# Wood identification



## Kirch3333 (Dec 23, 2011)

Hello everybody! I work on the beach and a bunch of lumber washed ashore over the course of a couple days. Being the scavenger that I am, I loaded a bunch of it up and took it home. When I found it it was milled down to about 4"x4" and various lengths. I milled a small piece down, sanded it, and applied a little oil. Can anybody help me ID what type of wood it is? I've looked all over but couldn't find anything helpful. I make custom solid wood longboards and may use some of this to make a few (depending on whether or not it's hard enough). The right side of the piece has tung oil applied and the left side is raw. Thanks in advance.

Ryan


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## hwebb99 (Nov 27, 2012)

I'm stumped. I wonder if it could be exotic.


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## Woodychips (Oct 3, 2015)

Too hard to tell seeing how this might have come off a container ship from overseas. It has a wide grain so I would suspect that it's not a hardwood.


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## bmarshall9686 (Jan 17, 2016)

Cherry (Fruit tree)


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## maple man (Dec 21, 2012)

Cherry or ceder would be my guess


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

Looks like cypress to me.


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## Kirch3333 (Dec 23, 2011)

I was kinda leaning towards cypress or something similar too, but I still haven't been able to confirm anything. We may never know.... Thanks guys


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## jessesnowden (Mar 15, 2015)

Where is the country are you? And how hard is it? Cedar will be easy to dent with just about any tool, cherry will be notably harder to dent with the same amount of force. If you're in the pacific north west like me you only have a few likely options. Any more info would be helpful. When you cut it, what does it smell like? Haha


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## Brian T. (Dec 19, 2012)

Commonly, conifers don't have figured heart wood like that. Plus, there's no obvious and abrupt finish to each growth ring. For those reasons, I'll say not a conifer. Thus, some sort of hardwood.

Knee-jerk guess from the color patterns is Butternut (_Juglans cinerea_). There's no more than 30-40 hardwoods of commercial importance in North America. I'd need to see radial, transverse and tangential sections under a microscope for a correct ID in a minute or two. The details of anatomy are better than fingerprints.


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## Kirch3333 (Dec 23, 2011)

I've been looking around and it kinda reminds me of primavera or "white mahogany" but I still can say for sure that that's what it is.


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## Toolman50 (Mar 22, 2015)

It looks like it could be Willow. Willow is soft, but considered a hardwood. 
Like another poster has said, it could be an exotic. Hard to tell from the picture, but if its domestic, it could be Willow or Butternut. Both can have that type of grain and are soft hardwoods. Nice wood and the price is right.


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## BZawat (Sep 21, 2012)

That second pic looks a whole lot like cherry to me


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## Woodychips (Oct 3, 2015)

BZawat said:


> That second pic looks a whole lot like cherry to me


I second that. Definitely looks like cherry


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## Hwood (Oct 21, 2011)

If it's cherry I would think 1 cut would have told ya by the smell. I didn't catch where you found it. Ocean or lake. Yellow birch was my first though.


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## Steve Neul (Sep 2, 2011)

It wouldn't be difficult to find out if it was cherry. Sand or surface the wood and lay a coin on it and set it in the sun for 30 minutes and the board would darken everywhere but where the coin was.


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