Mondays Guess the Wood Contest

[grumpy6165]

This is recylcled wood from science lab benches which must be least 30 years old. Does anybody have any idea what this is?

 

[Sgian Dubh]

It could be any one of:

American mahogany- unlikely
African mahogany- possible
Light or dark meranti (Shorea spp)- only a maybe
Sapele- possible
One or two other species that haven't immediately come to mind- maybe

No sure way of identification from a few images. Slainte.

 

[Bingy man]

I see loads on eBay - x science lab desks etc and it’s always mahogany . Was it stained dark before you worked on it .??

 

[MARK.B.]

Sapele or Iroko

 

[Ttrees]

Sipo/utile would be my guess.
How about showing the edge to see if there maybe clues, as sipo/utile often has a fleck like beech,
which I've not seen on say meranti, nor sapelle.

Sapelle which has much tighter grain compared, to say meranti, (pores less deep)
i.e yer looking at sliced longitudinal pores when looking on the face of the timber, which you've shown,
and those gulleys (for want of a better word) look deeper than that,

But with nothing to refer off, hard to get an idea of the size of them, zoomed in may appear like meranti, zoomed out like sipo/utile or sapelle.

Hope that helps.
Tom

(edit: to add a little piccy of the fleck which sipo/utile often exhibits, which might be seen
if you planed the long edges, should it not be already visible because of finish,
and worth looking at both edges of that glued up panel)

 

[Linus]

Meranti?

 

[grumpy6165]

It did have a heavy dark stain on it before it went through the planner.

 

[niall Y]

My best guess would be Iroko. I used to work in a lab, and one of my tasks was to clean and stain the bench tops from time to time. And these were Iroko.

 

[peter-harrison]

I'd add my vote for utile.

 

[Ollie78]

I think its not Iroko. The grain and colour are much more like Meranti or Utile. I vote Utile

 

[XTiffy]

As Sapele and Utile are both of the genus Entandrophragma, it would be difficult to tell them apart. My Atlas of end-grain photomicrographs (1961) illustrates three versions of Meranti, Dark Red, White and Yellow, further complicating identity. I'm staying out of this one! From my days at school 60 years ago, I thought school lab benches were Teak, though probably not and certainly not in this case..

 

[Orraloon]

Looks like Meranti to me also
Regards
John