Wood identification

A neighbor picked up a bunch of "scrap" which had been used as spacers between drill pipe. They are all 8 footers, 2 by 4, and on planing one off they are actually quite nice. The wood is very heavy - like maple or oak, but quite light in color and with a grain not unlike oak, fairly widely spaced growth rings.

I know it is difficult without a picture...Any ideas on what this is? Possibly ash???

Reply to
Graham Gilbert
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Possibly anything. I have seen Oak on many occasions used for platforms running up to drill rigs and to shore up sides of holes at underground pipe repair locations.

Reply to
Leon

There are thousands of different trees. Even long-time woodworkers can be fooled by just looking at wood. Ash is usually very light in color and somewhat heavy, but then there are probably hundreds of different kinds of wood that match that description. Ring spacing can be close or far apart for the same wood. You may need to do some further detective work--find out the hardness, density, workability, open/closed pore, steam bendability, etc. I've made several pieces of furniture from unknown woods and they turned out beautifully.

Reply to
Phisherman

Ash looks a lot like oak, the most obvious difference is the absence of prominent ray flecks.

Ash is also a good choice for the application above as it resists splitting and takes shock well--hence it's traditional use in baseball bats.

Reply to
Fred the Red Shirt

All quite true; OTOH, ash doesn't fit the OP's description of the wood as "very heavy".

Rock elm, maybe?

Reply to
Doug Miller

Fri, Nov 9, 2007, 4:51am (EST+5) snipped-for-privacy@telus.net (Graham=A0Gilbert) doth query: I know it is difficult without a picture...Any ideas on what this is?

Certainly. It is free wood, free wood is always popular wood.

JOAT Viet Nam. Divorce. Cancer. Been there, done that, got over it. Now where the Hell are my T-shirts?

- JOAT

Reply to
J T

If you really want to know, send a small sample to the Forest Products Lab in Wi.

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Reply to
Dr. Deb

Or maybe it's still green.

Isn't it commonplace to make pallets out of greenwood?

Reply to
Fred the Red Shirt

Yeah, it is. Hadn't thought about that.

Reply to
Doug Miller

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