Replies

1. 
   AlanTurner | Feb 09, 2004 06:10pm | #1

   From the two right hand boards in the first pix, I would guess beech.

   Alan

   Alan

   http://www.alanturnerfurnituremaker.com

2. 
   JsHerbel | Feb 09, 2004 06:51pm | #2

   With a guess shot, I think it looks alot like some sort of elm.

3. 
   Buzzsaw | Feb 09, 2004 08:57pm | #3

   Rodknee,

     When you say you only get reclaimed lumber, where do you get it?  I was driving through a town the other day and saw a bunch of wood out on a sidewalk to be picked up by the trash man.  I immediately pulled over and looked at these five bails of  'tongue and groove' knotty pine.  I spoke with the owner of the house and he told me that they were re-doing a family room and they pulled down all of this from the walls and were throwing it out.  I asked if I could have it and so I piled it all in my truck and went on my way.  Some of it has nails in it that I can easily take out and the wood is in excellent shape.  I now have a lot of wood that I can use to build tables, etc for my shop and elsewhere in my house.  I can't believe that I just happened to come upon such a find.  One man's trash is another's treasure and it was certainly treasure to me.  Last night I ripped my first piece to make a pen/pencil holder for my daughter that fits in her desk drawer.  She was psyched and so was I!

     When you say 'reclaimed lumber' do you just drive around looking for it? Thanks...

   Regards,

   Buzzsaw

1. 
   rodknee | Feb 09, 2004 09:23pm | #4

   Hi Buzzsaw,

   when I get low on lumber I will go throughout the endless small towns around this area (Southern West Virginia) and look for old barns, leantoos, houses etc.  When I find one that might be considered for "unbuilding" I go and ask the owner and tell them I'll take it down in exchange for the lumber and I'll usually try to talk them into hauling off or burning the trash.  Some I get and some I don't.  I will also put ads in a Local paper around here. 

   I started doing this just trying to make money on the side mainly looking for wormy chestnut only.  But I couldn't find any decent buyers and decided just to start working the wood myself.

   Also, As you said, If I see some old lumber lying in someones yard I'll stop and ask.  And it's not below me to look through palletts and take the ones I find most pleasing to the eye. You would be suprized at some of the wood you can find in pallets.

   I would rather tear down a barn and denail it all before paying the outrageous prices for a piece of oak @ Lowes.  Plus I like the look of the old growth lumber better with all it's worm and nail holes.

   Overall I think it's the point of taking something old, ugly and being ready to be discarded and turn it into a nice new product.

   Thanks Rodknee

1. 
   Buzzsaw | Feb 09, 2004 09:33pm | #5

   Rodknee,

     That is great.  It is hard to describe to someone the exhiliration I felt when I saw that lumber on the sidewalk and could have it for $0. I recently bought some maple at HD and I paid $2.65 a board foot.  That adds up real fast. So finding wood, even though it was knotty pine, was so satisfying to me.  Now I can dress is up, get rid of the nails, and I have much wood for projects that I would have had to pay for. Thanks for the ideas and I do have an F150 truck that I can use to haul away wood so that will come in handy.  I'm going to make sure I open my eyes a lot wider now going through the towns I travel through. Thanks for your reply to my post...

     By the way, I am a novice, but looking at your pictures it could certainly be maple.  It really resembles the maple that I bought for the project I'm currently working on.  The pattern in the wood is very similar...Regards,

   Buzzsaw

1. 
   rodknee | Feb 09, 2004 09:57pm | #7

   Yeah buzzsaw,

   The stuff you make out free wood always looks better!   But I am a novice as well and a previous poster has got me wondering about the wood being beech.

   Just to show you some of the lumber I have gotten from pallets here are two different pics.  I like to make picture frames the best so far so this is what they are. But I am really just trying to show the grain of this mystery wood not the frames. I have no idea about what kind of wood it is.   It favors oak somewhat but I think that it is not.  My camera is bad so sorry for a bad pic.

   
1. 
   jonsherryl | Feb 10, 2004 12:19am | #8

   Rod, I think the wood in your picture frame IS oak, but probably one of the tropical "live" oaks, which are not ring-porous oaks like our native temperate species...Do you know where the pallets came from? If they are coming up from Mexico (where the Liberals say all our manufacturing jobs have now gone), then there's a good chance it's one of their native live oaks. Mexico has more species of oaks than any other country in the world....somewhere around 120 species, which is twice as many as we have in the USA, but they are almost all tropical, diffuse-porous species. While these Mecican species have oak's typical large rays, they don't have the same figure as our northern oaks. In fact, except for the rays, they don't have much figure at all.

   Edited 2/9/2004 4:27:07 PM ET by Jon Arno

2. 
   rodknee | Feb 10, 2004 01:40am | #9

   Thanks Jon for responding,

   No, I am not sure as to the origin of the pallets other than they came from an electrical supply store ( State Electric Supply Co).   This wood is extremly dense.  I don't think I saw any "pores" in the cut end grains when I was putting this together.

   Here is a photo (bad photo) of a side of a lamp that I made using this wood.  I tried to get as close as I could so that you could see the grain better.  But I don't reckon it turned out so well.

