I need some help in Phoenix, Az., Please.

[Henry F Smith Jr]

I am completely uneducated as far as to be able to identify types of wood. Up until recently I didn't know there was a Purple Heart wood. That being said here is My issue. I recently acquired a storage room that had a bunch of wood in it. Some of it is reclaimed, some is milled lumber, and some is cut pieces of a tree. Ideally, what I would like is to find someone here in the Phoenix area that would be willing to spend a little time, identify what I have, and educate Me, just a little. I
am willing to offer some of My time and labor in return of the favor or make some sort of arrangement to show gratitude for the help I receive. I have some pictures but have no idea how to use those to identify what I have or if I'd even be able to do so. I would appreciate any help or input I can get. Thank you in advance.

[Henry F Smith Jr]

230 views and not 1 person has offered any advice or help of any kind.
And the dying art keeps dying.

[David Bassett]

230 views and not 1 person has offered any advice or help of any kind. ...

I'm sorry you haven't gotten the help you'd hoped for. ID'ing wood is hard, especially from photos. (I'm terrible at it, so I write the info on the board when I buy it!) Sooner or later someone will be along with better help, or at least better suggestions, I'm sure.

You can work on this yourself. The Wood Database is a terrific resource. Compare their magnified end grain photos to the end grain of your boards with a magnifying glass and you should be able to get in the right ball park.

[Justin Rapp]

too many different pieces of wood in there to say what is what. If you want IDs, you need closer picks of each piece of wood for the grain and even the end grain.

[Kevin Jenness]

You can do a lot by yourself with a book like Bruce Hoadley's Identifying Wood or the Wood Database mentioned above. For local help why don't you contact https://www.azwoodturners.org/wood/ , https://scwwoodshop.com/ or https://azwoodworkers.org/? For obscure species try the US Forest Products Lab .

[Frederick Skelly]

230 views and not 1 person has offered any advice or help of any kind.
And the dying art keeps dying.

You'll find that most people here try to help when they can. It's a very generous group. The fact that you havent gotten an offer isnt a snub - it likely means there's nobody nearby who has the skills needed to help you.

[John K Jordan]

IDing wood is indeed difficult, much because of incredible variety, both across the country and much more, across the world. There are many tousands of species and a lot look similar. And worse, there can be a huge variety within a single species. (for an eye-opener pick almost any species and look at the variety of photos on HobbitHouseInc woodpics.) Even radial and transverse sections of the same chunk of wood can look radically different. For some “fun” post a picture of the face a board and ask for an ID - you will likely get a number of different guesses and all will be wrong except for one, if you’re lucky. (btw, knowing where the tree grew can be a big help)

I’ve made a hobby of wood id for years and for me, the best approach is to prepare and examine the end grain with a magnifying lens as described in the book Identifying Wood by R. Bruce Hoadley, as mentioned. Another good place to start is the ID page on the Wood Database web site. These give you a good chance of identifying many (but not all) of the most common domestic hardwoods and some exotics. (the first thing to note is whether the wood is ring porous, diffuse porous, or semi-diffuse.) Some domestics are almost always easy, such as walnut, cherry, osage orange, holly, the oaks, persimmon, black locust, honey locust, and yellow poplar.

Exotics can be difficult. Many are so similar and uncommon enough that a guess is often the best you can do. That said, some are so distinctive they are easier to identify with some experience, sometimes by color, sometimes by general appearance, end grain, smell, fluorescence, density, and other features. A few species such as cocobolo, purpleheart, kingwood, pink ivory, ipe, yellowheart, zebrano, leopard wood, olive, and goncolo alves are generally easy. Many others I find difficult or impossible.

But while it is great to know the species of a chunk of wood in the end does it really matter? I’ve turned a bunch of things with no idea of the species.

JKJ

[David Buchhauser]

But while it is great to know the species of a chunk of wood in the end does it really matter? I’ve turned a bunch of things with no idea of the species.

JKJ

John - very much agree! I would be more concerned with how the end result looks as opposed to knowing exactly which particular species it was made from. I could understand if you only had a small sample piece and wished to obtain more that matched for a specific project. Then I would think you could take your sample to the local hard wood supplier to ID and match it up to purchase more of the same.

David

[Rick Potter]

Bingo, David beat me to it. I agree, take samples to a hardwood supplier and ask them.

[Tom Bender]

Just to get the guessing started I'd hazard that you have Pine, Walnut, Cedar, Purpleheart and Maple in that stack. It appears to be offcuts from a hobby woodworker who built furniture.

[Justin Rapp]

Here is a perfect example of why it's sometimes so hard to ID wood. Below on the left is a piece of Padauk I have. I actually have another piece that looks like the plain padauk in the 2nd picture. Both pieces look nothing like each other. They are in fact the same species of wood but look nothing alike. Other species tagged as say 'Hickory' can be from about 18 different specific trees, a dozen of them are in the grown in the US and also get mixed into wood lots from Pecan. So unless you actually start with the original tree's identification before it is milled up and mixed into piles of similar wood under the same commercial label, wood ID is not so easy from a stack of very mixed boards in a picture.

To help better, take a picture of each board and and maybe some boards will get spotted by folks here as specific species.


WhatWoodIsThis.jpg padauk.jpg

[Bill Dufour]

No one here would call that a "bunch". Not really enough to warrant a trip across town to check it out. Why do you care what wood species it is? You will not be able to buy more to exactly match what you have.
Bill D

[Henry F Smith Jr]

Thank you. I will try that.

[Henry F Smith Jr]

I appreciate the advice, guys. Thank you.