Ben, great question! To be honest, I'm not sure. The wood in the picture is sweetgum. It's from a few trees I had in the backyard that I wanted to remove. Many of the resawn pieces went into making a small circular tabletop for our front porch and I had a few leftover and this quick and easy candle project came to mind. I cut the trees in the fall when the sap had stopped flowing which increases the odds that the bark will stay adhered and they dried stickered in my garage shop with reasonably good airflow for about 10 months. MC was about 12 to 14% when I started working the resawn pieces. For a finish, I soaked (by spraying, not dipping) the edges using Shellac (in a can from Zinsser). I hit the bark on both sides 3 or 4 times with the Shellac and then did 2 more coats of Shellac over the entire project (bottom too). The one in the picture was done about 6 months ago and the bark shows absolutely no signs of going anywhere. I know woods like walnut and basswood have a good reputation for strong bark adherence and woods like hickory do not. No idea where sweetgum falls on the spectrum but so far, so good for mine. I don't have any more trees to take down at the moment and I'd really like to make half a dozen or more of these to give out to family and friends. Finding wood on this forum has always been great but I haven't been able to find any postings for logs that I can resaw.