This has been buried under some pine I've been working on for the better part of three years. I unearthed it a few weeks ago and rolled it onto a couple stringers to let the rain wash off some of the mud, and got to cutting it today. It smells a little like red oak, but didn't look like it to me. Any ideas? It is solid all the way through, with just a little spalting and the very beginnings of punk where it was in contact with earth. Split pretty easy.
Thanks for the feedback! Definitely not any species of softwood. This was a stringer left over from a log load I got a few years back. As soon as I finished processing the load, I was fortunate enough to have a few dump trucks full of pine dropped off.. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to move this ground log out of the way first. On the white oak possibility, will the rays fade over time? I'm not seeing too many. Didn't smell right either, but again it's been laying on the ground for a few years, half buried by the time I got to it. The original load had a lot of black and yellow birch, beech, and a little red oak if I recall correctly. Some sort of elm maybe? Thought about sugar maple with the way the spalting looks, but in my experience it would have gone to hell a lot faster.
I got nothing definitive....so, to knot got too far against the grain, I’d say ya got some nice farwood there! Way to go BigPapi
If it popped right open when spitting it is probably oak. Hard to tell. But like Eric said, it's good stuff
Didn't think of that, but it does grow around here. No thorns, but I'm sure the logger would have taken care of that before nesting with the tree. Does it have a smell?
No, I split some honey locust yesterday and it is dark reddish brown inside with white sapwood. The grain and color resembles ash, but the bark is wrong. The bark looks like poplar/aspen. I'm stumped. Maybe Norway maple?
I've got a bunch of Norway around here, and the wood is pretty similar in appearance to this tree. Norway is lighter weight than this though, and imo the bark is wrong. It has been sitting a while though, I've not seen any Norway maple sitting so long as this tree to compare it to. -edit- also much heavier than poplar/aspen, but I can see the bark similarity. Thank you for ruling out the honey Locust - I don't think I've ever cut any.
