I am working on a house right now and found this piece of wood in the stack of pallet wood. It is incredibly heavy and rings like a piece of tile. It is somewhat repellant to nail guns too. Found that out the hard way when the second nail "reversed direction" and pinged off the wall behind be. It cut fine in the miter saw. It is very very heavy.
Beech gets used for pallets, growth rings are tight, the wood is hard and the heartwood is dark. That would be my guess. Does a fresh cut end have a slightly sweet smell?
Could be mahogany? Indonesian mahogany is some dense hard wood. Built my deck from over 20 years ago. Had to predrill for the screws. South American mahogany is softer.
A contractor where I used to work (didn't work for him) used that stuff exclusively for decks. It's great and fits the description exactly. I snagged some cutoffs for a floor in a sauna I built. Made a frame, drilled and then screwed the ipe to the frame, and forgot about how heavy it was until I had to move it about 15 years later!
After more thinking about it I'm sure those specialty deck boards we used a couple times were Brazilian Teak. I had looked up the lumber supplier i know he used and they only list Brazilian IPE on their website.
My parents neighbor unloads ships that come up the Delaware River. He got his hands on some Ipe and man oh man is that stuff heavy and hard! Can’t drive a nail or screw through it without drilling a hole first. The stuff we have is t quite that dark though.
Teak would be my guess. The boss got a bunch years ago for a trailer deck. IIRC the whole project was a major pain. Still have a few boards in the back room. 2x6’s I believe.
Years back the lumberyard I did business with had piles of pallets and I'd take some now and then. Found one made entirely made from mahogany. Took it apart and made an Adirondack chair from it for my GF at the time. Nail holes added character too it.
Wish I knew where the pallet came from. We got one years ago from a building supply store. It had some mahogany boards on it and a couple very heavy boards like that, Dad was excited when he saw it. He had served in Burma/India (WWII) and had used teak like that. But the board with a little sap edge on it looks like Ipe. I helped a friend build this Green Egg cart for his daughter. He rang off several screws, then called for backup... And it was some kind of heavy... 4x4 legs 2x4 skirting 3/4 decking It has 4" casters on it It's sitting on a Delta cabinet saw and table. We almost turned the saw over sliding it off...
It doesn't really smell. There might be a little something there, but not much. I might poke through the pile and see if I can find more of it for a better sample. I am putting together another wall today. This one is wide maple boards and walnut. Should look pretty cool when it's done. I'll post pics.
I measured the volume and weight and it came out to 67.62 lbs/cu ft. It was confirmed by tossing it in water....it sank like a rock.
Here is the wall I built for a friend, along with a small hearth I made for his stove. The maple came from a very big/old tree that was on his elk farm. It is likely several hundred years old. The walnut was a tree he cut and milled about 25 years ago, around the same time he milled the maple. The wood has been stacked and stickered in his barn ever since. Some of the boards are close to 20 inches wide.
