Please identify this wood

[Joe McMahon]

Here are photos of my mystery wood. I thought it was ash until I saw ""elm" written in pencil. I can tell you that when planing it on my DJ20 (I am a "BLENDED" SHOP) the planer bogged down. This has never happened before. I adjusted the thickness of cut and it planed well.

I want to build Green & Green style dressing mirrors based on one built on Roughcut.

Can anyone identify this species???

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k262/joemac18/12.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k262/joemac18/1.jpg


http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k262/joemac18/11.jpg


http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k262/joemac18/13.jpg


Any help would be appreciated as I don't want to build a gift that looks like trash.

[Jim Koepke]

I can not help with the identity of the species. It doesn't quite look like the ash in my shop. That doesn't mean it isn't ash.


Any help would be appreciated as I don't want to build a gift that looks like trash.

I have made things from recycled pallets & fire wood that look great and things from "store bought" oak that look like trash.

It isn't the wood that makes things look like trash. It is usually the lack of skill from the craftsperson that makes things look like trash.

jtk

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I'm bad at this game. It looks akin to poplar I've been working with. But given that it sounds like it's a harder wood, that would most likely be very wrong! Most of the ash I've used has a more open grain structure - something that really requires grain filling when working in a guitar - not quite like oak, but that gives you an idea.

Mostly I posted to add in comment to "Any help would be appreciated as I don't want to build a gift that looks like trash." if your pleased with the look of the finished project, and it's structurally as sound as it needs to be for the given application, then it could be made of 2x4s - the mirrors don't care when they're done what they were made out of! Of concern may be whatever finish you plan to apply - some woods are going to respond quite differently to a given stain or finish. The best way to figure that out is finish a small piece or two (using whatever surfacing methods you plan on using on the given project) and apply the finish you plan on using, and see what it looks like. Make sure these pieces include whatever grain orientation you plan on using in the project, and if you're using a wood with varied color or grain, try and get a little bit of each of these in those scrap pieces. No good finding out your stain and finish combo looks great on an even coloured, blond, riftsawn portion of the wood and then making the actual project out of flatsawn pieces with more color in them and finding that finish recipe looks terrible over that part of the wood.

[John Coloccia]

Almost certainly not ash. I don't have any reason to believe it's not Elm if it says elm. Sometimes you will find elm with that sort of poplar-like streaking. Elm is about as dense as Doug Fir, so that will give you some idea about how heavy it would be. What's the end grain look like? Elm will have a wavy bands in the end grain.

[Andrew Yang]

Assuming the color is accurate, it looks similar to all the poplar in my shop. Certainly nothing like the ash I have on hand.

[John Coloccia]

A surefire test is look for pores. Elm requires filling but poplar doesn't.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

How hard is the wood? Can you dent it with a fingernail? That can tell you something, too.

I have no idea how poplar reacts to a powered planer, where you mention the wood bogging it down, but I do know that something about poplar, even though it's a softer, easier to work wood, makes things a chore as my hand plane blades get dull - a blade that's dulling but might be able to take a decent shaving in cherry isn't really going to do anything in the poplar - I don't know if it's the springiness/compressability of the wood or what. Gets to a funny point where too thick a shaving won't work, but too thin a shaving won't work either, won't take anything at all, just sort of rubs and burnishes rather than cut, and then you deepen the blade and you're taking a thicker shaving than you planned when it finally starts cutting.

[phil harold]

Looks like it could be elm, looks like some red elm I had, dont know why it was called red when it looked green/brown to me
has medium pores
my wood liked to get fuzzy when machining