Wood ID Favor, Please? *LINK*

Looks like it could be teak

Rob Sandow

>I'm judging primarily from the color of the unfinished wood and the grain/porosity. I'm not used to seeing annular rings that pronounced in teak but if it's rotary cut veneer that would make sense. I once had a teak table that was also susceptable to black water stains, so that gives me a clue too.

It looks like elm to me

Lee Grindinger

>It would be useful to know the age of the table, if it dates from 50s through 60s I'd guess it to be a production piece made from elm veneers.

Lee

Re: Wood ID Favor, Please?

Dale Lenz

>Assuming the wood is an eastern hardwood, and it appears to be. The wood does resemble elm, but I'm not seeing what I call a zig-zag pattern, think of something similar to "MMMM" pattern at the interface of the summer wood and spring wood, the growth rings, if you will. An end grain 10x will show this on a very clean razor blade cut surface. I doubt, you could see enough of the end-grain on veneer. Both Elm and ash show this zig-zag patter at the growth rings on the tangential face, like your picture 2. As you can imagine, IDing wood from pictures over the net can be difficult, but my best hunch is pecan or hickory. Again with out seeing a very clean cut of the end grain magnified, it's a guess at best.

Ditto.

Ellis Walentine

>I think it's pecan.

Ellis Walentine, Host

Re: Ditto.

knotscott

>I've never worked with pecan so I can't comment on that, but your closeups look nothing like the red elm I worked with this summer. Elm has a distinctive secondary or "ghost" grain between the primaries, similar to hackberry.

My pics don't catch that ghost grain too well, but there are other differences that show up. Granted, there are several species of elm...

"Bird feathers"

Basil

>It's slab sawn and I don't see any "bird feathers". Elm, Hackberry and Sugarberry all have some degree of grain that always looks like bird feathers to me.

...and like you said, the pictures don't come accross to well on my old computer.

Walnut which has faded.

Keith Newton

>

Re: I've....

Dale Lenz

>got some slippery elm, aka red drying now. It's time to bring it into the shop and dry further. I'm looking forward to giving it a shot, hope it behaves right, : ' >

Re: Walnut which has faded.

carl

>White Oak

Yeah, pecan is a really good hunch too,

Lee Grindinger

>Pecan/hickory is a really good hunch as well. It would be good to see the whole table, style and origin could help with the ID on this wood. I believe it's veneer judging from pic #3, here again, a picture of the entire piece would help.

Lee

Re: Wood ID Favor, Please?

Clay Foster

>Looks like butt cheeks to me. Okay, it looks more like pecan than anything else I've had experience with. I work with a lot of pecan.

no siree

SanMan

>no discerning ray flecks can be seen....

longish for white oak - shortish for red oak

definately not a walnut

pattern wise it kinda looks like an ash to me.

but im no amature expert ya know

sm

Addler

Joe Piotrowski - Chicago Burb's

>it hard to say, but I have an encyclopedia of wood book from time life. the picture of red adler is almost identical in grain pattern. scary close.

Re: Wood ID Favor, Please? *LINK*

Patti

>Hi everyone! Thanks so much to all of you who looked and contributed ideas. Because you mentioned seeing the whole table would be helpful, I took many more pictures today and put up two more web pages with them on it. Made the pics a little smaller in size this time, so they will hopefully load faster. Link is at bottom.

Table History as I know it

Have no idea of the table's age. I bought it at a garage sale in about 1979, with six chairs. The table looked old and beat up even then, and the varnish made the wood look very dark and was scratched and gouged - but it didn't look centuries old. I've always guessed at the 30's, 40's or 50's, because of the the leg design which is what is called a "reverse" flute design, or reeded, but these larger that any I've seen. And also because of the embellishment on the sides that looks like a yellow wood inlay. I discovered that this "inlay" was only painted on when I started stripping varnish off the sides (see pictures page 3).

I have always thought, in the back of my mind, that this table was hand-made. I don't why. Sort of like a project where the maker put the money into good wood for the top, but when it was time for the legs, used something *much* more economical.

The chairs all fell apart early on - lots of vertical breaks in the wood parts. I can't remember if they had legs that matched the table's. The wood that they were made out of was very fragile. I suspect it was the same wood as the legs on the table, which are also soft and one has cracked, which we repaired.

I would like to comment more on the legs and the vertical grooving (beading) on them. I've never seen this style of legs anywhere else (in my limited looking). They appear to made from two pieces of wood sandwiched together (See picture on page 2 of link). I suspect they are made from a soft wood of some kind - hemlock, pine? There are also two center legs that came with it for extra support when the leaves are in.

Teak is one wood I don't think it is. We had a sailboat with a lot of teak that I refinished a couple of times and this wood is quite different. Someone mentioned faded walnut, and makes sense, too, because the legs were painted a dark brown.

So - one more poll, please. What would you put on this for a finish. I would prefer something that will be good protection and easy-care. I have thought about putting a stain on it that would add a little more red orange tone to the wood, but don't want to if this turns out to be something special. But if it is really just a junky old table, I may as well. I WAS planning on a fun faux paint job of some kind until I saw the grain patterning on the top. So.....

Thanks again, everyone!


Page Two of Table Pics

Re: Wood ID Favor, Please?

Basil

>The last 2 pictures on page 3 make me think that the wood is Hackberry/sugarberry.

Or possibably peacan or ash.

The pictures help,

Lee Grindinger

>I don't believe it's handmade, I think it's far more likely to have been a factory production piece because it's veneered with a common veneer of the day, pecan or elm, most likely. The legs are fairly common actually, reeded legs have been around for quite a while and the fact that they are a different and softer cecondary wood leads me closer to the conclusion that it''s a factory piece. Google "reeded table legs". One off craftsmen would use the same wood for the legs as was used to veneer the top most likely.

The plywood is Douglas Fir, I'm not sure what the banding is between leaves. Doug Fir plywood was not really around in production furniture shops until post war fifties so I really doubt this table predates the fifties, maybe late fifties or the sixties. The painted apron detail leads me again to the notion that it's a production piece, a production house could easily afford to keep detailers like this around because of the savings in materials using secondary woods, this is still common today.

Lee

Re: The pictures help,

Charles Self

>I dunno. My reference stuff leads me to believe it might be red alder, AKA poor man's cherry, but it doesn't seem quite right, nor does it seem right for any of the carya (pecan-hickory) species to me. It's probably not a baffler is seen up close and personal, but...

Re: The pictures help,

Patti

>Thanks so much for the your thoughts, Lee. I'm actually glad it's a production piece and from the 50's instead of something else. I really want to put some red-toned stain on it (to match other woodwork I have) and I won't feel so bad about doing it. By the way, I did do searches on the term "reeded table leg" and only netted pics of legs that were turned with other design features as well. Again, many thanks!