Can anyone identify this wood for me?

[YouSpinMeRightRound]

For once this isn't a test. It's softwood, felled by builders nearby to put up apartments. Bark is yellowish, wood is pale (darker when burnished) with pores at the darker boundaries between rings. There's a very soft pith in the centre - you could remove it with a matchstick.





Incidentally, I think the dark circle in the third picture is from the skew rubbing and heating as I finished the shape. Can anyone confirm or reject this?

 

[Berncarpenter]

Sycamore ?

Cheers Bern

 

[KimG]

There's not much to go on, but I would agree with Bern, Sycamore seems the most likely candidate. Although it is fairly soft to cut, it is a hardwood by definition.

 

[YouSpinMeRightRound]

There's not much to go on, but I would agree with Bern, Sycamore seems the most likely candidate. Although it is fairly soft to cut, it is a hardwood by definition.

Thanks to both of you! I assume you mean the tree we call sycamore in Europe?

Is there something different I could do to make this (and future woods) easier to identify?

 

[Vic Perrin]

If not Sycamore, perhaps Mountain Ash ( Rowan).

Vic

 

[RogerP]

Looks like Sycamore to me. It's treated as a weed here as we get seedlings springing up all the time from the wind blown seeds coming from a 40' tree in a garden a few houses away.

 

[winemaker]

Sycamore

 

[duncanh]

Given the look of the open pores in the 3rd picture and the bark in the first I'd say that this is a young ash. The bark doesn't look smooth enough to be sycamore

 

[KimG]

I can't see the image in enough detail to see the pore structure Duncan, you got better eyes than me But the thinking on it, the fairly large pith is more in tune with Ash, as I said in my initial post, not much to go on, some sharper images of the clean end grain and a view of the side grain on the sphere would be helpful too

 

[Woodmonkey]

Looks like ash to me too

 

[chipmunk]

+1 Ash

 

[woodfarmer]

for a while I wasn't sure about this, and still aren't. didn't really believe it was sycamore, almost willow but too well defined annual rings. so young ash gets my vote.

had a choice today to start something in ash or oak. Foolishly I plonked for oak and it is proving to be very hard

ATM waiting for the drill bit to cool down before it spoils the hardening.