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Patrick Baxter of Lanarkshire Hardwoods didn't hesitate - elm. I queried the white sapwood and he's seen that in a number of elms in the east of Scotland area and considers it a local characteristic. Right pissed off he was that he didn't get a chance to extract it and was hopeful from the...

Hi Kirk - can you give an idea of the smell ? Or is it one of those things you can't describe and if it has a smell then think along those lines ? Being near an old house (now a ruin), it is very possible that it has been planted. The central belt of Scotland has many old houses that had...

I did mention I think that this is bough wood I am showing and up to 350mm diameter. The tree must have been 50ft high at least and it had a 30+ inch stump, so we're talking about tree wood, not large shrubs. I did wonder if the colour was the result of the tree being dead, but this is green...

Thanks for the links, Nev. I've bookmarked both. The US one with its samples of each wood type are questionable in their helpfulness - would you be able to identify sycamore or yew for instance. More use possibly in getting an idea of what a wood is like than as an identification tool. The...

OK - we can eliminate walnut ! Lovely idea but I took a sample to a hardwood woodmill in the Scottish Borders this afternoon and they produced a piece of English walnut, which is clearly a much darker and blacker brown. But they'd not seen anything like this. They put the sample log through...

Umm --- it's the middle of winter - how am I to look at leaves; and with all respect if I could have seen the leaves I would be either looking up a book or using my own identification skills. I don't think the bark is like either of oak or elm, plus of course there aren't any elms around now -...

Pictures - are these enough for identification ? I've just done a quick estimate of the amount of wood - 8" to 14" diameter - nearly a ton.

Ahh - that is interesting. Not familiar with walnut bark but memory says it is well-crinkled a bit like ash. That would well explain why the bole had disappeared so fast. Certainly the colour might well be right and walnut does have white sap wood. Good suggestion - added urgency now to get...

I've just been up to the site of an old house near Edinburgh to see what a friend of mine was talking about re. a fallen tree. He sent me because he had seen the branch wood and the stump, and had identified yew because it was brown in the centre and white sapwood. I've retrieved a 6 ft length...

Paul I'm interested but have not used a carbide tool and can only go on the favourable comments here. I have no difficulty in making my own shaft and handle, but am also unsure as to what the use of the round cutter would be. Could you expand on that for I suspect more than just I. My...

Hi Dink - I've tried searching for this guy as a Shop without success - is he a private seller ? Rob

Interesting - that I've not experienced except perhaps in fruit wood. I had some almond that cracked horrendously but from the outside in. I went back to the Wikipedia article on Wood Drying as I wondered if what you report, Chas, was due to the free moisture leaving the lumina, but no, that...

Jon - I had to go off and doodle to think about what you were saying, and pick you up on the statement above as I consider that you have it the wrong way round. If you take a large piece of round wood and look at it as it dries you do see two failure modes in operation - some woods show it much...

Thanks Chas - but I'm still wondering whether I am better to leave timber in its round form off the tree, and seal its ends, or take a chain saw with a rip chain and cut it lengthwise - and then seal it? Rob

In the UK my understanding is that the arborists and foresters do not now consider that sealing a cut branch end with sealing chemicals is good practice. The tree is perfectly capable of doing it itself. The only advantage of sealing is that it masks the colour of the freshly cut wood. The...

Perhaps we should ignore that last post - I've never seen that before; you must have said something to upset him Melinda!! Spalted beech is a curious beast - it seems to work for some shapes and uses but not others. I tried piercing some the other day and it looked awful. OK my piercing isn't...

I'm surprised that so many of you guys work with a single source of light. I picked up a couple of those Ikea ceiling quad spotlights off Ebay some time back and have one of those above the lathe - it means that I can have 4 lights spaced out and directed so that there is an excellent spread...

There's a lot of it around ! To a certain extent this came out of the Laburnum thread, but it will apply to all recovered timbers. I understand that the pith of the timber is the core of the problem and needs to be cut out ! There is I see a thread running on creating a rip saw chain for saws...

Many thanks Paul. I went back to the piece after posting the query and did make some progress. However having read your webpage, I feel that I am maturing as a turner in that I had looked at the tool and recognised the very problem you have addressed, and wondered just why it was made so deep...

Can I pick this thread back up please? I too got a Little Brother for Xmas - it was a recommendation from a professional as an inexpensive way into hollowing as I already had a HopeWoodTurning handle. The down side of going this way is that there are no instructions, and my first attempts are...