# Guess This One . . . .



## Kevin (Sep 3, 2014)

I know it's just a picture of a picture with no end grain etc. but what's your guess?


----------



## Mike1950 (Sep 3, 2014)

1. sycamore 2 maple


----------



## Sprung (Sep 3, 2014)

Looks like quartersawn maple to me. If you want it a little more specific - hard maple. That's my guess at least.

I love the look of quartersawn hard maple and if I ever get a log of hard maple and can get it cut however I want, I would certainly want at least some of it quartersawn.


----------



## David Seaba (Sep 3, 2014)

Quatersawn sycamore

Reactions: Agree 1


----------



## SENC (Sep 3, 2014)

Wood

Reactions: Agree 2 | Funny 1


----------



## Tclem (Sep 3, 2014)

SENC said:


> Wood


you were 2 minutes ahead of me


----------



## SENC (Sep 3, 2014)

Tclem said:


> you were 2 minutes ahead of me


Man, I must be slowing down!

Reactions: Funny 2


----------



## Kevin (Sep 3, 2014)

BTW I know what the wood is . . . . . .


----------



## Treecycle Hardwoods (Sep 3, 2014)

how bout a clue? domestic or exotic?


----------



## Kevin (Sep 3, 2014)

domestic


----------



## Treecycle Hardwoods (Sep 3, 2014)

With maple and sycamore being guessed already it limits the species that will fit the bill. Cherry will have that look when it is Qsawn as well but the colors are wrong.


----------



## Kevin (Sep 3, 2014)

Treecycle Hardwoods said:


> With maple and sycamore being guessed already it limits the species that will fit the bill. Cherry will have that look when it is Qsawn as well but the colors are wrong.



I'm gonna let it go on for a little while and see what guesses come. Not gonna say "right" or "wrong" yet. It may have already been guessed or maybe not.


----------



## ButchC (Sep 3, 2014)

The color's offf, even for a color blind guy like me....but it sure looks like some of my big leaf maple to me...


----------



## duncsuss (Sep 3, 2014)

I think it looks similar to beech ... or not.

Not.

Definitely not beech.


----------



## eaglea1 (Sep 3, 2014)

Sycamore


----------



## Tclem (Sep 3, 2014)

Fbe dyed yellow

Reactions: Funny 1


----------



## DKMD (Sep 3, 2014)

Can't be redbud... No cracks.

Reactions: Agree 1


----------



## JR Custom Calls (Sep 3, 2014)

Sycamore was my first guess... but I'm going to say qs birch


----------



## APBcustoms (Sep 3, 2014)

really light fishtail oak


----------



## NYWoodturner (Sep 3, 2014)

Gotta go with Sycamore.


----------



## Tclem (Sep 3, 2014)

Ok Kevin what is it ahhhhhh


----------



## Kevin (Sep 3, 2014)

Check this out:




I was flipping through RBH The Woodbook; The Compete Plates and this caught my eye at page 636. I never knew any species of cherry could look like this. I thought at first it was a misplaced image and was meant to be in the sycamore plates, but evidently it is not a mistake. This is hollyleaf cherry aka islay. _Prunus ilicifolia_.

I noticed Greg I believe was the only one that ventured a guess of cherry. Good call Greg I would never have guessed cherry in a million years.
@Treecycle Hardwoods

Reactions: Like 1 | Thank You! 1 | Way Cool 3


----------



## Treecycle Hardwoods (Sep 4, 2014)

Interesting, thanks for sharing. Many people associate Qsawn oak, sycamore, and maple with this figure, but all woods have ray flecks. When the trees are alive and functioning properly the flecks transport nutrients and water in and out of the tree. (center to outer layers) Walnut can show similar figure when the Qsawn boards are perfect or near perfectly Qsawn.

Reactions: Agree 1


----------



## phinds (Sep 4, 2014)

Treecycle Hardwoods said:


> ... but all woods have ray flecks ...


 
Greg, I wonder if perhaps what you mean here is that all trees have RAYS? The FLECKS are not what transfer the nutrients. The RAYS transfer the nutrients. Flecks are just a type of figure, caused by the rays, that sometimes shows up on quartersawn surfaces in hardwoods where the rays are thick. In many many woods the flecks are not noticeable to the naked eye, if present at all. That's almost always true in softwoods and even in those hardwoods where the rays can be seen easily with a 10X loupe but not with the naked eye, the FLECKS are almost always invisible to the naked eye or just not present.

As for that cherry from The Wood Book, it IS an unusual piece, but take a look at the piece of American black cherry about half way down the page on my site's "cherry, American black" page. Do a browser search on the page for _"One of the most amazing pieces of American black cherry that I've ever seen"_. The flakes are WAY bigger than those in The Wood Book piece. I was really amazed when I saw it in a wood shop in a little town I passed through on a road trip. I was glad I had my camera with me. Those have got to be the biggest flakes I've ever seen in any cherry. Some of them were easily 2" long.

