Sycamore price per board foot
Plan on about $3.95 a board foot for 4/4 stock at U.S. retail (our 2026-08 estimate — your yard gets the final word). A typical board, 6″ wide and 8′ long, will run you around $15.80.
You know this tree — the huge, ghost-barked giant peeling in camouflage patches down by the river. Butchers chopped on sycamore for generations before maple took the job, for the same reason as elm: it will not split. But saw it quartered and something unexpected happens — the plain board erupts into dense, shimmering lacework fleck that old catalogs sold under the name 'lacewood' to people who'd never have believed it was sycamore.
Quartersawn boards show lacy ray fleck at a bargain price. Flatsawn moves a lot; best used quartered and kept indoors.
Sycamore at a glance
| Price per board foot | $3.95 (2026-08) |
| Weight, dry | 34 lb/ft³ · 2.8 lb per BF |
| Janka hardness | 770 lbf |
| Shrinkage, green → oven-dry | 8.4% tangential · 5.0% radial |
| Cost of 10 BF | $39.50 |
| Cost of 25 BF | $98.75 |
What common thicknesses cost
Same 6″ × 8′ board, priced by rough thickness (thicker stock often carries a small premium on top of this — figured on volume alone):
| Thickness | Board feet | Cost | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4/4 | 4.0 | $15.80 | 11 lb |
| 6/4 | 6.0 | $23.70 | 17 lb |
| 8/4 | 8.0 | $31.60 | 23 lb |
| 12/4 | 12.0 | $47.40 | 34 lb |
Will it stay flat?
Flat-sawn sycamore cups and twists with genuine enthusiasm — there's a reason it's cheap. Quartersawn, it calms down completely. This is a one-cut wood: buy it quartered or leave it.
The measured numbers: drying from green, sycamore shrinks about 8.4% across a flatsawn board's width (tangential) and 5.0% across quartersawn (radial) — that ratio is why the two cuts behave so differently in your house.
Buying sycamore without regrets
For what the quartered figure looks like, the price is a quiet scandal — one of the last true bargains in figured wood. It spalts beautifully too, if you like your boards with ink-line calligraphy.
At the finishing bench
The fleck ignites under oil or shellac — angle a lamp across a finished board and watch it flicker. Fine, even texture, no filler needed, and it takes dye evenly for the adventurous.
Sources & further reading
Prices vary with region, grade, width, and figure. Cheaper neighbor: Douglas Fir ($3.60). A step up: Red Oak ($4.10).