Can anyone identify this wood?

[Bobby Smith]

Now remember, I'm in midland, tx and there aren't a whole lot of trees here. This was in a load of firewood I got last year. I'm making a pen blank out of it but I'm not sure what it is. Thanks for any help!

 

[Charlie Knighton]

1st picture wood is very straight and eat up with same bugs/creatures that eat mesquite.....no cracks so not mesquite and to my mind too light colored for mesquite

so only thing I can think of is post oak....its a guess....

 

[Bobby Smith]

We have a lot of oak around here. You are probably right on the oak part.
I was able to cut away all the worm holes and get one nice pen blank out of that little log. Lol

 

[Dean Center]

Given the locale, I'd think it's probably Buggy Derrick, a relative of Wormy Rig.

 

[Bill Boehme]

I normally avoid the pitfalls of identifying wood from fuzzy pictures, but I'll go out on a limb this time ... hey, I'm just in training for a stand-up gig. I'm telling you, I don't get any respect around here. Besides, you can go out on a limb in west Texas while standing on the ground.

The wood in the first picture is pretty far gone and there are some large boring beetles that love oak. I would go along with the suggestion of some variety of white oak for two reasons:

1. Even though the picture is a bit fuzzy I can see very pronounced medullary rays when I zoom in
2. If it were red oak the wood would have been completely decayed in a year or perhaps two in arid west Texas

The pen blank picture is a bit fuzzy and best identification is to look at end grain, but it appears to have the distinctive "look" of white oak. The county agricultural extension service agent here says that all varieties of the genus Quercus readily cross pollinate and there are probably a thousand or more species. Your county ag agent might give you a more definite answer. There are also restrictions against transporting many species of firewood across county lines because there are so many invasive pests that are devastating our native species. The most well known is probably the emerald ash borer which will eventually wipe out our ash trees.

 

[Bobby Smith]

Thanks for the help also Bill. Not sure what kind of monitor you have but the pics are not fuzzy on my end. The pen blank pic may look like a fuzzy pic but it is just how white this wood is after I sanded a thin piece, plus has very light gray grain lines running thru it. The small log I had was about 3 1/2" round and after cutting out all the worm holes, I wound up with one very nice pen blank. Lol

 

[Bill Boehme]

Oak has a distinctive slightly pungent odor when you cut it, but it might not be as noticeable when the wood is very dry.

Back in the old days, computer monitors were all cathode ray tubes so it was very likely that a fuzzy image meant that is was due to the monitor being out of adjustment. These days with LCD monitors we can't blame the monitor for fuzzy images ... Not even the cheapest of the LCD monitors are responsible for showing fuzzy images, but they might have other problems such as poor color or narrow viewing angle.

 

[Bill Boehme]

I forgot to mention a couple other thing and those would be viewing scale and JPG image compression. The image editing software that is on your computer typically opens an image at about 25% of full scale (four image pixels gets downsized into one screen pixel). An image that slightly fuzzy can look quite sharp when downsized. The best way to view an image for sharpness is to examine it at a1:1 ratio where an image pixel is displayed as one screen pixel. Different software programs use different compression algorithms and some are better than others. I use Photoshop and get an excellent compromise between file size and sharpness with a setting of 10 on a scale that goes up to 12 for no compression. When you use a large amount of compression, edges start to show a large amount of crumbly artifacts along what should be sharp edges. I can't say much about other software suites since I have sold my soul to Adobe.

 

[Emiliano Achaval]

I normally avoid the pitfalls of identifying wood from fuzzy pictures, but I'll go out on a limb this time ... hey, I'm just in training for a stand-up gig. I'm telling you, I don't get any respect around here. Besides, you can go out on a limb in west Texas while standing on the ground.

