trip to grandmas house , GLOAT, now theres pictures

[curtis rosche]

went to my grandparents house yesterday, grandfathers birthday, he had me turn my first peice about 2 years ago, sadly he now has alheimerzes (spelling?) and cant work anymore, didnt even know it was his birthday. well, back to the point, they have 2 apple trees, about 50years old, and never pruned, my uncle pruned them way down to size. i got a ton of apple peices, the peices i took all have burls on them and or are crotch peices, or are peices that look like they would have a neat grain, got a lot of them.

also i got a couple big logs of what i think is honey locust, the centers are spaulted and some eaten by ants, which is fine because i picked them for NE bowls, because of the non-roundness of the peices.

i also got a bunch of some other wood, it might be maple, it might be sumac, when it stops raining i will take some pictures.

[curtis rosche]

heres the pictures for ya, the first is the wood i dont know, the second is the locust, and the third is the apple. i dont know what the 4th wood is, it looks like mahogany, thats the color, but i dont think thats possible since this is PA, is it?

[curtis rosche]

any idea what the first and last one might be

[Jim Becker]

That last one may be Osage orange. First one is maple to my eyes.

[curtis rosche]

but its a redish mud color?

[Jerry McCaffrey]

I'm very interested also. I have osage orange and that doesn't appear to be it. My neighbor cleared some scubby woods last week and dumped a truck load of mixed stuff in my drive :) He said it was red cedar and poplar. I turned a bowl out of a log that looked like that and it turned out nice with great contrast between light sap wood and reddish heart wood. I'd like to know what it is also. I didn't smell like cedar and too red for the poplar I've seen.

Jerry

[Clancy Courtney]

Could the fourth one be chinaberry? Don't know if it grows in PA.

[Jerry McCaffrey]

The USDA map doesn't show it as far north as PA or Central NJ where I am, but the bark looks like what I have. The idea of an invasive species seems appropriate since it came from a low lying area that was being overgrown. I only have logs, no leaves, branches, or berries. But later I may take a walk over to the area where the wood came from and see if they left any stragglers around.

Thanks for the suggestion

Jerry

[Gary Garmar]

Mulberry on the last one. Will turn and look alot like Osage Orange.

[Terry Quiram]

Curtis

The first one looks like Hackberry and I concur with Mulberry as the last one.

Terry

[Cody Colston]

I agree on Mulberry for the last one. The newly cut wood will be a pale yellow but will turn that rusty red color with air exposure.

Curtis, just to clarify a common misconception I see. The name Osage Orange has nothing to do with the color of the wood.

The Osage Indians used the wood to make their bows, hence the other name (and the one I'm used to) Bois D' Arc...pronounced Bodark in East Texas. :)

The "Orange" part comes from the fruit that the tree produces. It's about the size of a softball, is green and has a dimpled texture. We call them "horse apples" around here.

Osage Orange would be like saying Apache Apple.

I apologize if I offended any Apaches. :)

[curtis rosche]

the first one has been sitting out for a couple months and it has no evidence of bugs, doesnt hackberry get a lot of worms or bugs in it? the last one i know isnt mulberry, i have mulberry trees and this is different. the bark and the leaves, i also know the tree it was from isnt mulberry.

[Nathan Hawkes]

the first wood looks a lot like alanthus, judging by the bark. It is usually a lighter color inside, but if its been sitting out for a while, or if you sealed the ends, it fits the bill. The last wood, if its for sure not mulberry, did it have any thorns? osage has pronounced thorns.

[curtis rosche]

no thorns unless they were nocked off. maybe its some speicies of walnut?

[Nathan Hawkes]

The bark really looks just like a mulberry I took down for a friend last summer. There are several species of mulberry; red mulberry is the most common fruit bearing one, but there is white (also has fruit), red, paper, and I think a couple others that we wouldn't have on the east coast. The leaves are pretty variable, though. If you can see the stump of the tree, it probably will have a ring of frothy sap coming out of the sapwood layer if it was a mulberry, regardless of type (at least so I read...I've only ever cut a red mulberry in VA)


Edit; the thorns I was talking about would be on smaller twigs, and are much smaller than those on honey locust, and more like japonica bush thorns--thin & pointy rather than the thick roselike thorns on black locust. I don't think osage has any on the trunk, but I haven't got any around where I live, and can't remember whether the ones on my relatives' property has thorns on the trunk or not.

[curtis rosche]

i will check the wood today and cut some off the ends and see it is the same color or if it is lighter

[Doug Miller]

Could the first one be holly? The white wood on that one log takes me there, not to mention the blue stain on all the others. Holly, if not sealed right away, will blue stain very quickly, loosing that bright white look forever. Could be other stuff, but holly was what came to my mind first.