A few weeks ago I turned a couple sycamore bowls about 12" diameter with no problem.  I've turned a few red oak bowls, and have some 10" and 16" sections to tiurn this week, but haven't turned any white oak.

Especially with oak, keep a small brush on the headstock to wipe out accumulated wet sawdust from gouge flutes and scraper bevels.  The wood always wears away the cutting edge, leaving fine iron dust in that wet sawdust that will transfer from your hands and leave black iron stain on the wood.

All of my bowls are once turned, and i dry them in paper grocery bags on a concrete floor at grade.  Record the weight weekly; when the weight loss is less than 2% move the bowl and bag onto a shelf or table and continue weighing; when the weight loss again is less than 2% remove from the bag and continue drying on the shelf or table; when the weight loss again is less than 2% I have not hesitated to sand and apply finish (but often it is a month or more before I get to sanding and finishing).

If you want to do platters, you will need fairly dry stock. Best way to get best figure with sycamore, is to quarter saw it, which means the pith part of the tree is the bottom of a bowl. Cut a center slab that way, and the edges of the bowl will warp down as it dries. I do have some videos up of my turning process for warped bowls and how I remount them for sanding. I do use an articulated arm for sanding, so the arm holding the drill/sander is on the rest and I can spin the blank with one hand and sand with the other with no strain since the weight of the drill is supported on the articulated arm.

For drying, I do wrap the rim in stretch film. Oh, do make sure to round over your bowl rim edges. I generally don't do maple that way since it has a lot of sugar in it and can mold under the plastic. I believe sycamore is in the maple family and may react the same way. For sycamore, I would leave the walls maybe 3/8 thick, mostly because it is a fairly light weight wood, and just doesn't 'feel' right if you leave it thinner. 3/8 inch thick, on the garage floor, will be dry in maybe 10 days. Sycamore does like to warp a lot more than other woods, probably due to water content being very high. If you try to twice turn it, that 10% rule doesn't work. It is also a wood that will soak up finish like a dry sponge and may take several coatings of oil before it is happy...

robo hippy

Glenn Jacobs wrote on Sep 2^nd, 2020 at 10:15am:

I'm wondering if you are confusing sycamore and cypress? Sycamore is pretty much a unique deciduous tree with a patchy bark and a large lobed leaf.

Edited to add - for the best appearance, in my opinion, sycamore is most attractive when turned with the inside (pith side) of the log at the foot of a bowl and the outside (bark side) to the rim of the bowl.

I picked up a few sycamore logs from a local tree service early this year. It is a softer hardwood, close to poplar in hardness. I turned a few natural edge pieces from it and liked the results. They were all turned wet and warped a bit.
Here are a couple examples. The bigger bowl is about 10 inches across the rim and the two smaller ones are about 6 inches.
I got some chunks or red oak at about the same time. Made some attractive pieces but the oak does like to crack and yes, lots of time cleaning up splatter and resulting rust, even on stuff across the garage that just happened to be in the line of fire of the oak sap.

I like all the bowls.   

Thanks guys.
I've been turning for almost a year now. It's gratifying when one or two turn out nice amidst all the "practice" pieces that go into the burn pile.

I used to take a box of 'rejects' to one show I did, and put a sign on them, 'nothing more than $5. They would be gone in an hour or two. Some one would love them, and they have all sorts of uses, from pet food scoops to garden 'baskets'. The box was big enough that it would pay for my food for the weekend. Not that I made that many mistakes, but I made that many bowls....

robo hippy