There is something uniquely fascinating about those wood sample sets isn't there?
I've got a few similar examples as in this photo,
At the top is a book called "What Wood Is That" by Herbert Edlin with a pull out section containing a lot of veneer thickness samples.
Lower right is an example of what veneer merchants used to hand out instead of catalogues, these are actual veneer samples, however most veneer merchants shut up shop twenty or thirty years ago and the remaining ones now just post photos on their web site. Unfortunately I guess the manufacturer of your sample set has also long ceased trading, so you'll need to find someone with an identical set who can share the key notes.
Lower left is a book called "The Identification Of Woods Used In Antique Furniture" from the Antique Collectors Club, it contains larger actual samples of common antique furniture woods.
They are nice, but they're all pretty useless.
The problem with all of them is that they show unfinished, new timbers. Add umpteen coats of button shellac and a hundred plus years and most timbers just go a dark, treacly brown! The other uncomfortable fact about timber is that no two trees are the same, in my workshop I could show you seven or eight different samples of genuine Indian Rosewood that all look totally different, ranging from pale brown, to dark violet/brown, to almost black. A random sample of Indian Rosewood could reflect any of those realities and be completely useless in helping you identify something from elsewhere on the Indian Rosewood spectrum, let alone pin down any of the other "Dalbergia" family such as Cocobolo or Rio Rosewood. In fact there's an interesting story about when Brazil banned the export of Rio Rosewood, but were subsequently forced to admit that they were actually unable to make a legally solid case that would stand up in a court of law based on a categorical identification of Rio versus any of the other Amazonian Rosewoods, all they could say was that given one hundred samples of Rio they could state the main part of them were
probably Rio rather than another Rosewood!
Moving on from books with actual wood samples there's a couple of modern books that you might find relevant, there's "Identifying Wood" by Bruce Hoadley. Which is a superb and more scientifically based analysis, unfortunately it tends to focus on current timbers, so it's not much help in identifying Partridge Wood or separating Cuban Mahogany from Honduran Mahogany. Another great book is "Woods In British Furniture Making 1400-1900" by Adam Bowett.
I've been around cabinet making and the antique restoration trade for forty years, and in all seriousness the best advice I can give you is when in doubt regarding timber identification just take a wild guess! I'm not joking, I've seen eminent dealers talk complete tosh and actually no one cares less. The real skill is patching in a convincing repair, not stating with botanical exactitude precisely what species of timber you've patched onto what.
Good luck!
