What Species Is This?

[Derek Arita]

I may have asked this before, but I want to ask one more time as I have gotten some additional information. This is pallet wood. I have come to the conclusion that it is likely Spruce-Pine-Fir or Southern Yellow Pine. What do you think?http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h151/derekarita1/IMG_0868_zpsivrbd5gp.jpg (http://s63.photobucket.com/user/derekarita1/media/IMG_0868_zpsivrbd5gp.jpg.html)

[Prashun Patel]

Looks like the BORG pine we can get around here.

[Derek Arita]

I'm using a stain that reacts differently to different species, even though they look the same.

[John Vernier]

Southern Yellow Pine has a much more pronounced difference between the early and late wood of the rings. The early wood is very hard, resinous and is more distinct and darker than the late wood. This is something else - I agree that it is like the softer pine I see at the local Borg, but that is never well labeled, unfortunately.

[Derek Arita]

Maybe better colors show in this pic...
321019

[Peter Aeschliman]

Another vote for it being construction-grade Home Depot lumber. I'm all to familiar with that junk. I noticed the other day that Home Depot is now calling their spruce-pine-fir lumber "white wood." Made me laugh- they refer to it as if it's a species.

[Derek Arita]

Someone suggested that this may be Hemlock...I'm not familiar with this species. Could it be?

[Bruce Page]

It looks like plain old pine to me. It could be hemlock, they look largely the same.
Is it easily dented with a finger nail?

[Derek Arita]

It looks like plain old pine to me. It could be hemlock, they look largely the same.
Is it easily dented with a finger nail?

It seems harder and more brittle than pine. It must be on the hard side, being used in pallets.

[Danny Hamsley]

A softwood. SPF for sure. Looks a lot like white pine.

[Art Mann]

I agree with the white pine idea. This species is weaker and softer than Southern Yellow Pine.

[Bill Adamsen]

Looks to me like Eastern White Pine or something from the white pine family. Home Depot labels it Whitewood Pine. Cynically, I might speculate it originates in southern Russia or China. Home Depot's warehousing chain of custody needs has required virtually unlimited supply (and low price) which few independent US or Canadian suppliers can meet.

One easy way to test is by volumetric density - determine the volume of the board, and weigh it. Hemlock (it definitely isn't Eastern hemlock) is much heavier than EWP. So if your board is a fourteen inch long 1 X 8 ... ((.75X7.25X14)/1728) = .044054 cubic feet of wood. If it were EWP you might expect it to weigh 1.5 lbs, if Eastern hemlock ... 1.76 lbs. I got the densities (per cubic foot) from the FPL Manual for Wood Mechanical Properties.

http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr113/ch04.pdf?

[Danny Hamsley]

One way to tell white pine from hemlock will be the presence or absence of resin canals in the end grain. White pine has resin canals. Hemlock does not.

[Derek Arita]

What do resin canals look like?

[Danny Hamsley]

Here is some info on resin canals in softwoods.

http://www.faculty.sfasu.edu/mcbroommatth/lectures/wood_science/lab_2_resin_canal_species.pdf

[Bill Adamsen]

Very straightforward approach to identification - thanks for that tip. Took a closer look and found this article from the wood database I found helpful as well.
http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/softwood-anatomy/