Wood ID?

[BHuij]

I bought a box of 48 pen blanks on clearance and received them today. They were mostly unlabeled, but I did my best to ID them with the order details.

I was supposed to receive:

• 2x Black Limba
• 2x Cedar
• 2x Olivewood
• 2x Zebrawood
• 2x Wenge
• 2x Bloodwood
• 2x Indian Ebony
• 2x Leopardwood
• 8x Acacia
• 8x Carob
• 8x Eucalyptus
• 8x Mequite

Almost all of those are ID with a good degree of confidence.

There are only 7x that I'm quite sure are eucalyptus, and 7x mesquite. The last 2 blanks seem to be neither of those.

The grain is tighter, more swirly, and the pores far less open than mesquite. The tone is redder and the color darker than the eucalyptus (and my eucalyptus seems to be primarily sapwood, though these mystery pieces are also markedly different from the heartwood parts of the eucalyptus).

I've attached several pictures. At this point my best guess would be Sapele? But more practiced eyes are welcome in my quest to ID these two blanks. They look nice. Significantly more interesting than either eucalyptus or mesquite to me, frankly. So I'll call it a bonus. Can't be too mad at less than $1 per blank

One last thing to note that the still photos don't convey well - even rough cut, these blanks have an obvious chatoyance, which becomes even more pronounced when I wet them down a bit to see the true color.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Todd in PA]

I'm very skilled at identifying wood. And can definitively say yes, those are wood.

 

[sorcerertd]

While I can't ID them, I will say that I have been very surprised at times with the variation of color and grain within some species of woods. It would not surprise me to see a couple that didn't look quite the same as the others of that type.

 

[BHuij]

I heard back from the seller, and he seemed pretty confident they were both eucalyptus heartwood. My other pieces of eucalyptus are almost all sapwood.

At any rate I turned one and it came out real nice.