Please help identify this wood

Need more clues

Jon Arno

>Chuck, it would help if you could provide a little more information. How heavy is the wood in comparison to other species you are familiar with? Is it ring-porous (open grained) or diffuse-porous (fine textured)? Does it have a scent you could describe?

Also, is there any chance you could take a photo up close so that the image on screen is about 1:1 real life?

Re: Please help identify this wood

Russ Fairfield

>I have a lot of fruit-tree Cherry that looks just like that. Same grain pattern, same color. How about a photo of the bark.

Re: Need more clues

Chuck Ludwigsen

>Thanks Jon, here are the answers as best I can tell.

1) How heavy is the wood in comparison to other species you are familiar with?

It is lighter than the Sycamore of comparable size but slightly heavier than my Magnolia pieces. In general, fairly heavy. I was able to lift the log by myself that all of these pieces came from.

2) Is it ring-porous (open grained) or diffuse-porous (fine textured)?

It is definetely closed-grained (fine textured). At first I thought it might be Cherry but now I'm thinking maybe Elm?

3) Does it have a scent you could describe?

It does not have a truly distinct scent. I would categorize it as slightly sweet. It is unlike the various Oak pieces and pine or fir.

Also, it is non-sappy, the heartwood is reddish brown. I think the camera flash obscured some of that. Somewhat streaky. The last pic shows endgrain.

4) Also, is there any chance you could take a photo up close so that the image on screen is about 1:1 real life?

I can try

Thanks again.

Chuck in Memphis, TN.

Re: Please help identify this wood

Chuck Ludwigsen

>I left outer bark on one piece, Russ. I'll post up a pic of that tonight.

It has been some years since I cut up some cherry, but I think you may be correct. The heartwood sawdust from the chainsaw makes me lean towards that.

I just hadn't seen cherry with the distinct transition from heartwood to sapwood. Very nice.

Chuck in Memphis, TN.

Re: Please help identify this wood

Russ Fairfield

>If it had a slightly sweet smell while cutting it with the Chainsaw, I would say that it is a Cherry. If it isn't, thats close enough.

Re: Please help identify this wood

David Hammond, in Powder Springs GA

>I thought cherry when I first saw the pics, but I think it could be apple. I just cut up an apple log and turned it, and it looked exactly like your blanks there - the heartwood was irregular like your pics. Most of the cherry I've gotton has a cleaner, more distinct transition between the heart and sapwood - if the smell is really sweet, and the bark is relatively smooth, I'd guess apple.

David

Re: Please help identify this wood

Gary Hern (St. Louis)

>As the other's stated, it's difficult with the info we have, but it sure looks like sweet gum that I get around here.

Re: Please help identify this wood

Mike Schwing from Md.

>It REALLY looks like apple to me as well. I've been cutting a lot of fresh apple lately. Shame it doesn't stay quite that red for long. Crabapple looks similar as well but not so pronounced an aroma as a food grade apple tree. Bet its gonna crack and warp like crazy no matter what it turns out to be. Get it roughed out quick and coat it all over with anchorseal.

Re: Need more clues

Jon Arno

>Okay, a closer photo should help, but I'm thinking you might have sweetgum. The cherry-like color and diffuse-porous, fine texture suggests sweetgum. Also, as your photos indicate, the log appears to have a very wide sapwood band. This is typical of sweetgum, in that (like walnut) it converts its sapwood to heartwood very slowly. In fact, the lumber trade often markets the heartwood and sapwood as two separate products: redgum and white gum.

Sweetgum's average specific gravity of 0.46 is just slightly lower than cherry (0.47). So, density could be an important clue here, in that the other possibility that came to mind was that it could be black willow, but willow is a much softer wood.

In any event, it's definitely not elm, since elm is a ring-porous wood and I'm sure you would have noticed that feature (elm also has a distinct and not particularly pleasant scent when fresh cut.

Re: Need more clues

Chuck Ludwigsen

>I have both sweetgum and a dry piece of cherry in the barn and this seems more like the cherry than the sweetgum. It is fairly heavy too. I built a router/planing box last month that works great. I will plane the face smooth and shoot another pic. Darn, guess I have to spend time in the shop tonight ;-)

Chuck in Memphis, TN.

Re: Please help identify this wood

Jon Arno

>I'd agree, Gary. It's no surprise that there could be some confusion between cherry and sweetgum (AKA redgum). It's commonly used as a cherry counterfeit in the furniture industry.

If it's cherry, chuck should have picked up on the coughdrop-like scent. Also, while cherry isn't exactly skimpy when it comes to sapwood, it usually doesn't have a band as wide as these photos indicate.

Another candidate that hasn't been mentioned yet would be hawthorn. Like cherry and apple, it is a member of the "fruitwoods" in the Rose family (Rosaceae) and some of the clues coming out here would fit with hawthorn (Crataegus spp). There are about a half dozen species native to Chuck's area (Tennessee?). It's one of the denser of the fruitwoods, lacks the scent of cherry and it produces a wide sapwood band with a sharp demarcation between sapwood and heartwood. The heartwood tends to be more of a plain brown color, as opposed to the pinkish hue of cherry, and it sometimes displays some variegation (light and dark brown marbling in the heartwood.)

Re: Please help identify this wood

adrien

>try:

http://www2.fpl.fs.fed.us/WoodID/idfact.html

The Center for Wood Anatomy Research will identify a maximum of five wood samples per calendar year as a free public service to U.S. citizens. We try to accommodate inquiries from non-citizens, but such requests are typically assigned a low priority. Persons or businesses in need of more than five identifications per year should direct inquiries to rmiller1@wisc.edu in order to make appropriate arrangements.

Re: Please help identify this wood

Carl Civitella

>Looks like walnut with all the sapwood,young one at that as far as walnut trees go.have fun.Carl