What wood is this?

[mowog]

A neighbour had a tree chopped down in their garden, and let me have a few bits from the pile. I asked because the colour seemed really quite special. The way the heartwood is a totally different from the sapwood is really striking.

Does anyone have any idea what it might be? I'm guessing it must be deciduous as there were no stray leaves in the pile. I've taken a few photos - hopefully someone cleverer than me can help to identify it.

The only other things I can add are that some of the bark has little red spots on it, it feels reasonably dense (though hard to judge as I don't know how dry it is), it's lovely to carve, and the photos are pretty accurate: the heartwood is indeed a nice chocolaty brown.

 

[MARK.B.]

Laburnum

 

[Lazurus]

Wot he said

 

[scooby]

Agreed

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Offer to replace it with something else if he burns it - it's laburnum.

 

[thetyreman]

Laburnum

+1

 

[Linus]

Laburnum - nice to turn but splits readily. Don't chew it either

 

[Doug B]

If you are going to season it yourself keep your eyes peeled for woodworm they love Laburnum in my experience it’s like a magnet to them.

 

[mowog]

Thanks guys - I had no idea.

Yes, he's planning to burn it. I don't think I could find a use for what he's got piled up outside his house TBH, especially if the spoon I've carved can't actually be used!

 

[topchippyles]

Nice colouring

 

[Ttrees]

If you had access to a bandsaw, you could get some nice material for some boxes or whatnot.
I'd take it personally

If you are going to season it yourself keep your eyes peeled for woodworm they love Laburnum in my experience it’s like a magnet to them.

Surely that's only the sapwood which would be discarded anyway?

Tom

 

[kinverkid]

A beautiful wood to turn on the lathe. And, over a few years, to see it changed to a deep chocolate/horse chestnut brown colour. If it's a live edge bowl that creamy white really contrast against the brown. Right about the woodworm too.

 

[MARK.B.]

Make some T light holders or candle sticks ,contrasts well against white candles All parts of the tree are poisonous to humans and a lot of different animals .
For a really dangerous tree giggle Manchineel , Just reading about this tree may make you pp your pants

 

[dannyr]

Yes laburnum -- it's like many sought-after protected tropical woods, with a very exotic character, but grows here in the UK. I love the look of it - especially some trees seem to give a really deep chocolate colour (others a little more grey-brown) and the white to yellow outer layer is quite strong/useable (sometimes a v thin layer, others quite thick like your example)

I see on yours an effect I've seen before - with the (really attractive) year rings coming in pairs, as if a growth year was followed by a 'recovery year' - anyone else seen this on laburnum or other woods?

never heard of the woodworm effect - interesting - what to do - pre-treat it?

save it if you can, if only to give/sell to someone if it's not your thing

 

[Doug B]

Surely that's only the sapwood which would be discarded anyway?

Tom

It depends on what you’re doing with it if you want to use the sapwood & bark to give contrast like in the bowl below then you don’t want worm in it.

As @kinverkid says Laburnum mellows over the years to a lovely chocolate brown, I turned both of these many years ago & they have a much richer colour now.

The other reason for mentioning worm was you don’t want to be attracting it in the first place because once you’ve got it it will be into everything. As I said it’s only my experience but I air dry a lot of native timbers & certainly of those timbers Laburnum seems to be one of the woodworms favourites.

 

[Ttrees]

It depends on what you’re doing with it if you want to use the sapwood & bark to give contrast like in the bowl below then you don’t want worm in it.


The other reason for mentioning worm was you don’t want to be attracting it in the first place because once you’ve got it it will be into everything. As I said it’s only my experience but I air dry a lot of native timbers & certainly of those timbers Laburnum seems to be one of the woodworms favourites.

Not that I'm any expert, but reckon we will have a plague of furniture beetles this year, judging by the amount of them in the last week or two.
Not sure if it would be the same in another household, or indeed over the drink in the UK.
The last plague was horrendous in this house, and been waiting for a few years for another one, was kinda expecting them to emerge last year, seeing all those swarms of locusts, but very little of them.
No sapwood would be immune to the amount of them the last plague.
Not worth the risk of using sapwood for me, no matter how much I might like the contrast, it would be getting sawn off.
I'll be sticking to my unpalatable toxic timbers for a good long time.
Would love to get some of that stuff, gorgeous colour and fleck.

Possibly worth buying a bandsaw for!

 

[kinverkid]

This is a lamp I turned quite a few years ago. I didn't mind the base it was on but preferred this one. Want to talk about woodworm? This also shows how Laburnum changes from a greenie/brown of the base (the wife would have a proper description of the colour) to the dark chestnutty/chocolatty (I'm not going to ask her) colour of the column.

 

[Cabinetman]

@Ttrees It says you’re in your workshop but you don’t say where that is, locusts? And furniture beetles emerging in March, it’s obviously somewhere quite a bit warmer than the UK. I hope we don’t get plagues of the damn things. It would be all we need to follow this year we’ve just had. Ian
Boils and frogs next?

 

[Doug B]

I can so relate to that @kinverkid i married a clothes designer 30 years ago what an eye opener on the colour spectrum that was, who knew brown was taupe & aqua marine wasn’t a character from a tv program I watched when I was a kid
Nice lamp by the way

As for woodworm I’ve read quite a bit about it, inspired in part by some oak I had which had been attacked but it wasn’t sapwood. Turns out that although they prefer the more nutrient rich sapwood they will also attack heartwood if that’s all there is, the only problem for the woodworm is the heartwood doesn’t contain all the nutrients the worm needs & this can effect it’s reproduction.

 

[Ttrees]

@Cabinetman
I thought the d'video would give it away.
Quite the opposite of warm, we have the adult furniture beetle all year round here in this damp house, but not very many of them.
No locusts that I am aware of, unless the longhorn might count.
Don't see too many of those, sometimes spotted climbing up the walls outside on a nice day, and I squish them with a mop handle on their way to the attic.

The last plague of the furniture beetle was so bad here that one might think
synchronization of many species could be at play, or at least worth bearing it in mind, it wasn't far away from cicadas the last time, over ten of them an hour in every room after Easter.
Doesn't seem that I was onto something by taking a guess they would come last year, like those locusts swarms did.

Thankfully I've never seen a flighthole in the small amount of domestic timbers I have in the workshop, likely because there's an iroko dust layer over everything, seems to work so far.

I have some hawthorn which I must inspect at some stage, only cut it for the fun of it, for handles, if nothing else.
If there is indeed a plague of beetles this year, I will be removing sapwod completely.
Any ash I have, rescued some nice bits in the log pile, is about to get radially sawn
and the sap nipped off, to keep them away as best I can.
I might throw a scoop of tropical sawdust on it, for the fun of it.
The same idea as with the borax, but cheaper.
Suppose most of you folks have nice dry workshops, and see that dust as a danger, but it stays put if a bit on the damp side, and left alone if space is available.

I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for laburnam trees now, it would make lovely guitar parts, like headplates and whatnot.

If a bandsaw isn't an option, handsawing with a proper ripping saw isn't either, then worth having a look on utoob at how Peter Follansbee might tackle it.
All the best
Tom