# Any ideas on what I have?



## WBYStockMan9 (Jul 1, 2014)

I picked this up at a local woodworking shop. The employees couldn't figure out what it was, I bought it anyway! It is very heavy and dense. I took a couple pictures to see if anyone could identify it for me. 

I did do a little research on http://www.wood-database.com/ and think it may be Cumaru. I've never heard of it before. It is more commonly know as Brazilian Teak.

Let me know what you think?!


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## Sprung (Jul 1, 2014)

To me it looks like Padauk, though I'm not the most familiar with exotics.


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## GeauxGameCalls (Jul 1, 2014)

I don't think it is because paduak is more open pored and straight grain. 


Sprung said:


> To me it looks like Padauk, though I'm not the most familiar with exotics.


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## Kevin (Jul 1, 2014)

Looks like some type of mahogany. Show a pic of the end grain please - we need a clear and close up of it. 

@phinds can probably ID this one just from the long grain shots you have posted - it's pretty distincive looking to me. I just can't ID the exotics except for a handful of the obvious ones. It's not paduak though.


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## phinds (Jul 1, 2014)

First pic looks exactly like mahogany, as Kevin suggested but the 2nd pic looks exactly like renghas. The first pic suggest that it is NOT renghas and the 2nd pic says that it's almost certainly not mahogany. And as Kevin said, it's not even close to being padauk. I'm assuming the first pic is a quartersawn surface (or close) and the 2nd is a flat cut surface, yes?

Can you take an end grain shot?


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## phinds (Jul 2, 2014)

And by the way, I"m at a complete loss as to how you could conclude that this might be cumaru. The two pics you posted do not look remotely like cumaru in any regard and although Eric (at the Wood Database) only has one sample of cumaru (as opposed to the dozen or so on my site) his one sample is a good one and does not look anything like your pics.

I'm wondering if maybe your wood is not being well represented by you pics? That's the only way I can figure that you might conclude that it's cumaru. Eric does have a good end grain shot and if the end grain of your piece looks like that in fine-grain detail, it would rule out both mahogany and renghas


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## WBYStockMan9 (Jul 2, 2014)

I'm stabbing in the dark! The guy at the wood shop I got it from said they were marked with codes and that would identify what species of wood it was. This block has CUMA in black on it. Of course there was no code on their list that looked like that. The block is covered in wax, and I work a 8 - 5... (I don't make enough playing with wood!) Anyways I will take a slice off of the end to maybe show the grain a bit better. 

Thank you all for your input!


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## Kevin (Jul 2, 2014)

What's the MC of the wood? If it happens to be close to 12% you can weigh it then extrapolate the weight out to a cubic foot's worth of weight. If it's no where close to 68 pounds it's not cumaru. Of course, if it *is* close to 68 pounds that in no way says it's cumaru. It's only one way to rule out certain species. The only way this method can be used to zero in on a species versus ruling it out, is if many other characteristics also align with the weight OR the block of wood weighs in the 79+ lbs/ft³ because only a handful of species weigh that much and they are all distinctive from one another in appearance.

Honduran Mahogany for example weighs 41 lbs/ft³ at 12% MC. If you block is 12% MC and extrapolates out to say 59 lbs/ft³ you can safely say it is not honduran mahogany for example or really any mahogany that I'm aware of. None of them are near that heavy.


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## eaglea1 (Jul 2, 2014)

Looks like Lyptus to me, I have a bunch of the same looking stuff and like you said, very dense, heavy.


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## phinds (Jul 2, 2014)

eaglea1 said:


> Looks like Lyptus to me, I have a bunch of the same looking stuff and like you said, very dense, heavy.


Could you post some pics of what you have? I've never seen lyptus with any such streaking

EDIT: also, I see from my own samples that none of the lyptus pieces I have have rays as thick as the one in this piece.


