White Oak vs Red Oak

[Prashun Patel]

I had a couple trees harvested in my back yard and didn't know if they are red oak or white oak. There are apparently some typical ways to distinguish:

(This is all taken from Youtube)

red oak has round pin holes in the end grain
The grain marks - not ray flecks - are shorter (1/4") in red oak than in white oak (3/4)".

Apparently, the tell-tale way to distinguish is with sodium nitrITE (not nitrATE):

Make a 10% solution (I paid about $12 for several oz) in water.
Take some shavings from the heartwood of the target wood.
Immerse in the solution.
Wait 10 minutes.
White oak will turn black, red oak stays brown.

It works! Neat!

The first pic is after right after soaking. The second is after 3 mins. The third (rotated, sorry) is after 10.

I think this is white oak.

[Wade Lippman]

Best way to tell is by the leaves or the acorns. But I guess Sodium Nitrite works also.

[russell lusthaus]

if you take a sliver about the cross section of a drinking straw, and try to blow bubbles in a cup of water - if it is white oak you will turn blue in the face, but if red, you will get bubbles.

Russ

[Bill Space]

I don't think you even need to use water, if you use a larger piece of red oak. Try putting the end in you mouth and blowing. You will sense the air passing through the wood if it is red oak.

I do like Russ's water idea though. I am going to try that one of these days...the bubbles are certainly a good indicator, better than just sensing and not seeing! :)

edit: You are lucky! White oak is a more durable wood and suitable outdoors. I wish I had some! I have a lot of red oak but no white oak...:mad:

[Steve Peterson]

White oaks turns my fingers black when working with wet wood. I wonder if it is the same type of reaction.

Steve

[Prashun Patel]

Yeah, yeah, you can try all your drinky, sippy, bubbly, acorny methods.

But this method is WAY cooler and geekier.

Walter White (oak) would be PROUD! (I think his liquid turns blue, though...)

Heisenberg lives!!!

[Brett Luna]

Heisenberg lives!!!

But I hear that Schrödinger's cat is or isn't doing so well.

[Prashun Patel]

He may be, or he may not be... We'll never know, so we have to assume he is simultaneously well and ill...

[glenn bradley]

Yeah, yeah, you can try all your drinky, sippy, bubbly, acorny methods.

But this method is WAY cooler and geekier.

Walter White (oak) would be PROUD! (I think his liquid turns blue, though...)

Heisenberg lives!!!

All hail the geekier method :D. Visually they are pretty different once you get used to it. Open pores or clogged pores; that's the tip off.

332527

Having said that I have found a few boards that gave me quite the challenge till I could get a clean section of end grain. A little bit of Dr. Patel's Miracle Oak Identifier Solution and I would have been sure right off the bat.

[Tom Deutsch]

I'm uncertain about that cat, myself.
I was taught the "blow" method, but to me they just look different. Plane a couple different faces in the grain and red oak should look like ... oak. White oak will look a bit closer to ash or chestnut and is just more beautifuller-ish. I'm not a fan of "regular" oak but white oak looks great, I think. You can build a boat, now!

[Frank Pratt]

So, how big were the trees, how much lumber?

[John K Jordan]

Visually they are pretty different once you get used to it. Open pores or clogged pores; that's the tip off.
332527
Having said that I have found a few boards that gave me quite the challenge till I could get a clean section of end grain.


I use this method for most wood ID. The key is in the early wood pores. White oak pores are filled with tyloses which look a bit like sparkly membranes under magnification. Red oak pores are completely open.

The Wood Database, where the above photos appear to have come from, gives a couple of things to watch out for:

The pores found in the growth rings on red oak are very open and porous, and should be easily identifiable. White oak, however, has its pores plugged with tyloses, which help make white oak suitable for water-tight vessels, and give it increased resistance to rot and decay. The presence of tyloses is perhaps the best and most reliable way to distinguish the two oaks, but it comes with a few caveats:
1.) Make sure that you’ve cleaned up the endgrain enough to see the pores clearly, and blown out any dust from the pores. You don’t want a “false-positive” and mistake sawdust clogged in the pores for tyloses.
2.) Make sure that you’ve viewing a heartwood section of the board in question. While white oak has abundant tyloses in the heartwood, it is frequently lacking in the sapwood section.


A razor blade is used to make a clean slice across the end grain. I buy single-edged razor blades in bulk for this. If the wood is very hard, soaking or even boiling in water can make it much easier to shave.

For those interested in this technique, R. Bruce Hoadley's book "Identifying Wood" teaches how to prepare the samples and what to look for. My copy has been used so much the pages are falling out. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0942391047

BTW, I use a low-power stereo microscope for looking at these but a 10x hand lens works well. This is hands-down the best lighted magnifier, and one of the cheapest, I have found: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CMDIOBK
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JKJ

[John McClanahan]

Here is another way.
https://youtu.be/L6t2AZubF8U


John

[Tom M King]

Unless I want some really easy to split firewood I say no to Red Oak.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Thanks for posting that John!

[David Helm]

Way back when (aeons ago) when I first became a carpenter I spent a couple of years installing wood floors. In the seventies, red oak flooring was very popular. Easy to install and, in my opinion, butt ugly. Installed enough of them to really learn to hate it. Occasionally I got to install some white oak. Much harder to lay than red, but oh my, it was so much prettier. To this day, for me, red oak is only good for firewood.

