I have an imposter in my elm pile!

[Dandan]

Hi all,
My friend's dad unfortunately died a couple of months ago, and she asked me to make a memorial park bench for him. Well I was super honoured to be asked, and what I think is brilliant is that i'll be making it from his own giant stash of slabbed elm which seems particularly fitting. I'll do a project build on that in due course but I digress, in amongst the elm was a single thick plank of something else that clearly wasn't elm. My friend insisted I take it (who am I to argue) and now I'd like to figure out what it is!
It came to me with a very dirty, very dark surface, here it is after being wire brushed to relieve it of the dirt:



As you can see I cut an end and planed a small section to see the grain. At first I thought the dark colour was some kind of stain, but there are saw marks in the dark area, who doesn't sand them out before applying a stain? But on the other hand, what wood darkens naturally that much? So planing revealed a wide variety of colour and also very close growth rings (mmm, quartersawn)



The light marks perpendicular to the grain are my planing marks



The live edge is quite textured



Ok what else... It's very smooth to the touch, even before sanding, its very heavy and very stiff. It doesn't smell distinctly when cut.
A quick google made me think perhaps its teak? Aside from that i'm clueless.

I'll add that i used a repsirator to sand it just in case, as i've no idea what it might be.

 

[RobinBHM]

it looks more like a coniferous timber to me, but what I dont know

if it doesnt smell, then that kind of suggests its not coniferous, as they are virtually all resinous

 

[swb58]

It looks like yew to me (are everything), but it's big.

 

[toolsntat]

A remarkable plank of Yew ?

Cheers Andy
Edit, Must type faster.....

 

[Cabinetman]

I agree I thought coniferous and then Yew, particularly when looking at the end grain, yes wear a mask. Ian

 

[TheTiddles]

Looks like cedar to me, if it is then it’s ideal for an outdoor bench
Aidan

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Yew does go quite brown with long term exposure to air.

 

[Keith 66]

Loks like a slab ofsome sort of pine to me. Like no Yew i have ever seen, not orange enough.

 

[kevinlightfoot]

Looks like Yew to me with characteristic purple staining and distinctive sapwood.

 

[Peter Sefton]

Looks like Yew to me, if it's hard it's Yew.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Loks like a slab ofsome sort of pine to me. Like no Yew i have ever seen, not orange enough.

I've used yew just like that. After many years of exposure to air it goes a nondescript brown which is not superficial. I've turned it and its been uniformly coloured all the way through, spoiling it completely to my mind.

 

[OldWood]

Looks like Yew to me, if it's hard it's Yew.

Another vote for yew. I doubt it is cedar as that is really quite soft - quite tricky to turn because of that. But then that would have been some yew tree both in girth and straightness of the trunk.

I seen somewhere that yew is the second hardest wood to olive in Europe.

Certainly recommend masking up - there's a thread somewhere recently that included a reference to a chart of the impact of many woods on us humans.

 

[Sean Hellman]

Definitely Yew, lots of tell tail signs.

 

[Dandan]

Thanks everyone, I think we have a clear winner!

Now I just have to decide what to use it for...