Picking Jarrah from a Jarrah and Karri rack

[gmcginty]

Much to my delight, my local Salvage yard has a constant supply of 8x2 Jarrah and Karri boards but I find it difficult to pick Jarrah. All boards are rough sawn but fairly clean.

I've heard a few techniques like:
1) snap a very small piece of jarrah in your fingers and it will snap clean. Karri being a longer type grain will not snap easy or will snap but not seperate.
2) Burn Jarrah and get white ash, Burn Karri and get black ash. Starting a fire in a wood yard doesn't go down that well !!!

None of tese techniques are easy to do or fool proof.

Any Ideas.

Regards
Greg

[Robert WA]

Drive a splinter of each into different fingers. The Jarrah splinter will cause pain, the Karri splinter will cause the finger to drop off.

Place a piece of each in the ground. The white ants will go to the Karri.

Does that help?

[ubeaut]

From my experience burning is the only way.

All you need is a fine splinter of the wood and a match light the splinter and it will be very quickly obvious which wood it is.

[Pete J]

So which does what when burnt????

[macca2]

Hi..............burning a small splinter is still the best method but contrary to what gmcginty said, you will find that it is Karri that burns to white ash and Jarrah will burn to a black ash.

You don't need more than a small shaving from the edge of the 4x2 etc with a knife and a box of matches. Not much chance of burning down the woodyard with this method

Macca

[craigo]

Always looking for timber in Perth, where do you buy your timber.