More Wood Identification

[Hand Plane]

I am attaching some photographs of a large garden bench from which a neighbour is currently stripping multiple coats of paint.

Photos - Bench; Seat and Back should be self explanatory.
Seat 1 - this is the plank nearest the back
Seat 2 - this is the middle plank
Seat 3 - this is the foremost plank - and is somewhat greyer than the other planks.

Any advice welcome!

 

[RobinBHM]

Pretty difficult to tell what it is.

The grain of the top back looks like iroko, wavy, interlocked etc.

It could be any of a range of commercial timbers from South East Asia, Kapur, keruing etc.....although typically they seem to be straighter grained.

 

[Mike Jordan]

I think it's more like Sapelle, I can't agree with Iroko but agree that it may be one of th lower quality red/pink hardwoods like meranti or luan.

 

[Ollie78]

Iroko maybe or another teak alike. If it was real teak it wouldn't have rotted like that.

 

[OldWood]

Only relevent as an example of teak. My brother is a small guage railway enthusiast and recently obtained some 30" guage ralway vans with teak bodies - probably from one of the munitions depots. They will have stood outdoors since they were built possibly before WW2 - and the 2" thick teak is perfect.

 

[thetyreman]

can you plane a section with a block plane? the only way to tell is to get back to the fresh wood underneath, to me it definitely does not look like teak or sapele, both are much darker.

 

[Hand Plane]

Many thanks for the replies.

The woods are a bit strange. I have hardwood wooden windows, which were meant to be meranti (from memory) but if I scrape a piece it's pretty light like three of the planks on the bench. Not much 'mahogany' colour about it. The front piece on the bench seat is different from the other planks, and the owner thought it was teak as very similar to how his boat deck used to go.

With the weather now on us, the owner has covered it up for the ongoing winter and will return to it in the spring - assuming it's dry!