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## phinds (Jul 2, 2014)

phinds said:


> Could you post some pics of what you have? I've never seen lyptus with any such streaking





WBYStockMan9 said:


> I'm stabbing in the dark! The guy at the wood shop I got it from said they were marked with codes and that would identify what species of wood it was. This block has CUMA in black on it. Of course there was no code on their list that looked like that. The block is covered in wax, and I work a 8 - 5... (I don't make enough playing with wood!) Anyways I will take a slice off of the end to maybe show the grain a bit better.
> 
> Thank you all for your input!


 
CUMA absolutely would indicate that the vendor thought it was cumaru, but it is not. I find that vendors mis-identify woods much more often than you might expect.

Reactions: Agree 1


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## WBYStockMan9 (Jul 2, 2014)

I just showed this to a forestry buddy of mine and he suggests it is probably Mopane... Again, this is a shot in the dark, but seems like the right fit??


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## Kevin (Jul 2, 2014)

I only have one piece of mopane but I don't recall it looking anything like that . . .


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## phinds (Jul 2, 2014)

WBYStockMan9 said:


> I just showed this to a forestry buddy of mine and he suggests it is probably Mopane... Again, this is a shot in the dark, but seems like the right fit??


 
Based on those pics, I'd say not a chance.


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## WBYStockMan9 (Jul 3, 2014)

I scrapped off more wax, and took an end grain shot the best I could.


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## phinds (Jul 3, 2014)

The face grain shot looks like mahogany, the end grain is too blurry to actually help much but doesn't rule out mahogany. Nothing there looks like renghas. Post focused pics after you get it actually cleaned off.


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## APBcustoms (Jul 3, 2014)

I've seen bloodwood like that before... In no way am I qualified to tell you that's what it is it's just my two cents. Please don't ridicule me haha


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## phinds (Jul 3, 2014)

APBcustoms said:


> I've seen bloodwood like that before... In no way am I qualified to tell you that's what it is it's just my two cents. Please don't ridicule me haha


 
Yeah, I've seen bloodwood w/ a somewhat similar face grain, but never with anything like the streaks in the 2nd pic in the OP.


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## APBcustoms (Jul 3, 2014)

i believe i gave @Kevin some like that


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## Kevin (Jul 3, 2014)

APBcustoms said:


> i believe i gave @Kevin some like that



Austin tell me where I put that box and I will look at it.

Reactions: Funny 2


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## APBcustoms (Jul 3, 2014)

hahaha it had a few stopper blocks of bloodwood it came with a curly koa knife block i traded for a nice curly fbe slab


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## WoodPro (Jul 6, 2014)

It's too open grained for Bloodwood. It's not Cumaru (Yellow, or Red), I've sold thousands of feet of it. It could be, Keruing or Apitong. It could be Red Balau although the pictures seem a little porus. I believe I can provide a piece of this. I have some old samples in my shop that I'll have to dig out. I'll let you know when I do.

Regards: Joe

Reactions: Like 1


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## GeauxGameCalls (Jul 6, 2014)

WoodPro said:


> It's too open grained for Bloodwood. It's not Cumaru (Yellow, or Red), I've sold thousands of feet of it. It could be, Keruing or Apitong. It could be Red Balau although the pictures seem a little porus. I believe I can provide a piece of this. I have some old samples in my shop that I'll have to dig out. I'll let you know when I do.
> 
> Regards: Joe


Man you know your wood!


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## phinds (Jul 7, 2014)

WoodPro said:


> It's too open grained for Bloodwood. It's not Cumaru (Yellow, or Red), I've sold thousands of feet of it. It could be, Keruing or Apitong. It could be Red Balau although the pictures seem a little porus. I believe I can provide a piece of this. I have some old samples in my shop that I'll have to dig out. I'll let you know when I do.
> 
> Regards: Joe



I have several samples of keruing/apitong on my site and none of them look like that. They are vaguely similar but the bold streaking is nowhere to be seen.


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## WBYStockMan9 (Jul 14, 2014)

Here is the wood shaped into grips. Now can anyone tell me what it is?!


