Can Someone Help Me I.D. This Wood?

[Mike Baker 2]

I build using salvaged materials, and a lot of the time I use pallet wood because it is at the moment readily available. The majority of it I get tends to be pine, but every now and then, on pallets used for large machinery, i get hardwood, like below.
Does anyone recognize this wood? I know that wood identification from a picture is not always possible, nut I'm hoping some of you have knowledge of typical woods used in pallets, and/or have experience using this wood. I think it is probably common, but don't know where most pallets are sourced, so can't be certain. IMO it is lovely wood, has a fairly open grain, is medium heavy and pretty hard. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
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[Don Orr]

Looks like some kind of fast growing pine to me. If it's heavy and dense could be Southern Yellow Pine or similar.

[Mike Baker 2]

Thanls, Don. I don't believe it is pine. I can barely mark it will a sharp marking knife, and the grain IMO is more open than any pine I've ever seen, and it is fairly heavy.. Keep in mind, I grew up in Georgia and Alabama. It "resists" a chisel blow a lot more than any pine I've seen as well.
But, if the majority consensus is SYP, I will yeild to greater knowledge than I.

[Lee Schierer]

It looks like yellow pine to me as well. It should have a pretty distinct smell when you cut it or sand the surface.

[John K Jordan]

I've used a lot of pallet wood for wood turning. Some of it is exotic hardwood, especially when I got it from dealers who imported motorcycles and tractors. The best came from a granite/marble countertop company - they put all the pallet wood in big bins and let anyone dig through them.

In my area, local pallets seems to be often made from oak. A large local commercial sawmill sells a huge amount of "pallet grade oak" to pallet makers. Before I got my own sawmill I bought a lot of that for farm building siding, extremely cheap.

If it's any type of pine you should be able to tell by smelling it.

If you really want to know, send a small sample to the forest products laboratory. They will ID up to 5 samples per year for US citizens. Check "Still stumped" in section seven of this page: http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/wood-identification-guide/ Or follow the guidelines in section seven and try to ID it yourself. Domestic hardwoods are easier than most exotics and some conifers.

JKJ


I build using salvaged materials, and a lot of the time I use pallet wood because it is at the moment readily available. The majority of it I get tends to be pine, but every now and then, on pallets used for large machinery, i get hardwood, like below.
Does anyone recognize this wood? I know that wood identification from a picture is not always possible, nut I'm hoping some of you have knowledge of typical woods used in pallets, and/or have experience using this wood. I think it is probably common, but don't know where most pallets are sourced, so can't be certain. IMO it is lovely wood, has a fairly open grain, is medium heavy and pretty hard. Any help would be appreciated.

[Don Orr]

If that pallet came from outside this country it could be just about anything.

[Jim Koepke]

If that pallet came from outside this country it could be just about anything.

+1 on that.

Most pallets are made of wood that isn't suited for other uses. It has to hold together for one use and be cheap.

Back in my pallet hunting days my favorite pallets were from printers. Most of the paper came from mills in the east at the time. A lot of those pallets were made of maple, oak, poplar, ash and any other wood that was available cheap.

jtk

[Mike Hollingsworth]

Radiata Pine?

http://www.wood-database.com/radiata-pine/

[Andrew Seemann]

It looks like one of those tropical plantation grown pines that are becoming more common these days. We see similar wood sold as clear pine at the big box stores around here.

[Marshall Harrison]

SYP and Oak are the two most common types used for pallets but if its not a domestic pallet then it could be just about anything.

Check this link - https://www.1001pallets.com/heck-wood-pallet/

[Prashun Patel]

I am going with pine. Hd sells “radiata pine”. This looks exactly like that stuff.

[Mike Baker 2]

Thank you, gentlemen. It is most definitely pine. One good whiff of the end grain settled it.
But I have never planed, chiseled or otherwise worked a pine that is this hard and heavy. I have definitely learned with this. Thank you, everyone, for all of your help. It is greatly appreciated.
Either way it is lovely to me, and I have a pallet that is about 5' x 8', with no gaps between the boards. So I have quite a bit of it. Tool chest time, I think. :D

[John C Cox]

Heart pine is quite hard, heavy, and dense due to all the sap/resin in the wood...

Try burning a shaving... If it emits black, gooey pine tar while burning and burns hot like it's full of kerosene.. It's heart pine....

It's some of the best stuff ever for starting fires...

[Matthew Hutchinson477]

Definitely not heart pine. Heart pine is just the heartwood of a longleaf pine (a species of southern yellow pine) and it has really tight growth rings because it comes from old trees. Highly unlikely you'd see something like that used in a pallet. It's valuable stuff.

Honestly it looks like some species of southern yellow pine to me. SYP can be pretty hard and its density can vary. Keep in mind that the earlywood and latewood have very different hardnesses so if you try chiseling a section with just one but not the other it will give you a skewed idea of how hard the wood is in general.