Good/best wood identification source

[Rob Mercure]

Folks,

Over the past few years I've managed to acquire dozens of samples of woods - mostly from packing - that I either can't specifically or generally identify. Now this might not bother others as much but I'm the some of a Reference Librarian and I really like being able to "know" about my physical world.

Does anyone know of a good on-line source or one that I could borrow on interlibrary loan? Some of the woods are really "strange" like one that visually appears to be yellow poplar but works like sugar maple. Many of the woods are quite hard and and some tend to gum up and scorch like cherry if not carefully cut - one's almost like a cherry but the pores are too wide. I dunno.

Also about 20 years the largest University in VA traded some of their agricultural land where they were growing trees from all over the world so that a "wally world" could be built. Since the wood was just pushed up with a dozer and burned I managed to get many samples of woods and this morning one piece that looks like an acacia that I quarter sawed on my radial arm saw green 1/4" thick was still just as straight although I hadn't taken any precautions to properly dry it. (Ironically that wally world is now a Big Lots and a mega-super-duper one that replaced it is waiting it's turn at abandonment).

Too many nice little pieces of wood and just not sufficient "experts" around.

Rob

[Antonio Cotichini]

That's a job for Superman!!! There are thousands of species of wood, and hundreds of sub-species of the same specie! O.K, tonewoods for guitar making are far less, but still many. I remember a book: "Understanding Wood". I'm sure you can find dozens of on-line resources on the net. But wood isn't plastic, and the same wood should be different one piece from another. I think I'll never be able to memorize more than 10 or 15 samples!
Good luck.

[Russell Vance]

Rob,
It's not a skill that can be fully learnt from a book or looking at pictures. Having said that, the basis for studying and identifying wood is a complete understanding of its makeup, starting at: "is it hardwood or is it softwood (conifer)?" and working from there, down to a cut and smell, prepare and examine with a magnifying glass situation. It is a lot of fun but it is hard work.

To learn my first hundred types of common wood I was given a box of professional cut samples which were 'typical' of the species and examined regularly - firstly with the samples and then with 'blind' (previously unseen) samples and then with sawn/roughsawn wood. Google "wood identification" and you can find where to buy a set of samples or where do to do a course if you are interested. You can also send samples to various labs for positive ID ifn you really wish to know.

Anyway, it's a hard skill to retain, I agree fully with Antonio - these days, when I don't do as much 'hands on' I find my skills have lapsed and I'm a chump when IDing the planks!

R.

[Ron Frazier]

Good luck!!!

There is about 15 different kinds of mahogany.

I got one that I thought was and cut it and it smelled

like a swamp that some one peed ed in for years.

It went in the junk!!

If it looks good and you have enough to do your job

go for it!!!

Ron

[Rob Mercure]

Always looking for knowledge - try this one so far pretty good:

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

[Paul Hostetter]

Identifying woods by visual cues is extremely sketchy. I know: a lot of people claim to be able to discern species on sight - they are blowing hot air. I can't go into it fully here, but please believe me that if you didn't personally key out the living tree before it was harvested, you can only trust the word of the people between you and that once-living tree. Which is OK if it's a general idea, but not a wise idea if you want the gospel truth. Your only reliable identification is to employ a wood lab with a huge library of reference samples and an electron microscope, and a skilled technician who's really conversant with the basic woods you need to know about. I have a page about spruce here: http://www.lutherie.net/eurospruce.html, in case you want a glimpse of just one small but pertinent area of inquiry.

For example, there are (not is) a lot of woods that are indistinguishable from mahogany. Hardly any are actually true Swietenia mahagoni or even Swietenia macrophylla. Some aren't even from the genus Swietenia, much less a species. Most folks would never know by looking at them, and most don't know how to evaluate them directly as worthy tonewoods. In other words, sometimes knowing all the scientific details isn't particularly helpful on a practical level.

[Rob Mercure]

Paul,

Generally I agree. About 25 years ago or so I spent a couple of years making my living off the local forest doing "Timber Stand Improvement" (TSI - now called "Precommercial Thinning") which is going back to a clear cut forest 10-15 years later and "releasing" selected trees and cutting down everything else over 1." And I also helped a friend with a USFS scarlet oak selective cut and also worked with a developers while during the summer while in Graduate school cutting a lot for housing. So I had lots of opportunity to see the trees before cutting and took numerous samples home to the woodshop (during this later time is when I got to cut the exotic trees that were being pushed down.) and while I hope this doesn't sound like bragging but I think I could pretty much identify most any wood from the central Appalachians by eye and using a pocket knife (not soleley visual clues but not that terribly sophisticated either.)

But you're right that many of the world/tropical trees are very much alike and in adddition to the Swietenia sp. there are many that are "almost" Dahlbergias! But, believe it or don't, true mahogany is one of the easier ones for me as I can generally spot the "other than Swietenia" especially if I can "curl a chip" with a shart knife. What really blows me away though are the woods that really aren't like anything that I'm familiar with other than being hard, dense, and difficult to work. Like some of the ones I described in my original post or the one that looks exactly like sweet gum (Liquidamber) but is heavy and hard as hell. Or things like what I call a "maple analog" (I've actually got a book that describes almost every world maple - Acer - so I know what these aren't - not what they are). And I could go on in this vein forever.

Basically though what I want to be able to do is to identify the woods in hand sufficiently to use them on a project, such as an musical instrument, that is at least semi-precise and long term stable. It's easy to make carvings and little boxes and such with these woods and some I've very pleased with. But I'm just not sure over the long term whether glues are doing to hold nor whether I should solvent wipe them before glueing or whether wood X is compatible glued to wood Y over varying temperatures and humidities. Ah well, guess you can't have everything but I regret having a source that I can't exploit reasonably. These woods make great firewood but I've never been able, for example, to burn cherry or walnut no matter how funky the trees are. It just seems sacrilegious to waste something on a lower purpose (can you tell I was partially raised by grandparents who went through the Great Depression? ).

Rob