Yet another "What wood is this?" Thread.

[MJP]

A friend of mine who knows I'm collecting different wood species gave me some chunks of wood.

These were rescued long ago from a shipbreakers' yard, are off a ship of some kind, and still bear specks of the pale battleship grey paint that once adorned them.

They were used forty or fifty years ago to build a greenhouse so they could be eighty or more years old.

Two determinations have given me a specific gravity of 0.91+- 0.02;

The moisture content according to my cheapo moisture meter is 10%.

The pics show the wood just sanded and wiped - no surface treatment has been used.

The high density seems to rule out most woods - any idea what this could be?

Martin.

 

[PAC1]

Given that SG, Leadwood.

 

[NazNomad]

More of that flippin' Iroko. :-D

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Ygiagam.

 

[AndyT]

Teak? Quite popular on boats.

 

[custard]

Greenheart?

 

[MJP]

Well, that's a nice selection!

Nothing that seems to fit though -

Leadwood is too dense, Iroko and Teak are lower density,

Greenheart is the same density but my piece isn't green...

I rather suspect that phil.p's suggestion of Ygiagam is as close as we're going to get....there seems to be quite a lot of that about.

I did at first think that it was teak, looks the right colour and structure to my untrained eye but it's far too dense.

Could any form of Iroko or Teak attain an SG of 0.9?

Interestingly, its thermal conductivity is quite high too - picking up a cold piece, you can feel the chill.

Destined to remain yet one more of life's mysteries....and I've got two hefty six-foot pieces coming on Saturday hopefully.

Thanks anyway folks.

Martin.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

.55 - .66 for both, according to the Wood Data base. It's unlikely they'd get to .9, I'd think.

 

[Woodmonkey]

Looks like holm oak except for the end grain. Very dense and i believe has been used for ship building in the Mediterranean.

 

[MJP]

Mmmm...Holm Oak looks paler and more yellow than my sample, which is a good solid slightly reddish brown.

This does bring home to me though how difficult it is to be certain of the identity of anything out of the ordinary.

A fact which I was ignorant of until I fell into the rabbit hole of woodworking.

Martin.

 

[Woodmonkey]

I guess it depends which samples you are looking at, but I've felled many Holm oaks some of which had a rich reddish brown coloured timber, and others which were much paler.

 

[MJP]

Yes, this seems to be the complicating factor in all wood identification - there's so much variability in the appearance of any particular species.

If Holm Oak can in fact look a nice Teak colour then it would indeed be a good candidate, though the pics I've seen don't seem to have the same "pippy" look as my sample.

All very confusing.

Martin.