Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
what wood is this?
steve knight
>a fellow got this wood from soneone cutting down their tree. i thought he said it was holly but looking at the stuff on ebay and looking at the bark that it is smooth and this is not. what wood is this? it was someones yard tree in in portland oregon.
Re: what wood is this?
mikew
>Looks like a Maple to me, Steve.
Mike
Re: what wood is this?
HC Sakman
>Yes, it looks soft maple to me.
Chico...
If it maple...
Stephen in Utah
>You can do the 'iron buff' test to determine if it is soft or hard maple.
Stephen
What's the Iron Buff Test?
Tom MacGregor
>
Re: If it maple...
steve knight
>could be maple. but it is not soft maple. but it does not seem as hard as hard maple. but with me hard maple seems soft with the tropicals I use. here is anotehr picture
Poplar?
David Miller from Iowa
>Obviously a very fast growing tree, judging from the growth rings. The first picture looks a lot like poplar/cottonwood.
Re: Poplar?
steve knight
>not poplar that stuff is stringy. I think it is maple but it is a yard tree and who knows what maple tree?
Looks like Poplar to me too.
Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA
>
Iron Buff
Stephen in Utah
>Iron buff is a mixture of vinegar and iron filings, when you put a drop of it on maple it changes color, indicating if it is hard maple or soft maple.
If it is soft maple the wood below the drop will turn blue, if it is hard maple it will turn green.
Stephen Shepherd
Re: Poplar?
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>I watched Nova the other night, a show called "The First Flower," very informative and interesting. One aside that blew me away was that plants can interbreed to a severe degree, that the pistils will accept most any old pollen, to the extent that the closest relative to a lotus is the sycamore tree. I think this explains the difficulty in pinning down a piece of wood to a given species, it can be a cross pollination of most any type.
Pam
Re: Easy test for maple v. poplar
Dave Mount, NE Minnesota
>Hi Steve--
Looks like maple to me. Spalting is common in maple, so is curl, which on my screen it looks like this has at the outer edges. Grain and color looks about right too.
The difference between maple and poplar is easy to tell if you can get a look at a radial cut (QS) -- maple has darker ray flecks against a lighter background, poplar has lighter ray flecks against a darker background. This is an old antiquer's trick for telling cherry from garnet shellac'd maple furniture (cherry is light rays on dark also).
Beyond that, you should be able to crush poplar with a thumbnail, but not maple.
The cross section you show has some serious asymmetric growth -- that's going to have some severe reaction wood in it.
Best,
Dave
Re: what wood is this?
Dale Lenz
>How about posting a picture of the bark.