What is it

[Ron Wenrich]

Here's some more of Roscoe's pictures:





I ain't buying black locust.  I'm leaning more to the elm. 

I've got some ash I can't split with a maul, even though ash is supposed to be easy to split.  I've split some hickory with ease, even though its supposed to be hard to split.  I even had some elm that was easy to split. 

[PoDunk]

I just took these pictures of a BL log that was in my wood pile, me and dad just cut around 30 cord of this about a month and a half ago.
In the picture of the split log you can see the maul that I just used to split it and two hits made three pieces of firewood about 24" long with a lite swing.
The wood darkens to a dark honey color after its exposed to the air for a week or two.
Looks like the same stuff to me.
One thing I have noticed is the bark frome a young tree looks different from an older tree and also varies depending where its located on the tree.... but im for sure no expert !

[WDH]

With the additional pics, I am with Ron.  Definitely not black locust.  With that cinnamon color just under the outer bark, it looks sassafrassy.

[SwampDonkey]

WDH, that's what I came up with at first. It's not fresh cut and I detected some stain in an earlier picture.

[stonebroke]

That would have made a very good fence post or several  !!

Stonebroke

[WDH]

BTW, awesome pics, PoDunk  .

[Ron Wenrich]

I've noticed the smell of a freshly split piece of this.....reminds me of the odor of the holding pen on the dairy, on a wet day, after the Holsteins were all milked and gone!!!

If it was sassafras, I doubt he would have used that discription of the way it smells. 

[WDH]

Yep, cows and sassafras are not all that compatible  .  Maybe it is a cow oak  . 

Well, that would be appropriate I guess, but it is definitely not a cow oak (swamp chestnut oak).

[SwampDonkey]

Well, depends and you guys have more experience with those species than me. But, if it were not fresh and laid about a few months to get stain, I believe it would stink or go sour a bit no matter what it was.

[Ron Wenrich]

Not true.  I've sawn sassafras that's been cut over a year.  It doesn't stink.  Same goes for the other dense hardwoods.  The only ones that have a natural stinkyness are black gum and elm.  Oak that have bacterial infections will also stink, but without it there is no sour smell.  If tulip poplar is cut during the hot summer, it will turn sour, but the sapwood will also turn color.  Even then, it doesn't have a barnyard smell.

[SwampDonkey]

Maple and yellow birch turn sour and can smell it in the house when my wood is stacked. It's not a pungent smell, but different from when it was first sawed. It does dissipate when it dries good though. As far as sassafras you would know more about it than I. Sassafras is suppose to have a spicy smell to the bark I guess. Anyway, my guess is still sassafras or elm, but not black locust. I know elm does stink like a horse stall. But they used elm on the floor under horse stalls up here.


Ron, that darn edit button had me editing your post by mistake. I put it back though, I think.

[WDH]

If it is elm, then the latewood pores will be arranged in distinct wavy bands.  It should be easy with that test to determine if it is elm.

[Ron Wenrich]

Does this help?

 

On the right hand side there is some end grain of a piece of wood. I don't know if its from the same tree, but it isn't oak.  Kinda looks like elm.  I'm pulling these out of Roscoe's gallery. 

[SwampDonkey]

Here's the pore ribbon pattern in American elm. Can't mistake it I don't think. Should be similar in other elms. Latewood is fairly narrow in this sample, can see where the larger earlywood pores fade out toward the end of each ring. The an abrupt line and a new set of early wood pores in the succeeding growth increment.

[roscoe234]

i haven't been around for the past few...but appreciate all the work you guys are doing on this......wish i could help more....Ive seen some talk about the wood Ive shown been cut for awhile......i split and photographed it same day it was cut.... i have noticed it has turned a bit of a tan color since.
I remember the elm at home in mo as a kid.   my dad had a special name for it....indicative of the moisture within...  ....it would not split...You could lose your ax in it!!  I'm wondering if other elms are the same.....

I don't think I'm gonna buy elm based on the fact that I split most of it with an ax; even the pieces that were like 24" diam.

Nevertheless...I've gotten super curious now.  My new plan of attack....find where Pedro cut this tree...talk to his customer see what I can find out......Maybe that tree had a sibling and leaves are coming soon here .....I'll let ya'z  know!

[pineywoods]

could be catalpa, yeah they do get that big...

[Brian Beauchamp]

Looks like a pecan to me. Bark is highly variable between varieties, but can almost have a black walnut resemblance at times. Wood can be kind of stinky, too. The bird pecks in his gallery show the layered tendency of the bark as well. If you scrape off the bark with a knife or just pick at it, I bet it will come off/break apart in layers.

[SwampDonkey]

Tough sugar maple can also be a bit stringy to when splitting. It's actually quite splintery. I get a couple wheel barrels of splints from every delivery of firewood on a 1.5 cord load. The rings seem to be quite wide in one photo. Don't know the scale.

[Ron Wenrich]

I've had hickory that you couldn't even split with a maul, then I've had hickory that split like ash.  Who's to say that every elm has to be a monster to split?  Besides, we're talking Siberian elm.  I have a couple in my yard, and the bark is pretty much the same.

I'll throw another possibility out - Kentucky coffee tree.  But, I don't think it has the odor that Roscoe's talking about.

I'm not buying catalpa.  The ones I've cut have been more of a straw color with little sapwood.  I don't recall any odor. 

[SwampDonkey]

They use a lot of American elm for firewood in the Canadian prairies. Some western provinces post signs about transporting it and dutch elm. My cousin cut and split a 25 inch elm in his yard for firewood, used a splitter.