what to do with a larger piece of chestnut ??

[John K Jordan]

...Sorry about he dimensions but as you can see from the pictures its actually 11 wide 4 thick and 5 foot tall....

Ah, that makes more sense!! That's a respectable chuck of timber regardless of what it actually is, useful for lots of things even after the cracks are cut away. I would probably cut it into turning squares and blanks.

JKJ

[Mark Wooden]

Do you have a block plane, or any plane really- clean off about 12" of a face and edge and then post a pic. A flash pic of old end grain for i.d. is a ring toss. By that reckoning, the pile of boards I have in my shop are heartpinedougfirwhiteashchestnutwood. ;-)

[John K Jordan]

Do you have a block plane, or any plane really- clean off about 12" of a face and edge and then post a pic. A flash pic of old end grain for i.d. is a ring toss.
By that reckoning, the pile of boards I have in my shop are heartpinedougfirwhiteashchestnutwood. ;-)

Ha! I'll have to remember that. I have some nice tubs of of poplarsoftmaplestainedhollybirchsweetgumunknownexo tic turning blanks.

Stephen, also, try to get a clean end grain picture to eliminate the saw cut smear on the rings. A clean cut on the end grain can show instantly if it is actually a ring porous hardwood, the easiest and most significant tell.

The article I mentioned is a good place to start but better is the book "Identifying Wood" by R. Bruce Hoadley, still available. He includes a decision tree of descriptions and macro photographs of end grain for common hardwoods. (Positive ID on conifers is a different issue.)

Hoadley shows how to use a single-edge razor blade to clean up the end grain for examination. All that is really needed is a small piece that shows several rings - I usually cut a block about 1/2" long and maybe 1/4" to 1/2" wide, only thick enough to hold onto. Sometimes a small sample of old wood can be soaked in water or even boiled to make it easier to shave cleanly. He recommends a 10x lens which I do use, although I do have a low-power stereo microscope which makes things easier. This lighted magnifier is the absolute best I've found, and cheap too!:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CMDIOBK/

magnifier.jpg

I found this magnifier so useful I bought several for the shop, house, and as gifts.

JKJ

[Danny Hamsley]

I agree with several others. It is a yellow pine. From the color, it is heart yellow pine, probably longleaf. It certainly is not chesthut. Chestnut is ring porous with large earlywood pores and small latewood pores all filled with tyloses.

[steven mendez]

I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree that the wood is not Chestnut. The lumber looks more like douglas for rather than pine.....but we need better pictures, I think. Still.....I don't think you wasted your money. People love big distressed lumber and I for one have a customer who needs something like what you have. 50 bucks?

Well looks like the guy pulled one over on me, but shame on me. thats why the forums are a great place to learn. I am sure that i will be able to find something to do with it. who would have thought that there are 115 species of pine and over 1000 tree species in N.America alone.. geeeze lasta lot of different woods to keep in ones head.

[Mike Manning]

Well looks like the guy pulled one over on me, but shame on me. thats why the forums are a great place to learn. I am sure that i will be able to find something to do with it. who would have thought that there are 115 species of pine and over 1000 tree species in N.America alone.. geeeze lasta lot of different woods to keep in ones head.

Steven,
A couple of days before Xmas I went to look at an old red & gray Craftsman 6-drawer top chest. The seller was an 83-year old lung cancer survivor. He was proud to tell me he was the original owner. He'd bought that tool chest in 1954 in Corpus Christi. I spent about two hours there talking. I ended up taking home 3 vintage Craftsman toolboxes. Before I left and after getting a feel for the young fellow I felt I could tell him that the tool chest as made in Oct '72. He was very apologetic and explained he didn't intentionally lead me astray. He did keep trying to tell me that it was '54 and why. Long way of getting to my point, he may very well have thought it was Chestnut and now he can't tell the difference anymore. I'd bet if you took it back to him and said it's not Chestnut he'd give you your money back. I hope you get some of that Chestnut one of these days for sure! Good luck and I think you've been a good sport about it.

Mike

[Joe Cowan]

It looks like heart pine. Probably a beam from a barn etc that was salvaged.

[steven mendez]

Steven, A couple of days before Xmas I went to look at an old red & gray Craftsman 6-drawer top chest. The seller was an 83-year old lung cancer survivor. He was proud to tell me he was the original owner. He'd bought that tool chest in 1954 in Corpus Christi. I spent about two hours there talking. I ended up taking home 3 vintage Craftsman toolboxes. Before I left and after getting a feel for the young fellow I felt I could tell him that the tool chest as made in Oct '72. He was very apologetic and explained he didn't intentionally lead me astray. He did keep trying to tell me that it was '54 and why. Long way of getting to my point, he may very well have thought it was Chestnut and now he can't tell the difference anymore. I'd bet if you took it back to him and said it's not Chestnut he'd give you your money back. I hope you get some of that Chestnut one of these days for sure! Good luck and I think you've been a good sport about it. Mike

Yes that could be the case. I do not take it to bad, just for the fact of my own ignorance with different wood species. Ido think it is some very pretty wood and will put it to good use sometime.

[John K Jordan]

...who would have thought that there are 115 species of pine and over 1000 tree species in N.America alone..
geeeze lasta lot of different woods to keep in ones head.

That's funny! The number of species is overwhelming. What's worse, every locality has different names for many of them - for example "Ironwood" is widely used for woods that are very hard. Often even the wood importers and dealers don't have a clue and make up a name or use one that might be similar, sometimes just for marketing purposes. The worst are probably the exotics - I read that botanists are still discovering new species in the tropics.

At last count I had well over 100 distinct species in my turning stash, maybe 130 or more. This doesn't count a bunch I've marked with "??". Fortunately, they are all useful for something.

JKJ

[Derek Cohen]

Can you resaw the board to 2" thick panels and make a Nakashima-style tabletop? Dark butterflies would look great against the light background.

Regards from Perth

Derek