Wood Identification...

[Timbo]

There's some highway construction going on near where I live. The construction crews downed a big tract of trees. I stopped by one afternoon, after the workers had left, to see if I could find anything interesting. I didn't find too much other than the common Oaks, Maples, Sycamores and Ash. I did take a chuck of Sycamore, I threw it in the woods behind my house hoping I could get some interesting spalt. We'll see in several months.

I also found the wood pictured below that I did not recognize. Maybe you do? Nothing to write home about as far as pen turning material. However, it is hard, heavy, with a subtle tecture, and light tan color. I thought it might be good as a contrast materal for segmenting. The bark has a ruddy color with virticle ridges about the width of a pencil. It seems to want to flake off in 1/8" thick plates. I cut some into pen blanks and I'm air drying it now. There is absolutely no checking. I'm sure it's something common, I just don't know what.

Oh yeah...I live in eastern Pennsylvania, and the piece in the photo is about 2.5" in width.

 

[JAB1]

I think this may be a type of juniper or cedar. Here in central Texas, the Hill Country is overrun with the western juniper. I have a bed made of it and the wood closely resembles it. My guess---cedar or juniper.

 

[OldWrangler]

If it were juniper or cedar you would have smelled it when cutting. The outside looks like a juniper but the inside doesn't. This is some kinda Yankee tree that we don't see in Texas. I don't have any guess but I don't think it is cedar or juniper

 

[wdcav1952]

Don't know the wood type, but it is a berber carpet.

 

[Timbo]

Actually, we do grow some types of both Cedar or Juniper in the north country, but this wood is neither.

Good guess Cav...but carpet species don't count.

 

[Rmartin]

I don't know what wood it is, but your story reminded me of what happened to a buddy of mine. We used to ride to work together, and every day we would pass by an area of road constuction with piles of dirt and gravel. He kept saying, I'm gonna get him some of that fill dirt to level out my front yard". Well, he did. Spent one hot summer night shoveling a pickup truck load of it. Turns out the dirt was "treated". Killed every bit of grass he had. He ended up having to hire a crew to take the 'top' off his front yard and replace it with some very inexpensive fill dirt to get grass to grow again. I still tease him about it from time to time.

 

[Timbo]

That's an interesting story. Must have been a nightmare from your buddy. I'm going to take a wild guess and say the trees my wood came from were not treated with Agent Orange.[xx(]

 

[ColoradoHermit]

That looks a lot like the Chines Elm around here. It would help if you had a leaf or two with it. But it definitely doesn't look like any kind of Cedar I've seen.
Just my 2 cents on it any who.[]

 

[Timbo]

Hmmmm...possibly. I have "The Woodbook" by Romeyn Beck Hough. The descriptions of some of the Elms are close. However, there was no mention of Chines elm. I found a reference for Chinese Elm, but the bark does not match what I have.