Need some help with wood identification
I've had a mystery log in my firewood pile that was a striking pink when I tried to chop it in half. I set it aside to do something interesting with so it's been sitting in wet conditions for several winters.
This is what it looks like now after I've taken a slice off of the end. These are a couple small bowls I made out of the slice: 1 2 3 4 5.
Posted Mar 12, 2014, 2:57 PM UTC
17
Where are you located? The answer to your question is really dependent on your location.
If you're in Africa, there's pink ivory. Then there's Tasmanian pink myrtle. There might be other exotics (to me in the states, at least) that might be possible. If you're in the states it could be beech, birch, cherry, apple, dogwood or even red oak (although I'd rule that one out because grain doesn't look right).
As a side note to the OP and anyone else reading this: when asking for the ID of a particular type of wood, please post the location for where the wood was found, and pictures of the bark if possible. Those two bits of information are extremely helpful for determining the identification of mystery logs/woods.
For other help, feel free to browse The Wood Database for other information about the woods of the world.
Are you saying that it's extremely likely that someone living in the United States doesn't have a rare African tree growing in their backyard?
Preposterous!
It looks most like honey locust to me.
If the OP is from California or Florida, I wouldn't rule anything out. You never know. I was leaning towards honey locust myself, it just didn't make my list above.
I'm in Colorado but I doubt it's a native species. There really isn't any bark remaining since it's been outside for at least six years. The wood pile came with the house when I bought it.
There are an awful lot of two and three inch branches off shooting from a relatively small log. Round about seven offshoots of that size in two feet of log along with a dozen smaller branches. Its not particularly heavy but the grain seems quite tight and more resistant to tools than some figured maple I have.
Local species that I have nearby would include apple, cherry, apricot, Siberian elm, and cottonwood. I have some apple from some other trees on my property but those logs appear much more brown than pink.
I'd lean more towards the apple or cherry. It looks much too dark to be cottonwood or elm. Apricot might be a possibility if you've got a number of them around you. Do you remember smelling anything in particular when you were trying to work it?