The wood in the first picture is pretty far gone and there are some large boring beetles that love oak. I would go along with the suggestion of some variety of white oak for two reasons:

1. Even though the picture is a bit fuzzy I can see very pronounced medullary rays when I zoom in
2. If it were red oak the wood would have been completely decayed in a year or perhaps two in arid west Texas

The pen blank picture is a bit fuzzy and best identification is to look at end grain, but it appears to have the distinctive "look" of white oak. The county agricultural extension service agent here says that all varieties of the genus Quercus readily cross pollinate and there are probably a thousand or more species. Your county ag agent might give you a more definite answer. There are also restrictions against transporting many species of firewood across county lines because there are so many invasive pests that are devastating our native species. The most well known is probably the emerald ash borer which will eventually wipe out our ash trees.

Not sure how many clubs have had an ag inspector or the State's wildlife biologist as a guest speaker at a club meeting. I'm thinking of inviting ours, one biologist on Maui, so he can teach us about these new pests. For the first time we have restrictions of movement of wood between the Islands. We have Rapid Ohia death and now the Eucalyptus are dying by the thousands all over the island... He could also educate about what not to bring in, our ecosystem is very fragile, one bug away from disaster. Once the Eucalyptus are all gone, what next on the menu?

 

[Emiliano Achaval]

Thanks for the help also Bill. Not sure what kind of monitor you have but the pics are not fuzzy on my end. The pen blank pic may look like a fuzzy pic but it is just how white this wood is after I sanded a thin piece, plus has very light gray grain lines running thru it. The small log I had was about 3 1/2" round and after cutting out all the worm holes, I wound up with one very nice pen blank. Lol

Picture looks good on my computer...

 

[Bobby Smith]

I forgot to mention a couple other thing and those would be viewing scale and JPG image compression. The image editing software that is on your computer typically opens an image at about 25% of full scale (four image pixels gets downsized into one screen pixel). An image that slightly fuzzy can look quite sharp when downsized. The best way to view an image for sharpness is to examine it at a1:1 ratio where an image pixel is displayed as one screen pixel. Different software programs use different compression algorithms and some are better than others. I use Photoshop and get an excellent compromise between file size and sharpness with a setting of 10 on a scale that goes up to 12 for no compression. When you use a large amount of compression, edges start to show a large amount of crumbly artifacts along what should be sharp edges. I can't say much about other software suites since I have sold my soul to Adobe.

Yea Bill, I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 10. Been using it for years as I am a coin collector also and I use it for cropping and resizing, etc... Good program.

 

[Bill Boehme]

Picture looks good on my computer...

I looked again and should have said that it was mainly the second image where "focus" was the problem. Actually, the whole problem boils down to the camera not focusing on what you want it to focus on and the depth of field. The image is sharp, but the focus point was actually on the log propping up the pen blank. My guess is that the depth of field is short because of the aperture being wide open. On the first image, the focus point was at the top corner of the log, but due to the shallow depth of field the image sharpness is a bit off at the bottom end of the log.

 

[Bobby Smith]

Well I took the pics with my Samsung 8+ Bill. I tap where I want it to focus and it just does what it does. Lol I don't carry my Canon out to the shop. Lol To be honest Bill, that wood is very light and I really don't know if it was able to focus clearly on it anyway. It looks in focus to me at the top of the little piece of wood sitting against the log. You can just make out the very light gray grain.

 

[Bill Boehme]

Picture looks good on my computer...

I looked again and should have said that it was mainly the second image where focus was the problem. Actually, the whole issue is related to the camera depth of field. The image is sharp, but the focus was on the log that the pen blank is leaning against so the pen blank is in front of the focus point. Without seeing the EXIF data I would guessThe depth of field is very short because of the aperture being wide open. On the first image, the focus point was at the top corner of the log, but due to the shallow depth of field the image sharpness is a bit off at the bottom end of the log.

 

[John Torchick]

Far from an expert on wood except that if grows on trees and shrubs, etc. The photos came out OK on my computer. You are required only to take fuzzy pictures of Bigfoot and Nessie.