Thread: timber identify thanks

Originally Posted by rusel

Hi
Found these skirting boards at the tip the other day, it is heavy and straight, cuts cleanly when routed.


The photo of the face is after a belt sanding of 80 grit.
Thanks for any input.


Russell

It's pretty hard to get any idea of the true colour of that timber from the photos. If you could try the photos again, but this time take them outside under sunlight. I suspect that the indoor lighting in your workshop, combined with the Internet's difficulties in rendering accurate colours on everyone's monitors, is combining to make the photo of the face of the board look very brown/purpleish. I suspect that the timber colour in the end grain shot may be closer to the true colour, but not sure.

Photos taken under sunlight will help provide more accurate colours which will help our timber experts to possibly identify the timber for you. Also - it would help them to know what region of Australia you found the Timber in.

Regards,

RoyG

Could be jarrah...
TM

+1 for Jarrah

Can't help you identify it, but love the fact that you got it from the tip. Now that's proper recycling!

Some more photos of better quality as RoyG suggested. Reminds me of a old computer term GIGO.


Would a single thread maybe a sticky with photo and presentation suggestion at the start be a good idea for timber identification?
That way there would be a list of timbers photos in one thread and one might find there timber in there............

Thanks for your best guess.

Cant saw what wood (stringybark perhaps) but there was quite a bit of logging in the Blue Mountains in times pasts. A lot of the older houses will have local timber in them. I have seen similar at the Lawson recycled timber yard.
Regards
John

Originally Posted by rusel

......Would a single thread maybe a sticky with photo and presentation suggestion at the start be a good idea for timber identification?
That way there would be a list of timbers photos in one thread and one might find there timber in there......

rusel, this idea has been proposed a few times, and it may seem like a good idea, but I'm afraid such a thread is liable to create far more heat than light! Take a look at any thread where someone has put up a pic & asked for id, and in most cases, you'll note a very wide range of 'identifications' given.

I've said this before, but identifying wood from it's superficial appearance is a mug's game. Why do you think so many different woods from widely different species get the same common name?

Most species have quite a range of colours and grain patterns. You could show a few 'typical' boards, but you would really need lots of pics to cover all the possibilities for most species. So many woods can look alike in a picture, & most of the time, the best even a very knowledgeable person can do is put up a few suggestions (in fact, the more knowledgeable the person is, the more cautious they usually are! ). There are, indeed, a few woods that are so characteristic and so constant that you can identifying a board with some confidence, but they are very much in the minority in this country.

Within a given locality, you can become very skilled at spotting what's what, and can maybe even separate species that are very close, but even very skilled folk are sometimes fooled. Some of the old sleeper-cutters I knew could outfox the canniest inspector, on occasion. To id a piece of wood to a level that will stand up in court, you need the skills of a good detective and a thorough knowledge of wood anatomy, & even then, you may only be able to place it in a broad category if you don't know exactly where it came from. Perhaps the only truly incontestable id in many cases is to get a botanist's identification of the tree it came out of...

Not much help to you, I know, but at least it might explain why you get a few different answers....
Cheers,

Meet up with a woody mate and he confirmed it as Jarrah.
But thanks to those who had a go.

uploadfromtaptalk1469344870922.jpg

Hello, im just wondering if anyone knows what type of timber this is, i orginally thought it was some hardwood, or cypress? The section is 250x150mm and has quite a musky smell to it. Cheers.

Sent from my SM-G925I using Tapatalk