[Frank Pratt]

I'm afraid I'm another red oak hater, but I sure love white oak. When I put hardwood in my house red was wayyy cheaper than white, but it was an easy decision to go for white. No stain, just oil base poly. Gorgeous.

[Tim Cooper Louisiana]

I was recently taught to tell the difference by the color of the bark. Its probably not 100 percent reliable, but my sawyer friend said I guessed right every time. Someone else already said it, but the leaves are quite different.

[Scott DelPorte]

White oak also has the very prominent medullary rays when you look at a face that is quarter sawn

[Tom M King]

I can tell none of you guys live in the woods.

[Tom M King]

Way back when (aeons ago) when I first became a carpenter I spent a couple of years installing wood floors. In the seventies, red oak flooring was very popular. Easy to install and, in my opinion, butt ugly. Installed enough of them to really learn to hate it. Occasionally I got to install some white oak. Much harder to lay than red, but oh my, it was so much prettier. To this day, for me, red oak is only good for firewood.
I had a second buyer of a house I built in the mid '70s call me to ask if I could tell him what kind of wood the floor was because he was building an addition. I told him I had a simple test for that which would only require that he answer one question. He said, "Sure, what's the question?" I asked, "Who built the house?" He said, "You did." I said, "It's White Oak, and I don't even need to know which house it is."

[John TenEyck]

That's good, Tom.

I'd call those who only like white oak snobs or short sighted. I like them both. I like QS white oak as well as most, but have you ever seen QS red oak? It's beautiful. Or how about rift sawn? If you finish it dark it's hard to tell it from white oak. And white oak will never have that warm color that red oak most often does unless you dye or stain it. I think a lot of people associate the big chevrons you get with plain sawn oak as being red oak. White oak has the same grain pattern when cut that way, but it rarely is because it's so unstable. And therein lies yet another benefit of red oak - it's a lot more stable so you can saw it any way you like and it won't split on you whenever it feels like it like white oak is often apt to do.

John

[Allan Speers]

He may be, or he may not be... We'll never know, so we have to assume he is simultaneously well and ill...



So it's both red oak AND white oak?

Maybe it's just both until you cut it.

[Mike Cutler]

But I hear that Schrödinger's cat is or isn't doing so well.

I hope we don't have to apply quantum physics to tell red oak from white oak. I'll blow the bubbles first.:D
It's been over 35 years since I sat in those classes and counted the holes in the acoustic ceiling tiles.:eek: (The Prof' that taught the class, used to sit cross legged on the lectern, and never had on a matching pair of socks.)

[Prashun Patel]

Two trees 28 and 30 inch in diameter. i didn't count the bf, but it's about 2 pallets stacked 6 feet high with 8/4 and 4/4. A couple hundred I think.

[Scott T Smith]

Hi Prashun, good thread. You are indeed correct that the sodium nitrite solution is 100% accurate and the most definanitive test of all methods.

There are actually three species of white oak that are open pored, the most common of which is chestnut white oak. Thus the pore test is not 100% accurate. Additionally red oak can produce some extraordinarily flecked lumber when quartersawn, just as white oak does.

[Bill Adamsen]

Thanks Prashun and John (the Shipwright Louis Sauzedde video) for these simple tests. I've bought a fair amount of white oak. There are a lot of species in the White oak group. I buy typically from local sawmills, and they sort their woods by some of the morphological methods mentioned earlier. Mistakes can made, and I have bought what was labelled as White and turned out to be open pored ... either a Red oak or possibly Chestnut. Used outdoors that can be a disaster. With these tests my confidence has increased that mistake won't result in actually using the wrong wood.

[Cody Colston]

Never had a problem differentiating between Red and White Oak, myself. Red Oak is reddish colored while White Oak is light brown...at least the lumber that I have worked. I saw my own so I know what species it is but the color difference is pretty disparate.

[Danny Hamsley]

Be aware that chestnut oak, Quercus montana, a white oak, will not always have the pores plugged with tyloses.

[daryl moses]

Red Oak has pointed lobes on the end of the leaves. White Oak has rounded lobes, the bark is also different as is the color of the wood.
When I go into my woods to cut down an Oak [or any other species]I don't have time for scientific methods to determine what species I am cutting, I rely on experience.

[Prashun Patel]

Daryl, i didnt mean to imply the chemical method is superior to your experience. Sorry you took it that way.

[daryl moses]

Daryl, i didnt mean to imply the chemical method is superior to your experience. Sorry you took it that way.
I didn't take it that way at all Prashun, sorry if it sounded like that.
I'm sure your "scientific" method is sound. But living on a tree farm as I do you better be able to identify every species on the stump. When my Sawyer says he needs X amount of Red Oak etc, he would be a little more than aggravated if I brought him a load of Sweet Gum lol.
Identifying trees on the stump comes with experience, it's a lot easier if the leaves are on that's for sure. But the bark, shape of the tree, canopy, where the tree is growing, etc all give visual clues.
When I retired after working almost 40 years in Manufacturing most of which was on rotating shifts, growing, harvesting, and looking after my little Forrest, is probably harder work but a heck of a lot more enjoyable and rewarding.