Identify wood from the end grain of a board/log

[beenthere]

elm

[Dodgy Loner]

beenthere beat me to it!  Can't really tell what species it it without looking at the endgrain.  I'm guessing it's a hard elm, because the earlywood pores look really small (especially in the second picture), but it could be an American elm.

[SwampDonkey]

It is elm. Here is the end grain if you want to try to narrow it down.

[Ironman]

I knew it was Elm, I knew it was Elm.  Hard Elm I reckon.  Those fine, tight rings are a dead giveaway.

[SwampDonkey]

The give away is the ribbon pattern of the latewood pores. It is American white elm, which have more dense pore ribbon pattern, making it a less dense elm than others. It was my grandfather's tree in his yard. Used to be a lot of big elms there and out at the mouth of the river were islands covered in big elms. The hydro dam was built down river in Beechwood, some 25 miles, and it flooded the islands in the 60's and killed the island elms. The stumps are still visible in the dry season when the water gets shallower and also at times when the hydro dam just above there has only one spill gate open.

[spencerhenry]

can anybody post a shot of chestnut? i cut alot of reclaimed material, but dont know what half of it is. chestnut is super valuable so it might be good for me to be able to identify it.

[SwampDonkey]

Try this.

http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/chestnut.htm



The site was suggested earlier by a member and posted in Indentifying Hardwoods, uses and properties

[spencerhenry]

thanks, thats what i needed. i was looking online yesterday and found a great synopsis of the lessons that you have been teaching here. i found it on the university of tennessee website.http://www.utextension.utk.edu/publications/pbfiles/pb1692.pdf

[SwampDonkey]

Ferric salt painted on the sapwood of maples will differentiate the "soft" maples from the "hard" maple groups. Blue stain indicates soft maple and green stain indicated hard maple. I'm thinking any fertilizer that controls moss growth and containing FERROUS SULPHATE will do the trick, I have not tried it.

[Tom]

I wonder if rusty water would work as good?   Putting rusty water on oak, or even touching it with wet iron, causes iron tannate (the black stain).

[SwampDonkey]

You could experiment Tom, but they say it has be a ferric salt and I was trying to find online what the product name might be. I came up with the fertilizer for now. I think the rusty water will most likely turn it black like the oaks. I'll have to look into it further, maybe something in the Wood Handbook or the Wood Tech Book.

[SwampDonkey]

I'm pretty sure from looking further it has to be the Fe +2 cation of iron in a compound known as Copperas (FERROUS SULPHATE) and is copper green. Here is a Wiki link to the compound. Basically, the hard maple won't react with a color change. It's applied to the green (wet) sapwood. I did see in this Wiki link that it's used on maple wood to make a silvery hue. Did anyone ever hear tell this use? I never did, and why would you want your maple to look silvery?  Maybe they mean to turn it weathered looking. Anyway, it's in the fertilizer to control moss, at 17 % concentration or there abouts. I'll see if i can get some to try.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron(II)_sulfate

[SwampDonkey]

I saw your thread a while back Haywood and if you had a scanner and zoomed into a tiny section covering 3 or 4 rings and scanned at the highest setting we might have had a better crack at it. Trouble with the forum size limits it's not crisp clear enough sometimes to see the physical aspects. A picture might look clear enough, but it washes out the rays and pores. 

[Jeff]

I simply HATE to remove the links to your photos, but I can't make exceptions for one member and not the others without adversely affecting the future of the Forestry Forum. We have a rule about the photos and there are many reasons why.

5 years from now I expect the Forestry Forum to be here. At least I truly hope it is, and I think many of you do as well. I expect to still be taking care of it. I expect to still be protecting all of the photos that create the hearts of the posts where they appear.  I cannot expect any other person on this forum to protect their photo posting areas outside of the Forestry Forum with the fervor that I will protect them with here. Its not responsible of me to, as its none of my business what you do with your photos that reside somewhere else. Given that fact, I must also protect the ideal that I hope people will still be able to post photos on the Forestry Forum 5 or even 10 or however many years from now the way they can now. When ever they want, when ever they need to. In order to do that, space has to be reserved, so thus the size restrictions that must be maintained and have been maintained over almost the last decade.

I feel bad when ever I remove someone's photo links, because I know they are simply trying to share. I know I would feel worse if I was to go to old threads from years ago to find that the information within them was destroyed because I was unable to protect it because through my own neglegt I allowed it to exist somewhere else other then under our protection here.