# what wood is this? Help please :)



## Jamied64 (Jan 21, 2015)

Hello
this great part of the site is what drew me here 
Hello to everyone here :)
I was hoping to get some input form those who are more educated than me.

This is a wood that I have a fair bit of, but I am not sure exactly what it is.

It is roughly 15 years old, and was used originally as packing/transportation (pallets?) for steel

I have worked this wood beofe and it is extremly heavy, dense and hard to refine.

Thanks for any advice as I do not know much about wood


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## Mike1950 (Jan 21, 2015)

Alays try to get this guys attention for wood ID @phinds


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## phinds (Jan 21, 2015)

Appreciate your attempt to put up good end grain shots, but unfortunately these are not quite detailed enough (and mostly not well enough focused) for me to tell anything. The face grain is of wood that has not been cleaned up at all, so I'd hazard a guess that it is in fact wood, but that's as far as I'd go. Please try to get some pics of cleaned up wood. See here for example:

http://woodbarter.com/threads/welcome-to-the-wood-id-section-please-read-before-posting.69/

An alternative is to cut off a chunk at least 6" long and more than 1/2" thick and send it to me and I'll see if I can ID it.


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## DKMD (Jan 21, 2015)

Looks to be a diffuse porous species which narrows it down a little. Since I kearnd that from Paul, I'm unlikely to be much help if he can't ID it.


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## phinds (Jan 21, 2015)

do


DKMD said:


> Looks to be a diffuse porous species which narrows it down a little. Since I kearnd that from Paul, I'm unlikely to be much help if he can't ID it.


Jamie posted some slightly better pics in the ID intro section and I'll move them to this thread where they belong as soon as we resolve an issue w/ my mod priviledges. It looks to be probably semi-ring-porous (close to diffuse porous) but the pics aren't quite good enough to tell for sure.

Jamie, take a look here to see what I mean

http://hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/_anatomy/semi ring porous/_semi ring porous.htm

Now, I absolutely do NOT expect you to get to this quality of cleanup on your end grain but you do need to sand it to at least 240 grit.


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## Jamied64 (Jan 21, 2015)

Does this help?


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## Jamied64 (Jan 22, 2015)

i will try sanding it really well tmrw


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## barry richardson (Jan 22, 2015)

My guess, based on where it came from, and your description, is Apitong. I was similarly puzzled by this wood when I salvaged some a few years ago. Finally figured it out. Used primarily for dunage, decks in freight cars, etc. Does it have a distinctive smell, hard to describe but kinda piney/chemical-like? Is it resinous, leave a lot of gunk on your TS blade? Those are a couple of other indicators...


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## phinds (Jan 22, 2015)

barry richardson said:


> My guess, based on where it came from, and your description, is Apitong. I was similarly puzzled by this wood when I salvaged some a few years ago. Finally figured it out. Used primarily for dunage, decks in freight cars, etc. Does it have a distinctive smell, hard to describe but kinda piney/chemical-like? Is it resinous, leave a lot of gunk on your TS blade? Those are a couple of other indicators...


The problem with that is that apitong is pretty uniformly diffuse porous and this mystery wood does not appear to be. Of course, "apitong" encompasses about a dozen species so there's some variation and a cleaner end grain shot may give a stronger indication that it is apitong.


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## Jamied64 (Jan 22, 2015)

hey guys, the wood does have a musty smell as it has been in storage for over 10 years- some of my close ups shots show a little bit of oil coming out of the pours

Here is my attempt at a better close up today


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## phinds (Jan 22, 2015)

OK, from what I can see it's diffuse porous with sparse pores and marginal parenchyma and numerous fine rays so it is looking quite a lot like apitong except that the pores seem too sparse. I hate to be a bother but can you sand it to 240 grit? I think I may be seeing a lot of vague pores that should come out more clearly at 240 grit and that does make a difference.

Do you have a cleanup up (nicely sanded) face grain shot? That would also help.

Nice photography, by the way.


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## Jamied64 (Jan 22, 2015)

thanks for your input so far, I will get this done soon and repost :)


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## Jamied64 (Jan 25, 2015)

here is new pics sanded to 240


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## phinds (Jan 25, 2015)

Nice job.

What jumps to mind immediately is African mahogany, but you said it is really hard/heavy/dense and that doesn't sound like mahogany. The marginal parenchyma does the disappearing act that is typical of African mahogany but otherwise seems a bit strong for that. Do you have a cleaned up face grain pic? Don't know that it will help but it can't hurt.

Only other thing I see right off the bat is that it is not likely to be apitong since, as I thought from the previous pics, the pore density is too low. Also the marginal parenchyma seems too strong. 

A quick scan of diffuse porous woods shows me that it might well be jatoba. End grain characteristics aren't quite right but very close and the color and hard/heavy/dense are an exact match. A face grain shot would definitely help since jatoba is one of the few woods that often shows the marginal parenchyma clearly on the face grain. The main thing arguing against jatoba is that the marginal parenchyma lines in jatoba tend to be more crisp than what I'm seeing in your mystery wood and also more continuous. The "continuous" I can't be sure about since your pics might be making it look discontinuous just 'cause they are a bit fuzzy and not as fully cleaned up as what I do.

Clean up some face grain and compare it to the jatoba pics on my site.

Beyond that, I think you're just going to have to send me a cut-off. Let me know if you decide to do that and I'll PM you my address.


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## Jamied64 (Jan 25, 2015)

great, thanks for the reply. I will let you know what i DO :)


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