red maple?

[spencerhenry]

i mill alot of old handhewn beams from old barns in the east and south. a wood i have run across with some frequency that is very tight grained, has a pinkish color to it, small knots if any, a sweet fruity smell when milled, can be heavy like oak, mills very nicely. i think it is red maple. i found a piece of bark on a timber the other day, it is light gray about 3/16" thick vertical lines in it.
i dont know my hardwoods very well, but i would guess it to be a maple of sorts. others out here where we dont have hardwoods have suggested hackberry, or beech. i have no experience with those species.
i want to gather up this stuff, and make it into flooring.

tried to upload a photo, but was unsuccesful.

[Tom]

Could be Sycamore too. keep trying with the Photo. 

[SwampDonkey]

Not red oak or cherry? Cherry has faint smell of almond, pinkish wood, but not  gray bark. Red oak has gray-green bark and kinda striped, pinkish wood, no smell much. Younger red maple has smooth gray bark, no smell and white wood. Can be kinda striped though until it gets old when it started getting real flaky bark that you can see the rings in as it weathers.

[Dale Hatfield]

No smell to Red Oak ??

[SwampDonkey]

An oak smell I suppose, nothing distinct to tell one from another. They say butternut has no smell. Stick a piece of fresh cut butternut under my nose or some fresh shavings and I can tell blind folded. Same with white ash. Can't believe all ya read in text books. :D

[Daren]

Red maple is kinda soft and no smell really. Pinkish and small knots says honeylocust to me ?

[spencerhenry]

while i dont know my hardwoods very well, i am NOT a newbie to wood. it is not cherry, it is definitely not oak of any kind. has bark that looks somewhat like maple, very tight grained like some maple. remember these timbers that i am cutting are OLD with square iron nails, hand hewn, mortise pockets, etc...  some are also large timbers, like 30 feet long and 12" square, looks like from trees at 2' in diameter or so. i know that very old doug-fir has a very different smell than freshly cut doug-fir. i grew up in the midwest, i dont recognize it from anything we had on our property. we had oaks red and white, several species of pine, soft maple, poplar, birch, cherry, etc...
i have never seen a beech tree, honey locust, osage orange, or much else not listed above. now, you ask me what kind of wood we have here, and i can tell you the trees from a mile out, or the wood at a quick glance.

[metalspinner]

Sweetgum, perhaps?