Birch or Maple? And, ... ?

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johnpipe108

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John Meshkoff
We were given a donation of scrap wood from a furniture factory, mostly SPF, but I noticed some end grain on some of the pallet wood (I think that's what it is; has a shallow groove along one face) that looked like hardwood. I found 5 pieces that looked interesting. Two of the pieces turned out to be maple or birch, I'm not really certain which. I think maybe birch because of the general wood color, but then I'm not very knowlegeable on wood varieties or their colors.

Here is what I think is birch or maple:

Wood-Maple-or-Birch-dscf0599.jpg


You can see that the wood is mostly heartwood; it has a sort or reddish or purplish look to the heart, and has a more white-ish overall tone than, for example, the hard maple turning square I have from Woodcraft which is more of a yellowish/orangish color.

This wood burns relatively easily when cutting on the TS as may be seen by the scorch marks on the right, and also when friction polishing at 3975 rpm (top speed on the Jet Mini) with its own shavings on the lathe.

The other wood I can't even guess; two of the uncut pieces are to the left, and surrounding are the re-sawing scraps:

Wood-smelly-dscf0600.jpg


This wood had an unusual odor when cut; can't describe it properly, sort of sickly sweetish. It's relatively heavy, comparable to the weight of the maple/birch. Knocking on either of these woods with the knuckles produces a nice, solid bell-like sound.

Any ideas which/what these are?

Thanks, John
 

Robert Arrowood

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Robert Arrowood
Not sure what kind of wood you've got. But what scare's the **** outa me is when you talk about pallet wood and lathe together. It's bed enough too catch a piece of metal with a tsaw.I hate to think what would happen if you caught a chunk of metal with a lathe tool.Man please check the wood with a metal detecter. We don't want to read about it in the accident forum.
 

johnpipe108

New User
John Meshkoff
Not sure what kind of wood you've got. But what scare's the **** outa me is when you talk about pallet wood and lathe together. It's bed enough too catch a piece of metal with a tsaw.I hate to think what would happen if you caught a chunk of metal with a lathe tool.Man please check the wood with a metal detecter. We don't want to read about it in the accident forum.

Well, I read a recent post here about a tree from someone's front yard that did major damage to a sawmill! It certainly is a good idea to be able to test foreign wood like that. At least on the lathe, though, I'm a bit safer mostly, as nearly all my hardwood turning is now done between cone centers, NO positive spur drive. When I catch, the wood simply stops turning while the lathe runs merrily onward.

When I got my first lathe and started my Irish Uilleann pipe project 25 years ago, I sent one of my first drone pieces against the ceiling from a catch (spur center drive, didn't know any other way then), probably tried to cut from the small to the larger diamter. The piece broke, and I had to start another. Scary when that happens; I still get startled every time there's a catch, but aside from possible damage to the work, nothing else happens.

Thank you for being concerned,

regards, John
 

johnpipe108

New User
John Meshkoff
looks like gum to me

hmm, I'll have to look up gum and see what's said about it. I did finally get to visit luthier Bruce Sexauer and showed him the wood, and he thought, from the sort of greenish cast, that it could be poplar, as he once made a dresser of poplar and thought this looked about the same. No positive ID yet, though.

Neither of us could decide if the other was maple or birch; however, I made my Uilleann pipes main stock from something I think is birch, and the grain on that is more open than this stuff, so I'm betting on the other being maple for now.

He also looked at my rosewood collection, and identified some as cocobolo, and most of the rest is likely Brazilian rosewood (which he said makes sense coming from Mexico, as they use a lot of that there).

====================================================

:oops: My bad! I've gotten a little confused here; I'm sometimes cognitively challenged, and confused and mixed two woods here. I took a closer look at the actual wood, and realized I had two different woods I took to be maple/birch; and looked for gum descriptions and I think you may be right on that. So, altogether I have 3 varieties -- looks like poplar, red gum (found out that's the heartwood of the same tree that's sweet gum IIRC) and maple.

The gum shows tiny dark holes, from gum worms? And I took a closer look at the end grain, very distinctive color patterns, similar to some of the pix here:

http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/gum.htm

One of the other things that misled me was "birds eye-like" spots seen from a certain angle on one side. Thanks very much for the gum suggestion; looks like you cracked that piece :icon_thum

John

p.s. I've also got to be able to re-saw rough pieces of rosewood, so I am going to have to surrender to purchasing a small bandsaw; that will also be a little safer for re-sawing "foreign" wood with. So, I think I'll hold off on most re-sawing until I get the BS, except for the wood I know came from the mill.
 
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