   Anyway thanks to you an' everyone else who has helped me out.

   Rodknee

   Edited 2/9/2004 6:36:17 PM ET by rodknee

   Edited 2/9/2004 6:41:59 PM ET by rodknee

   
3. 
   JsHerbel | Feb 10, 2004 02:44am | #10

   Now that looks like white oak to me. Goes to show that identification of wood via photos on a computer is almost futile.

4. 
   jonsherryl | Feb 10, 2004 03:08am | #11

   Rod, I still think this second mystery wood is probably a tropical  oak. Two clues that might help you confirm this would be: 1) does the wood have a tannin scent similar to our native oaks?...and, 2) looking at the smoothly shaved end grain with 10X magnification, do the pores form radial chains? In other words, do they radiate out between and parallel to the rays, looking something like the rizing bubbles in a glass of chamagne? These two features are typical of the tropical oaks.

   As for your original mystery wood, I think the clue that is leading some of our Knotheads to suspect it is beech are the ray bands on the edges of a couple of the boards in your first photo. They do look very much like beech, but maple also displays ray bands like this on the perfectly radial surface. In fact, the ray pattern in maple is very much like beech, except the rays tend to be much smaller. I think the better clue is to look closely at the flatsawn (tangential) surface as shown in your second photo. If it's beech, the ray flecks (in cross section) on this surface will be readily apparent. I can't see them in the photo, but it could be just the lighting...so, look closely. In beech, the ray flecks will be very plentiful and will appear as short dark dashes, about 1/8" long. On maple, they form the same pattern, but they are so faint (about 1/64" to 1/32" long) that you almost need magnification to see them. Also, while you'd need confirmed samples of both of these woods to make the comparison, beech is a much coarser textured wood than is maple.

   It would also be a very helpful clue to know where you are located. Since you mention that some of the salvaged wood you are finding is chestnut, you obviously live somewhere east of Missouri, but some north-south coordinates would be helpful. If you are in the northeast, beech or maple would be the most likely candidates...but if you are somewhere in the southeast there are some other species that look like the wood in your photos that would also be typical timbers you might run across as beams in an old barn. For example, white gum (the sapwood of sweetgum) also looks very much like your mystery wood.     

   Edited 2/9/2004 7:16:46 PM ET by Jon Arno

4. 
   jonsherryl | Feb 09, 2004 09:42pm | #6

   Rodknee, I suspect you are guessing right on this wood being maple. At least the board on the extreme right of your second photo looks like maple...but what can you tell us about the history of this wood? In other words, how old of a structure did it come out of and what part of the country is it from?

1. 
   rodknee | Feb 10, 2004 03:13am | #12

   Jon,

   The wood in the pic is all from the same board.  It came from an old barn in the most southern hills in mercer co, west virginia.  I would estimate the barn to have been around 50 to 75 years old.  I have tried to take another pic of the frame after it has been put together to give a better aspect of the wood, but I don't think you will be able to get alot out of it.  Its not a good picture.    I have put a coat of BLO on it, so between the camera and the BLO the color is distorted through the picture here.  It is somewhat lighter than this in person.

   Thanks for all of your help,

   Rodknee

   
1. 
   jonsherryl | Feb 10, 2004 03:36am | #13

   Rod, this latest photo of the entire frame doesn't help much with respect to the anatomy of the wood...but what are those dark spots? If they're nail holes, they may offer another clue that it may be an oak. Oak is high in tannin and tannin reacts with iron to form dark (virtually black) pigments.

   ...Also, on the first mystery wood, now that we have the West Virginia location, you should be able to rule out sweetgum. It's probably maple or beech and the size of the ray flecks on the flatsawn surface ought to let you know which it is.

1. 
   rodknee | Feb 10, 2004 05:48am | #14

   Jon,

   The full frame photo is the 1st mystery wood (maple).  There are tiny small dashes as you said on the face which is seen in that particular picture.  there are no dashes on the face that you see in the picture that are an 1/8th inch long.  They are much more  smaller than that, probably like a 64th or so.  So going on what you had said, I think it would be maple.

   Now about the mystery oak.  It did have a heavy smell of tanin, like oak does.  It does discolor with nails in it, makes real dark spots.  As for the end grain 10x magnification, I am not sure all my stock is at the workshop which is at my uncle's house.  (don't have my own workshop yet, still living in an apartment)

   Thanks again Jon,

   Rodknee

1. 
   jonsherryl | Feb 10, 2004 07:00am | #15

   Rod, it sounds like you are on your way to solving both of these mysteries...but just for future reference, make a mental note of that fleck pattern on the flatsawn surface of maple. It is also one of the better clues for separating maple from birch. And I don't think any woodworker has ever made it all the way to Valhalla without bumping into a "is it birch, or is it maple (?)" problem at one time or another.

   Birch differs from maple in that its rays tend to be of the same color as the background tissue...so, birch seldom reveals that fine ray fleck on the flatsawn surface. 

   Edited 2/9/2004 11:30:47 PM ET by Jon Arno