What species?

Re: What species?

Oskar

elm?

Re: What species?

Mike In Los Angeles

It does look like the photos that came up, but ive also heard that elm is super tough? This planes about like white ash? Thanks!

Re: What species?

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I have worked elm. It is light weight, about like poplar as I recall. It is not a stable wood, like beech, so I am surprised to see it in a piano. But the picture looks like the elm I had. Made daughter a book case and desk out of it.

Re: What species?

Mike In Los Angeles

Thanks Bill, I was wishing I had said Poplar so that is what I’m gonna imagine it is.

Thanks!

Re: What species?

Don Orr

Looks a lot like Hickory from here. Ash is a good guess though.

Re: What species?

Oskar

not necessarily.

Have seen great variation in elm, from very interlocked and hard to pretty straight and similar to ash. The later variant planed very easily, especially the quartered faces.

Re: What species?

Jack Dover

Not at all. It resists splitting and breaking, doesn't really want to come apart, so riving\splitting is quite an adventure, but it's quite workable otherwise.

Identifying elm

Warren in Lancaster, PA

Here are some features we use to identify elm. First make an end grain cut just as clean as you can with sharp chisel or knife.

On the end grain we see rows of conspicuous pores that we call the earlywood. In between, in the latewood, we see denser material, but with very fine pores. In elm these fine pores are arranged in wavy lines, maybe four or five rows in one band of latewood. The various elms have these wavy lines, and hackberry, which is in the elm family does also.

Re: Identifying elm

Mike In Los Angeles

This kinda thing?

Interesting!

Jack Dover

For me elm was always "handles" wood. It has just right amount of elasticity to make it perfect for an axe handle, it absorbs some of the shock and it's way more pleasant than a harder woods handle. Shovel and hoe handles are too so much better when they flex just a bit. It's also can withstand a surprising amount fo breaking forces, one of my senior relatives told me elm was used for axles and spokes in all kind of carts, but nobody in the family wanted to split it, 'cos it was quit a bit of effort. I remembered that story once, when I used up all the wedges I had, but a billet still refused to split. David, if you reading this, maybe elm would make a good chisel handle too?

Although I'm relatively young and ships were made from steel long before I was born, it's easy to imagine these properties would make elm a perfect wood for a warship. Bet that chances of a warship rotting were pretty low, so durability of elm was less of a concern. Really makes me wonder what would our lives look like today if industrial revolution wouldn't catch up.

Also pretty sure there's a hundred or two different elm species, and probably lots of them don't have these properties.

Absolutely

Re: Absolutely

Mike In Los Angeles

Thank you so much! I love learning