More oak with speck rays or ray specks, whichever.
More oak with speck rays or ray specks, whichever.
Member
Looks like Oak to meOriginally Posted by Bill Jobe
Have fun and take care
Member
Might it be elm?
Leo, are the spec rays a character present in every tree of one variety of oak, or are they random throughout all varieties?
Ted, if it's elm this is my first experience turning elm.
Actually, I have not used any of it yet. I just cut a small piece off of a log about 30" by 7 or 8 inches. Can't remember where I got it. Wood fit for turning sometimes just jumps into the bed of my truck.
Member
I have turned just about every kind of Elm there is in N.America, none of them had rays.
Oak is known for its rays, and though I have only turned several types of Oak, certainly not all species of them.
I was also looking at this grain that has similarities to Elm, but for the rays I dismissed that.
Have fun and take care
Member
Bill as I replied to Ted, Elm does not have rays like that, and all species of Oak that I know off does have it, best I can do
Have fun and take care
Thanks Leo.
I think I once read there are over 70 varieties of oak?
Member
It looks like it could be mulberry...
Contributor
Locust perhaps? I agree on the oak save for the color.
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Moderator
Eliminate the wild guesses. Cut off a small piece, just enough to hold easily. Shave off the wood on the transverse face (end grain) with a single-edge razor blade to cleanly expose several rings. Look at the rings with a 10x hand lens. Note the pores in the earlywood and the late wood. Look for tyloses. Compare what you see with an on-line photo of the type of wood you think it might be. This will eliminate all those species that might look close from a photo of the board.
It is hard to be sure from your photo but it appears your wood may have wavy bands of latewood pores. Several species have these very distinctive wavy bands. The pictures below are from the online Wood Database.
Elm is one with these wavy bands:
elm.jpg
Hackberry is another:
hackberry.jpg
There are others.
Now, just for fun, look at red oak and white oak:
red_oak.jpg white_oak.jpg
Notice other differences in the two photos above, for example the pore size, the earlywood pore distribution, the ray size and spacing. Look for tyloses in the larger pores.
Note that due the the wide variations between members of the same family and even between samples of the same species you might have to look at several samples to be fairly sure of the species. I like to use several references to get an idea of the range of variation. However, it is usually easy to eliminate a bunch of common species.
JKJ
Member
Bill there are many more than 70 species, trying to ID a specific specie will take more than just a magnifying glass, with 90 in the US and Canada, plus 160 in Mexico and another 100 in China, though we probably won’t find many logs up here of those.
Just taking the things you do know will help eliminate what it isn’t and then also what it is probably, even if not what specific species
Quercus species.jpg
Wavy grain Oak does exist but certainly not common, here’s a picture of it.
Wavy Oak grain.jpg
Last edited by Leo Van Der Loo; 02-07-2017 at 12:52 AM.
Have fun and take care
Wow, the world of trees is full of surprises !!
Moderator
I too have seen specific boards from oak and other woods that look similarly wavy. The cross section of that board would be interesting.
It might be surprising how many times wood is misidentified, even by those who should know better. I first got interested in learning more about ID when an experienced turner at the club passed around a bowl labeled "Cherry" on the bottom. But even without a magnifier I could see the wood was strongly ring porous! That was a case where armed with even even the most basic knowledge anyone could have eliminated Cherry from the possibilities.
To get the exact species takes a great deal of effort and even then is often nearly impossible or at least impractical. The most reliable method: start with the actual tree, leaves, and fruit.
Beyond that, these will help narrow the possibilities of domestics and some exotics:
- knowing something about where the wood came from
- examining the ring structure under magnification
- measuring the density
- learning the distinctive smell of certain species
- using a good black light in some cases
(If anyone is interested in my experience in locating the perfect UV light for wood, just ask.)
I've mentioned it before but may be worth repeating: the US gov Forest Product Lab will do free wood ID for any citizen. But even they will NOT identify the exact species. We sent a sample to them once as a test and they sent back their findings in one word: Elm.
For anyone seriously interested in wood ID I recommend the book "Identifiying Wood" by R. Bruce Hoadley. For the literate woodworker perhaps less serious about ID but serious about wood, his book "Understanding Wood" is a good education on the structure of wood and how it behaves.
JKJ
Member
To this old forester's eye, those ray's look awfully weak for an oak species--just my take?
Moderator
I meant to mention but forgot: a 365 nm UV light will cause locust species to fluoresce with a bright yellow. Several others species also glow with yellow so that by itself won't give a positive ID. However, as with other methods, it can easily prove if a sample is NOT locust! UV is good at distinguishing between black locust and osage orange which are sometimes confused, especially when aged, due to the similar endgrain and densities. (Osage does not fluoresce.)
This picture shows redheart and locust under UV light. The fluorescence looks even more distinctive with the eye than in the hand-held photo.
UV_3_redheart_locust.jpg
I think anyone serious about wood ID could make good use of a UV light. Just be careful, some are so cheap they are almost free and are still worthless. The problem is the manufacturer lies or is mistaken when advertising the wavelength. I've even bought two identical lights from the same vendor and one was good and the other useless for ID.
JKJ
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