Reactions: Way Cool 1


----------



## phinds (Sep 4, 2014)

Kevin, I see you've got the "original reprint" (the original original is worth thousands of dollars if you could even find one), as I do. I HATE that gold printing on black pages, don't you? "Elegant" but unreadable. I understand that there is an "updated reprint" that uses black type on white pages but since I'd already paid something like $80 for the first reprint, I didn't get it. I'd advise anybody who is looking to get a copy (and it's a GREAT book) to look for that one. I think I remember seeing that the price has come down too. Probably cheaper to print without all that gold and black.


----------



## barry richardson (Sep 4, 2014)

That book is bogus, it doesn't have Desert Ironwood!

Reactions: Like 1


----------



## phinds (Sep 4, 2014)

barry richardson said:


> That book is bogus, it doesn't have Desert Ironwood!


 
HA ! That is quite an oversight isn't it? Probably Hough hung out in forests and avoided deserts


----------



## barry richardson (Sep 5, 2014)

There are several southwestern trees not included in the book. I'm guessing that at the time they gathered all the photos, the southwest was pretty much an uninhabited wasted land, of little consequence to wood lovers...

Reactions: Agree 1


----------



## phinds (Sep 5, 2014)

barry richardson said:


> There are several southwestern trees not included in the book. I'm guessing that at the time they gathered all the photos, the southwest was pretty much an uninhabited wasted land, of little consequence to wood lovers...


 
Well, "uninhabited wasteland" (in 1888 to 1913 when he was collecting his samples) seems quite a stretch, but the area MAY have been a bit of a backwater when it came to the lumber industry.


----------



## barry richardson (Sep 5, 2014)

Not a stretch at all, other than a few mining boom-towns it was indeed uninhabited, by other than native americans, who weren't lumbermen. This is at least true of the Sonora Desert.


----------



## Kevin (Sep 5, 2014)

Paul I'm glad you addressed Greg's post because I didn't agree with it but just didn't have the energy to start the conversation. As to the gold edges I wish they weren't there but I was just excited to get a copy. This thing must weigh 10 pounds. How on earth did you ever locate an original?


----------



## Tclem (Sep 5, 2014)

I said cherry I'm the winner now send it to me. Greg cheated

Reactions: Funny 1


----------



## phinds (Sep 5, 2014)

Kevin said:


> Paul I'm glad you addressed Greg's post because I didn't agree with it but just didn't have the energy to start the conversation. As to the gold edges I wish they weren't there but I was just excited to get a copy. This thing must weigh 10 pounds. How on earth did you ever locate an original?


 
I saw an original on eBay several years ago. I don't remember the price but it was in the thousands. NCSU also has one and they have a different set of pics on their site than those in the book because those in the book were taken from a different set of samples from another original than the one NCSU has. That's why the colors are so far off on many of them both in the book and on he NCSU site. The samples were ~100 years old when Taschen Press took pics of them and the same for NCSU so a lot of them had darkened with age. Also I think their photographic process added some purple to a lot of the pics that probably wasn't there in the wood, even at 100 years old.

I think I read somewhere that there are only a handful of them left and they are in research libraries or xylariums atuniversities such as NCSU. Probably a lot were thrown out over the years by heirs not interested in wood and not realizing the value.


----------



## Kevin (Sep 5, 2014)

I checked out a rare book once from the University of Illinois through the interlibrary loan program. I was shocked they were letting it out. My local librarian who was doing it for me said she was too given the rarity and that she thought it was a mistake. The only other copy I found was at the University of Oklahoma. I had called and talked to the lady in charge of their rare book section and she said I could only come view it on the rare book room. I did end up talking her into making me a copy for .20 a page. It is a small book.

When my original copy arrived from UI I had a very difficult time not "losing" it. But, being an hnest Irishman I did send it back within the time frame allotted to me, although I struggled with it.


----------



## phinds (Sep 5, 2014)

Glad to hear you're honest, even if you are Irish 

I have been meaning for years now to get over to Cornell and at least take a look at some of the hard-to-get (and EXPENSIVE) books they have in one of their 18 libraries. I even got as far as going to the campus once but it is a HORRIBLE place to drive around in if you don't know it (it's a HUGE campus, and very congested) and parking is a joke, so I gave up. Still, it's only 40 minutes or so from my house so I ought to get my ass in gear but I'm lazy. I think about it ocassionally when I go to Ithaca. I'm really good at that ... thinking about things instead of doing them.

I'm particularly interested in getting a look at "The CSIRO Family Key for hardwood Identification". I saw a copy on sale somewhere a couple years back but it was $200 and I just didn't feel up for it even though I thought that for my purposes it might be worth the price.

One of its draws is that it has 9,000 microphotographs with discussions of wood anatomy. Fortunately for me I discovered the NCSU LUNA site:

http://images.lib.ncsu.edu/luna/servlet/view/search?q=="Modern Wood"

which has an even more extensive set of micropics and they are sizeable up to bigger than what's in Ilic's book.

Hey, damn. I just did a web search for the book and I now see one selling for $100. Hm ... I'll have to think about that.


----------



## Kevin (Sep 5, 2014)

_The CSIRO Family Key for hardwood Identification_ - I'm not familiar with that I will have to do a search on it.


----------

