Thread: Wood identification help!

Red Cedar

Looks like Red Cedar.
Does it dent easily with a finger nail it so that's the stuff.

Cheers

Steve

Its fairly hard stuff (can't dent it with a finger nail), reasonably heavy too..

I don't think its red cedar as he works with it fairly regularly and has a truck load of it from his days on the carriage ways and this stuff is pretty different (although it does look similar).

Not sure, but it may possibly be an import, i initially thought it may have been sapelle, but after i compared it to the sapelle i had it seem too redish.

I'm having trouble getting definition on the grain up close (need new glasses I guess) but I would appear to have a fine zig zag pattern to the grain. You say it's firm... 4 on a scale of 6? And reasonably heavy... say 735 kg/m3?

Colours right, sapwood is right, grain is right if I'm seeing correctly... if the hardness and weight are in the range and match sized splinter burns to ash I'd call it Red Touriga. If not it's possibly one of the other callophylums... there's a few of them, 4 in FNQ plus others that get imported from PNG and South East Asia irregulary.

Lappy,

I agree that it is not red cedar as red cedar is ring porous and that does not look to be. The boards look fairly wide (+250?) and are quarter sawn, so from a fairly large tree and stable too if the boards aren't sprung. These features, the grain structure and colour suggest mahogany (Sweitennia sp.) There seems to be remnant bandsawing marks on the face which seems to be how most of the mahogany was cut which arrived in Australia in the 80's. The presence of sapwood in the boards is unusual though for mahogany imported to Australia. If it is mahogany the air dry density should be around 530 kg/m^3. You may be able to find burning splinter tests for mahogany and the touriga and callophyllum that John suggested and use these to eliminate candidate species.

Happy investigating, cheers Timboz

Meranti (shorea)?

Hi Glen,
I'm not sure either, & it seems to be to redish , but I thought of Myrtle.

Hard o tell from photos, but it certainly could be Blackwood. ? PAUL.

Probably mahogany, looks just like red cedar but more brown and harder and sought after for cabinet work

On second thought it does look a bit like African Mahogany(Khaya).

Hi All - thanks for your responses I greatly appreciate it!

The red was bugging me today so i skimmed a bit off with a hand plane (nice with a blade), its a lovely brown underneath, possibly it had just darkened over the years on the outer layer.
I have a strong feeling that it is going to be a mahogany of some form as suggested, on parts of the board it has a lovely fiddleback and flame.

It is quite a large board to measuring just over 300mm by 50mm by 4 metres... going to have to see if he'll let me have it.. and put it to good use!

Now just to try and figure out what type of mahogany!

Thanks again
Glenn