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## phinds (Jul 14, 2014)

Well, now it does NOT look like renghas, so I take that suggestion back.  It has the exact right graininess for renghas but the streaks are too short and a bit too sharp for renghas and they are clearly just pores, not actual color streaks as in renghas. Your original pics were way off in color and that's part of what threw me.

Still doesn't look like apitong/keuring since it is grainier than any of those species I"ve ever seen.

Also seems a bit too grainy even for mahogany.

"luan" / "Philippine mahogany" covers so many species that it's always possible it's one of them but it doesn't look like any of them I've ever seen.

There's an exotic called timbo (Enterolobium contortisiliquum) that has the right graininess but I don't really think that's what it is either.

Great ... lots of ideas about what it's NOT, no idea so far what it IS. Probably somebody here will recognize it and I 'll slap my forehead and say "OF COURSE", but not yet. So far mahogany is the only candidate I can see as having a chance (or the very closely related Spanish cedar) but I really don't think that's what it is.

Too bad you didn't do a full cleaned-up end grain shot. Got any left where you could still do that? It looks a bit like red palm and a good end grain shot would clarify that one way or the other immediately.

Reactions: Agree 1


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## APBcustoms (Jul 14, 2014)

phinds said:


> Well, now it does NOT look like renghas, so I take that suggestion back.  It has the exact right graininess for renghas but the streaks are too short and a bit too sharp for renghas and they are clearly just pores, not actual color streaks as in renghas. Your original pics were way off in color and that's part of what threw me.
> 
> Still doesn't look like apitong/keuring since it is grainier than any of those species I"ve ever seen.
> 
> ...



I was thinking red palm but figured I would be flat out wrong


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## phinds (Jul 14, 2014)

APBcustoms said:


> I was thinking red palm but figured I would be flat out wrong


 
As I said in my post, if he would post a cleaned up end grain shot we could figure that out really quickly.

John, in lieu of posting an end grain pic, you could just take a look at the red palm pics on my site and see what you think.


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## WBYStockMan9 (Jul 14, 2014)

Paul, after looking at your site, I think you are spot on. I am sure it is Red Palm. 

thank you all for your help in identifying this.


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## phinds (Jul 14, 2014)

WBYStockMan9 said:


> Paul, after looking at your site, I think you are spot on. I am sure it is Red Palm.
> 
> thank you all for your help in identifying this.



Just as a note, to everyone really, a cleaned up end grain shot would have made this ID immediate rather than having taken all this time and energy by several people.

I always find it frustrating when people don't bother to include a good end grain shot because so often that is more useful than anything else (although I wouldn't generally want JUST an end grain shot).

Reactions: Agree 1


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## APBcustoms (Jul 14, 2014)

phinds said:


> Just as a note, to everyone really, a cleaned up end grain shot would have made this ID immediate rather than having taken all this time and energy by several people.
> 
> I always find it frustrating when people don't bother to include a good end grain shot because so often that is more useful than anything else (although I wouldn't generally want JUST an end grain shot).



I'm good at bad end grain shits


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## WBYStockMan9 (Jul 14, 2014)

Sorry!

Thanks for every ones help though


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## JR Custom Calls (Jul 14, 2014)

APBcustoms said:


> I'm good at bad end grain shits


Those sound painful. Imodium help any?


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## Kevin (Jul 14, 2014)

APBcustoms said:


> I'm good at bad end grain shits



Looks like you took the _Kevin's Home Study Spelling Course for Woodworkers_, Austin.

Reactions: Agree 1


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## APBcustoms (Jul 14, 2014)

JR Custom Calls said:


> Those sound painful. Imodium help any?



Well I guess being an addict. this is one of the consequences. First you start sleeping with it then you start having end grain shits

Reactions: Like 1 | Funny 1


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## Cody Killgore (Jul 14, 2014)

APBcustoms said:


> I'm good at bad end grain shits



Well, that just put an image in my head that I will likely never forget.


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## ripjack13 (Jul 14, 2014)



Reactions: Funny 2


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