Wood Identification for Pen Turning blanks

[Jim Paulson]

Hi,

My wife has gotten into pen turning and buys blanks of exotic wood. She needs a reference book to id the blank. What would be best book or books to use? :)

Thanks,
Jim

[Dave Wagner]

If you look online for Exotic woods, there are many sites with pictures and what they are.
Here is one

http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/

AMazon
http://www.amazon.com/Wood-Identification-Use-Revised-Expanded/dp/1861084366

[Lee Koepke]

+1 on the hobbithouse website. I have used that many times!

[David E Keller]

Another vote for hobbithouse. I'd also recommend looking the Arizona Silhouette website… He's got nice photos of a number of different blanks that he stocks.

[Dan Hintz]

Not to poo-poo on anyone's party, but ID'ing can be more difficult than looking at a few online pics. For example, I have a number of pieces of Maple (what most would consider a very common wood) cut into small blanks... I could easily pull out 5-6 different looking pieces (all from the same tree), and several of them are not identifiable as Maple, even on close inspection. Burls are particularly hard, especially if they're not common burls.

If I'm ordering pieces, I make sure to label them as soon as they come in so there's no question down the road. Even now, I have a few logs in the woodpile that I likely couldn't identify. Relying on my memory is a poor way to go, too.

[Jim Burr]

In support of all the above...a few sample pics can make it tough to ID any wood from. But some of the sites do have multiple pic's of different grain cuts that can help. As a suggestion...buy from a known source and bag the blanks in a sealable (ziploc) type bag labeled with the wood type.

[Royce Meritt]

To answer your question...

One book I like is "World Woods in Color" by William A. Lincoln. Not a cheap book by any means but pretty useful. I see Amazon.com doesn't have it in stock but used copies are available on their site. Might be available other places as well.

[Dan Hintz]

I really like this book:
The Woodbook: The Complete Plates (25th Anniversary ed.)
http://www.amazon.com/Woodbook-Complete-Plates-Taschen-Anniversary/dp/3822838187/ref=pd_sim_b_2

Picked it up last year as a present to myself. Wish I could find an original copy with the original wood pieces, but I'm no millionaire ;)