Fly rod grip/Wood ID

[Royce Meritt]

Been messing around with making fly rod grips using birch bark instead of cork. The ones I'v done so far have included both birch bark and wood. I decided to try this chunk of wood I had lying around for the ends of the grip. Thought it would be a nice contrast to the birch bark and ebony accents.

Any guesses as to what type of wood this is? Is it just some sort of spalted maple? Very light weight so it would be a soft maple. The "spalting" doesn't look quite like most spalting I've seen. Turned easily but was a bit "splintery". Thanks.

Royce

[John K Jordan]

Any guesses as to what type of wood this is? Is it just some sort of spalted maple? Very light weight so it would be a soft maple. The "spalting" doesn't look quite like most spalting I've seen. Turned easily but was a bit "splintery".

It's easy to guess. My guess is it's something other than maple! Many wood species look the same from pictures from the side. Different parts of the same tree can even look much different.

Do you have a bit of scrap offcut left? If you want to try for an ID, one excellent thing to do is to look at the end grain of a piece or the actual grip. This article tells how in step 7: http://www.wood-database.com/wood-ar...ication-guide/ Often a single look at the end grain can narrow down the species or at the least, tell you what it can't possibly be! For example if you guess maple and compare it to online pictures of maple end grain and see that it is strongly ring porous, you can throw out maple.

You can also carefully measure and weigh a piece and compare the density to the published densities of candidate species. (This is not useful if there is evidence the wood has degraded significantly, i.e, has partially decayed.)

Another hint can be if you can remember where you got the wood - for example, was it local to your area or to some known area? If so, was it growing wild or could it have been a cultivar.

Also read the "Still Stumped?" section further down the page - you can get free ID from the US government lab. Or send a little piece to me - I've made a small but enjoyable hobby of IDing wood using microscope, UV light inspection, and precision scales.

All this boils down to the question: are you just casually curious or is it important to you to get an accurate ID?

JKJ

[Mel Fulks]

Reminds me of sande. It's not maple.

[Robert Willing]

Looks like horn and leather.

[Marvin Hasenak]

Mineral stained maple.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Royce, I will take a guess, but I’m certainly not sure of what I think it might be, looking at the right side of the handle in the picture, the wood grain does look like Elm and I think it might be spalted Elm, no guarantees on i though.

Wood ??.jpg

[Dave Fritz]

I would agree with Leo, it looks like some of the spalted American elm I have.

[Reed Gray]

Well, not maple... My first thought was rubber tree. Lots of it around in Asian furniture, and it is similar to that. Never in big slabs, more like 2 X 2 pieces. Spalting or mineral staining, not sure.

robo hippy

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Well, not maple... My first thought was rubber tree. Lots of it around in Asian furniture, and it is similar to that. Never in big slabs, more like 2 X 2 pieces. Spalting or mineral staining, not sure.

robo hippy

Reed I was looking at how the grain shows the interlocking grain pattern, even though the picture isn’t very sharp, and it does shows this when you cut through the grain on an angle, just like that right hand end of the piece does.

I got a couple of pictures that do show that grain somewhat like in the OP picture, and the OP also says it is very light weight wood, (Hevea tree wood (Rubber tree) is not that light weight if I recall)

Anyway it is just the best guess I can come up, considering of what all I can gather from just a small picture

Elm wood grain.jpg Elm wood.jpg stained Elm grain.jpg