will use it in my stove when that is all there is. Just have to make more trips to the wood pile!
Click to expand...

It's the woods density that makes the difference. The chart shows BTU's per Chord. Since Cottonwood is "lightweight" it takes more cottonwood to equal the BTU's per Chord when compared to a more dense wood.

From the chart that Owen linked to:
"The BTU in a cord of firewood is usually close to the same per pound between species. One pound of dense hardwood will have about the same amount of energy as one pound of light softwood. The difference in energy content is in the woods density. A cord of the more dense wood will have more energy than a cord of less dense softwood."​
 
robo hippy said:
As some one said about using cottonwood for fire wood, 'You get warm twice. Once when you cut it up and split it, and when you shovel out the ashes.' I don't even know if you can split it though...

robo hippy
Click to expand...
Years ago, late 70's I think, in one of the world oil crisis's, me and a few friends decided to start heating our homes with wood. In Utah there isn't an abundance of wood like some places. This is a desert. But a farmer friend had a huge cottonwood out in the middle of a hay field that he said we could cut down with one condition. We had to cut it off at ground level so he could mow over it. We knew a guy that worked for a tree service and he showed up with the longest chainsaw I've ever seen. I think it was a 6-7' bar. We got this tree all limbed down to a stump that was about 10' tall and about 6' thick at the base and then started cutting the stump off at the ground with the big saw. The saw started to bind when we were about 2/3 of the way through it. The stump weighed tons I'm sure and the soft green wood just compressed when we tried to hammer wedges in. So we hooked a chain around the top of the stump and tried to rock it back by pulling on it with a 4 wheel drive pickup. This was spring and the field was wet so we then managed to get the truck stuck and had to get a tractor to pull out the truck but still couldn't get the saw out of the tree. We ended up taking the bar off the saw and we had to all chip in and buy a new bar and chain for the tree service. It was expensive too! And that stump stood there for years with a new tree growing out of the side of it eventually and that bar and chain still in the cut. About 10 years ago the hay field became a subdivision full of new houses. I wished I could have been there when they ripped that big stump out of the ground just to laugh at how stupid we had been and to maybe try one more shot at cutting up some of that incredible cottonwood that would have been in that stump.
 
With a tree stump that size you could cut a short section out of the one side they started the cut from and place a bottle jack with a plate of steel on top of the ram to support the weight of the stump and jacked the tree stump off of the saw blade. Green trees that size have a lot of cubic feet of wet wood!
 
Mike Johnson said:
With a tree stump that size you could cut a short section out of the one side they started the cut from and place a bottle jack with a plate of steel on top of the ram to support the weight of the stump and jacked the tree stump off of the saw blade. Green trees that size have a lot of cubic feet of wet wood!
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Maybe... cottonwood is so soft, especially when wet, that the bottle jack ram would like just bury itself into the tree.
 
Mike Johnson said:
With a tree stump that size you could cut a short section out of the one side they started the cut from and place a bottle jack with a plate of steel on top of the ram to support the weight of the stump and jacked the tree stump off of the saw blade. Green trees that size have a lot of cubic feet of wet wood!
Click to expand...

But, of course, you would need another chain saw to cut out the notch and the tree service company probably wouldn't have been too excited about loaning out another saw. :D
 
Curtis Fuller said:
Years ago, late 70's I think, in one of the world oil crisis's, me and a few friends decided to start heating our homes with wood. In Utah there isn't an abundance of wood like some places. This is a desert. But a farmer friend had a huge cottonwood out in the middle of a hay field that he said we could cut down with one condition. We had to cut it off at ground level so he could mow over it. We knew a guy that worked for a tree service and he showed up with the longest chainsaw I've ever seen. I think it was a 6-7' bar. We got this tree all limbed down to a stump that was about 10' tall and about 6' thick at the base and then started cutting the stump off at the ground with the big saw. The saw started to bind when we were about 2/3 of the way through it. The stump weighed tons I'm sure and the soft green wood just compressed when we tried to hammer wedges in. So we hooked a chain around the top of the stump and tried to rock it back by pulling on it with a 4 wheel drive pickup. This was spring and the field was wet so we then managed to get the truck stuck and had to get a tractor to pull out the truck but still couldn't get the saw out of the tree. We ended up taking the bar off the saw and we had to all chip in and buy a new bar and chain for the tree service. It was expensive too! And that stump stood there for years with a new tree growing out of the side of it eventually and that bar and chain still in the cut. About 10 years ago the hay field became a subdivision full of new houses. I wished I could have been there when they ripped that big stump out of the ground just to laugh at how stupid we had been and to maybe try one more shot at cutting up some of that incredible cottonwood that would have been in that stump.
Click to expand...
My father and I tried to split a sweet gum with an iron wedge and 16 lb. sledgehammer. Like trying to split a truck tire! The wedge would just bounce off. Split it with a chainsaw.
 
John Simmons said:
Maybe... cottonwood is so soft, especially when wet, that the bottle jack ram would like just bury itself into the tree.
Click to expand...

With the Cottonwood stump being wet and soft you would need a steel plate on the top and an additional plate on the bottom of the bottle jack to distribute the weight.
 
I had some rounds of London Plane that were maybe 5 feet across... They grow big out here. I tried splitting them because I couldn't lift them to get a saw in long grain wise. I tried splitting them. I could drive a wedge in maybe 2 inches, and then they would spring out. After 30 years of concrete construction, I know how to swing my 10 pound sledge. So, I would drive them in to the point where they wanted to bounce out and then left them in there for most of the day. Drive them in some more at night. Drive them in some more in the morning. Eventually the rounds would split... They were delivered by dump truck. Got a lot of very nice quartersawn blanks out of that tree.... Tried that with some Oregon White Oak.... Didn't work, the wedges would just bounce out no matter what I did...

robo hippy
 
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