Wood Id

[budnder]

I'm located in Illinois and surrounded by some old growth tree areas and tend to work with stuff I find (downed limbs and trees). Whatever this is, it's a gorgeous orange brown when finished (a bit lighter before). It has a very narrow sapwood and the bark that's left is kinda papery. There's a lot of black cherry around here, but the color and thinness of the sapwood isn't like other known black cherry I've picked up, though the papery bark might be a fit. There's a lot of buckthorn growing here as well, and the color is maybe a closer match to that, but the bark doesn't seem correct for that. I wish I could remember where I picked it up. I hit the end with a little sanding sealer in the photo to show the finished color.

Anybody recognize this or have other thoughts?

 

[Edgar]

Easy - that's from the Purty Wood Tree

 

[RBcarving]

Osage Orange, possibly

 

[tomtedesco]

My first thought was also osage orange.

 

[Herb G]

That is Osage orange. You must rid yourself of it immediately.
Send it to me for proper disposal.

 

[2 Saw]

The bark is all wrong for O.O. it looks to me like Honey Locust to me?

 

[Mortalis]

Honey Locust | The Wood Database - Lumber Identification (Hardwoods)

Osage Orange | The Wood Database - Lumber Identification (Hardwoods)

Sweet Cherry | The Wood Database - Lumber Identification (Hardwoods)
Black Cherry | The Wood Database - Lumber Identification (Hardwoods)

Kind of hard to determine using only cut end grain on a log

I have plenty of what I call (dont ask me why, for lack of better knowledge) wild cherry which is probably what you are referring to black cherry and it has a very distinctive fragrance of cherry when being cut. It is also very fractous and limb have a tendency to snap off the trees and the trees themselves will snap and fracture under high winds.

 

[budnder]

Posted here is a link to a picture of a knife I did with some of this. I said I thought it was walnut at the time. Interestingly, I also did a knife in what I know was Cherry, so you can see the color difference - this stuff is much more orange:

http://www.penturners.org/forum/f45/pocket-knives-damascus-144762/

When I went to make something else out of what I had left, I looked at it a bit closer and I really don't think it's Walnut.

I've got some Honey Locust trees around and have worked with that before - I don't think it's a match for that.

Yes, Wild Cherry is probably more accurate for the Cherry I was referring to - there's a lot of it in the wild around me, and not the kind that produces the Cherries that you think of eating.

Pictures of Osage Orange looks the closest to me, thought I know what you mean about the bark. The bark on this piece looks to have mostly come off, so it's kinda hard to tell what it looked like in all it's glory.

There's Osage Orange in the area, but not in my usual haunts where I pick up wood. So that might be a clue... it's probably from one of the areas I don't regularly get to. I will make a point to get some over the next month or two and see how it compares.

I think I'm going to go with Osage Orange as an ID of this piece for now.