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What is this wood?

D

Dex Thomas

Joined
Oct 22, 2012
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Location
Arizona
A friend of mine gave me a block of wood that was approx 3"x2"x2". It was a dark wood with some light sapwood showing. It was very heavy for it's size. I could've sworn that it was desert ironwood. I cut it in half, drilled it, and chucked it up on my lathe to make a couple of bottle stoppers. It drilled and turned like butter.... not at all what I was expecting since I thought it was ironwood. It gummed up my sandpaper pretty quickly, and I only had to sand to 320. While I was burnishing it with a paper towel, it gave off a mom's-spice-rack type smell, and it's obviously pretty oily/waxy That is only only finish I have on it. I am attaching a couple pics.
Can anyone tell me what this wood is? Cuz I am now positive that it isn't ironwood.
 

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sassafras ???
The clues fit except it is not particularly heavy.

Smell is distinctive. A soft hardwood.
It is usually a shrub but it does grow into trees with 3-4 diameters

Maybe wax-myrtle or bayberry

Al
 
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Looks like Olive wood to me but then I've had so little of it I don't remember for sure. It's fairly hard but turns well. Is very heavy. An oily wood that tended to gum up the sandpaper but finishes to a great lustre.
 
I would have guessed yew except that it does not have a distinctive smell. Name the spice -- ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, sassafras, oregano, cardamon, allspice, parsley, sage, rosemary, or thyme?

It is probably a tropical wood unless your friend said it was domestic. Trees are most readily identified by their leaves, bark, and shape. Trying to identify from a wood sample can be difficult. Identification from a somewhat fuzzy picture is even more difficult. The wood looks similar to a piece of Peruvian wood, Platymiscium pinnatum (sold as orange agate by importers) that I have. I have no idea whether it has any sort of smell since the piece that I have is about eight years old and still sitting in my garage waiting for the right project. When the wood was still wet it did a lot of moving and cracked between the sapwood and heartwood.
 
Dex Thomas said:
A friend of mine gave me a block of wood that was approx 3"x2"x2". It was a dark wood with some light sapwood showing. It was very heavy for it's size. I could've sworn that it was desert ironwood. I cut it in half, drilled it, and chucked it up on my lathe to make a couple of bottle stoppers. It drilled and turned like butter.... not at all what I was expecting since I thought it was ironwood. It gummed up my sandpaper pretty quickly, and I only had to sand to 320. While I was burnishing it with a paper towel, it gave off a mom's-spice-rack type smell, and it's obviously pretty oily/waxy That is only only finish I have on it. I am attaching a couple pics.
Can anyone tell me what this wood is? Cuz I am now positive that it isn't ironwood.
Click to expand...

Dex.......I can't say for sure, but your pictures reminded me of this bowl I made 5 or 7 years ago. This one is Tulipwood. It's been long enough ago, that I can't really remember how well it turned or sanded, but it does look similar to yours.......

ooc
 

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Dex,

I find it hard to identify woods from pictures. Mesquite (sp?) may be a possability. I find that hard, heavy, dense, oily woods will cut like butter with sharp tools and polish with ease. Nice wood....get some more!

cg
 
Dex Thomas said:
It gummed up my sandpaper pretty quickly, and I only had to sand to 320. While I was burnishing it with a paper towel, it gave off a mom's-spice-rack type smell, and it's obviously pretty oily/waxy That is only only finish I have on it. I am attaching a couple pics.
Can anyone tell me what this wood is? Cuz I am now positive that it isn't ironwood.
Click to expand...

How about Milo? http://www.hawaiiwoodturning.com/graphics/big-guy-milo.jpg

Made some ornaments out of a small gift several years ago.
 
My first thought was carob and I did have a few chunks some years back. Not yew, which is always kind of orange, or at least what we have out here is. Not sassafras which all of the pieces I have seen are a tan color. Not sure.

robo hippy
 
Whatever it is, olive wood definitely is not it. Maybe the best approach is to to use the process of elimination to rule out species from the roughly 100,000 known species in the world. Some others that I can add to the list of ruled out species are: wax myrtle, mesquite, all white oaks and red oaks, ash, hickory, pecan, any species of ebony, yada, yada, yada .... This still leave over 99, 900 to go.

The suggestions offered by MM and Odie seem to be the closest to looking like the pictures that Dex showed.
 
Maybe we have a winner

OK, it is A&M Wood Specialty and not the university. Anybody in Texas who hears A&M automatically assumes that it has to be Texas A&M University. The only thing that I saw on the A&M Wood Specialty site about Tineo was veneer.

I don't know why my first search came up empty -- maybe Google was on break. Anyway, there are a number of dealers on eBay selling it and many of the pieces look like the pictures that Dex posted.
 
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Alan Lester said:
My guess is Tineo. Look it up on the A&M Wood Specialty site and see what you think.
Alan
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I have some Tineo seasoning right now, but have never finished a bowl from this species......yet.

It does look similar, so I couldn't rule it out.

My few bowl blanks out of Tineo were purchased from Woodcraft, but it looks like it is no longer available there......

ooc
 
Hi Bill,
Not being from Texas, A&M University is the last thing I would think of 🙂.
I like this site because it has a fairly good set of photos of different woods and prices to boot. I've never actualy seen Tineo in the flesh, just pictures of it.
Alan
 
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