Hey makers. Looking for some help ID’ing this hardwood.
Tree was grown in Kansas. Ring-porous. Very light yellow/gold in color. Hard to tell where the sapwood ends and the heartwood begins.
Here’s the end grain:
Here’s the bark:
Here’s some of the small boards I milled next to other species for comparison. Left I know is Hackberry. Center is the mystery wood. Right is Maple.
Here’s a small box I made, with a hardwax finish:
Thanks!
How heavy is it? How did it work? Has an oakish look to me, but a little to even and muted pink… elm?
Its quite heavy. Its more dense than any red oak I have. Its close in density to Honey Locust, not as dense as Osage Orange.
Machines just fine. No odor to the dust. Easier to work than Osage Orange but harder to plane than say Maple.
Grain and endgrain alone I would think its some kind of Ash (although its more gold than I’ve seen Ash to be). But the bark does not match any examples of Ash tree bark I’m finding.
Its not Elm, its harder and doesn’t have the smell. That small box is part of a set, the large box here is Red Elm and this mystery wood:
My money is on hickory.
On Thu, Nov 16, 2023, 12:06 PM Michael Champlin via MakeICT Forum <noreply@talk.makeict.org> wrote:
| MichaelChamplin MakeICT Member
November 16 |
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Hey makers. Looking for some help ID’ing this hardwood.
Tree was grown in Kansas. Ring-porous. Very light yellow/gold in color. Hard to tell where the sapwood ends and the heartwood begins.
Here’s the end grain:
Here’s the bark:
Here’s some of the small boards I milled next to other species for comparison. Left I know is Hackberry. Center is the mystery wood. Right is Maple.
Here’s a small box I made, with a hardwax finish:
Thanks!
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Hickory, good chance. It’s America’s superior answer to ash.
What do we think about Tree of Heaven?
An invasive species that has some presence in the state.
Ailanthus | The Wood Database (Hardwood).
I found a picture of the tree before it was felled.
Are you asking if it’s likely that? I didn’t read the article, but the snipit says Mid-Atlantic and your first post says it’s grown here.
Sorry. Link has a map that shows the species has some egress into Kansas.
I think Ailanthus makes the most sense of
I have prior no experience with this species, it was suggested to me by a Facebook group.
Ailanthus does have a significant presence in Kansas, mostly as an escapee from household planting going back over 100 years.
But, it has a very soft pith, rather than any true heart wood. It’s also very light weight and has a smoother, thinner and lighter colored ‘bark’. The ability to push out the pithy core makes it useable for making whistles.
As noted in the linked article, it’s noticable odor gives it a nickname of ‘stinking sumac’ and around here I’ve heard it called skunk wood.
Edit: Apparently some people call the smell ‘nutty’, but I can say that to me it’s very skunky.
I’m not really what to compare the smell, but those trees sure do stink. And I have heard they’re very invasive.
I can say that the color of hickory can vary greatly from tree to tree (including all/nearly-all blond). It’s hard as #&!!. As hard or harder than Orange Osage in my anecdotal experience, machining well, but sanding with difficulty.
The darkness and texture of the bark made me think persimmon. I had such a tree once in college hill [i think its still there but in the back yard]. But i’ve never seen the plank wood other than branches it dropped. It was defs a hardwood. But not osage orange strandy. [Learned from sawing off broken branch stubs].
Your sample isnt yellow enuf for hickory imo, but Ive seen a lot of cabinetwood samples claiming to be hickory. And it was whiter than I expected, AND had lots of dark contrasts in the wood. Really dark contrasts.
I worked in a woodshop in college and learned that there are lots of difficult wood Identification opportunities. But save the bark as that will likely be the clincher imo.
My money is on persimmon, but unless I can handle it, Im just guessing from the bark photo. And I have no idea where you might buy such wood. Maybe a treefall timber rescue?
Btw, persimmons require male and female, and often cant survive Kansas winters in the open. Ours was nestled between garage and house. Protected. And across the fence from the biggest magnolia Ive seen in these parts … so a protected space.
Persimmon is in the ebony family. I had one in my backyard too, and the bark on mine was deep deep, almost 2" thick with lots of deep splits in it. My neighbor used to make wine from the fruit. Unfortunately it had taken on some sort of disease and was punky throughout when I felled it so I couldn’t tell you what the wood was like. I did manage to keep a wormy burl that I hope to turn one day though.
We called ours “The popcorn tree”. The blooms were about the right size and color, and after they were done, they fell onto our driveway like a gentle rain of popcorn. So much fermenting nectar, and many bees could be found, drunk on the driveway. It was hilarious. “Go sleep it off girl. Make more honey tomorrow”.
We swept up bushels of “popcorn” for weeks and it made the best compost too". No other trees nearby so we never saw fruit. Altho my Mom sais she had seen some along with pawpaw trees when she was a kid.
Another “black bark tree” would be russian olive.
Remembering my days of identifying all the local trees by their leaves for botany class, never learned to look at the wood sadly.
