Wood ID?

[Aaron Craven]

I imagine this is a bit of a longshot since I have very little information to go on, but can anyone tell me what this stuff is?
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My initial thought is hickory. I've also been told ash. I honestly don't have any clue, though.

[Bob Bouis]

The green line between the heartwood and sapwood, as well as the bark, says cherry.

ETA: I see what looks like a little rot near the pith. That also says cherry, very typical.

Go grab the rest of it if it's not rotten. A good find.

[Reed Gray]

If it isn't cherry, then maybe plum. Plum tends to have more purple and orange in it. Cherry usually smells like cherries too.

robo hippy

[Aaron Craven]

If it is cherry, I'm going to kick myself very hard... We split almost all of it for firewood... I only grabbed enough for three small bowl blanks out of the whole pile...

[Bob Bouis]

It happens. Fortunately cherry's fairly common. Also that piece had some rot in the pictures you showed, which usually means the tree had quite a bit of it also. It's sometimes hard to identify as rot since it just looks darker red than the rest of the heartwood.

Cherry heartwood wood is fairly durable, but in the south at least, the trees tend to be sickly, for whatever reason. That tends to be the reason the lumber is expensive more so than the trees being rare, at least where I'm from.

Also cherry only sometimes has the "cherry" smell, and often not when freshly cut for whatever reason. So its absence isn't a reliable indicator of the species.

ETA: I'm pretty sure it's cherry. It's possible it could be some other fruit tree, but pretty unlikely where you're at. Especially if it was found in the wild.

[Ed Morgano]

It looks like walnut to me.

[robert baccus]

Take a close look at the cut or sanded endgrain. Cherry is diffuse porous--no pores showing. Hickory is ring porous and walnut is semi ring porous--no pores spels cherry to me.

[William Bachtel]

I say it is Cherry, and it is Cherry. Its not the wild Cherry, its the fruit Cherry. Your photos are good, fruit Cherry is not as dark red as Wild Cherry. Not as desirable as the wild stuff.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

I believe it is Cherry, even wild Cherry isn’t always dark, especially freshly cut it will look much lichter in color, and other Prunus species do look all much the same when cut from fresh green wood.

I have pictures here from Apricot and Cherry that I cut at a friends place, except for the bark it would be very hard to distinguish between the two right next to each other.


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[Aaron Craven]

It looks like walnut to me.

Definitely not walnut. The pictures don't show the color very well, but it's reddish, not dark or muddy brown.

I need to ask some questions from my FIL who cut it down about where it was and whether we ever saw fruit on it. Either way, I think when I start turning it, I should be able to confirm whether it's cherry. It does seems to fit what I've seen so far.

[Scott DelPorte]

The bark in your third picture looks similar the bark on the pin cherry trees on my property.

[Aaron Craven]

Finally turned a piece of this today. It smells like cherry, cuts like cherry, sands like cherry. Looks like cherry too. So I'm going with cherry.

The figuring in this wood is just gorgeous. Pictures are of an unfinished bowl. Apologies for the bad white balance - it was just a quick cellphone snapshot. I've turned and sanded to 1000. I'm going to give it a few days to dry (the wood is still just a hair green) and then finish with oil.

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[robert baccus]

Ooooooh---nice cherry.