Help! Wood identification

[Linus]

Can I hurl this one at the combined knowledge of this forum? With the passing of a friend's father, I acquired a quantity of unidentified turning blanks going back to offcuts from the ark! I am stumped by this one below so any help welcomed.

The blank is 150mm dia x 65mm deep. It weighs 508g at 11% moisture. I planed the side off and it looks like bright copper and reflects light beautifully off the rays. It feels heavier than balsa wood but not a lot. By my calculations (dodgy I imagine) I make it 442Kg/cu metre. The shavings look like Goldilocks curls!

Any clues?

 

[adidat]

Sapele or meranti

Adidat

 

[Linus]

Sapele or meranti

Adidat

It's not that heavy and the shavings are like lambs wool!

 

[Ttrees]

Meranti from the last pic, long pores and scratches may suggest so..
Looks a bit light in the pics, what does a wet shaving look like, should go dark red
as well as it would be a bit softer than iroko or sapele.

 

[adidat]

Without knowing the specific weights and haven't worked with meranti for about a year. My memory tells me that its the same weight if not lighter than pine.


Adidat

 

[Ollie78]

Maranti I reckon, it doesn`t look "dense " or red enough for Sapele or Utile.

 

[Orraloon]

Meranti. One of the lighter sap wood bits. Its quite a variable timber ranging from really nice figured medium hard wood to stuff almost balsa like. The nice bits are nice and good to work with so if you get the chance to go through a stack the good boards are worth grabbing. Meranti is a marketing name covering about 5 timbers all from SE Asia. It is very stable as regards humidity changes. Here in Australia most door posts are made of it.
Regards
John

 

[memzey]

Looks like meranti to me as well. I think playing "guess the wood from a pic" is more like bingo than science

 

[Linus]

Thanks all. I'll go with Meranti. I shall turn it at some point and see what emerges! Seems so soft and light I'll probably have fun getting a finish on it.

Light red Meranti has the same dried weight according to the wood database as well.

 

[Linus]

Meranti from the last pic, long pores and scratches may suggest so..
Looks a bit light in the pics, what does a wet shaving look like, should go dark red
as well as it would be a bit softer than iroko or sapele.

Re the shavings here they are soaking wet. Not much colour change.

 

[LeeAkeroyd]

Looks like Meranti to me too light in weight.

 

[Homerj]

Looks like Meranti to me too light in weight.

IT looks a bit like Philippine mahogany I worked quite a bit of this on some window frames difficult grain to finish.There are a few lookalike timbers that come under the same category.

 

[Orraloon]

Philippine mahogany is just another name for meranti. I have also heard it called Pacific maple. After all there is no one name for wood. Timber,lumber or just wood.
Regards
John