Nice piece

[topchippyles]

Guys can anyone tell me what timber this is as cut it for a customer who was given it,Never seen pink wood before and its very nice stuff.

 

[loftyhermes]

My guess would be Wellingtonia.

 

[Ttrees]

Yew, haven't seen much mostly guessing from the colour and by the multiple branches.
T

 

[johnnyb]

Is it very soft?

 

[MikeG.]

Yew, haven't seen much mostly guessing from the colour and by the multiple branches.
T

It certainly has hints of yew, but I would expect more brown (rather than pink) from yew.

 

[Bm101]

Fairwarning : Amateur hour here all day long but if the pink is a little more orange off camera, if the sapwood is fairly soft when dry, (dig your finger nail soft) bit brittle almost compared to the heart and with the knots I'd maybe guess Yew too but I know nowt. Just posting for fun. If it is Yew it's off a fair aged tree at that size isn't it? I remember my old man telling me as a kid 'All trees are younger than you think they are except Yew which is always older.'
The knotting is similar to the yew I have seen as mentioned by Ttrees but that pink hue is making me think its some other tree.
I wouldn't know which.
Told you it was amateur hour though.

 

[topchippyles]

It was pretty hard on my sawmill so not sure if its yew as yew tends to be more brown than pink,The board is 20 inches wide so would have been a fair size tree.

 

[johnnyb]

Yew is really hard and wellingtonia is really soft. Yew can be a multitude of colours pink red purple brown blacketc. Wellingtonia is pink. I've got a big cube in the garage a chainsaw Carver gave me. It's a favourite for that as it's big and soft. (Like me)

 

[custard]

You can get splashes of that purple/pink colour in Yew, but it tends to be localised rather than the entire board, and generally Yew is a more orange (at least when freshly sawn, let it oxidise for a couple of decades and it goes a beautiful conker brown). This is a typical decent quality Yew board,

Often you'll find Yew with loads of bark inclusions, which drives you round the bend because the wastage goes through the roof. There's an old saying that there's only one longbow (traditionally made for Yew) in a Yew tree. In most planked up Yew trees I've seen even that would be an optimistic assessment, there generally isn't enough straight grained, knot free timber for even the one!

Your board does look more like Wellingtonia. Wellingtonia is more of a decorative tree than a commercial timber, because the the wood tends to be a bit "wooly" and difficult to finish cleanly.

 

[Inspector]

What does it smell like? Here it could be an aromatic cedar.

Pete

 

[Phil Pascoe]

There's an old saying that there's only one longbow (traditionally made for Yew) in a Yew tree. In most planked up Yew trees I've seen even that would be an optimistic assessment, there generally isn't enough straight grained, knot free timber for even the one!

From what I've read the best bows were from yew grown in Lombardy, as they were grown much closer together than ours (which tend to be solo or near solo specimens) and thus much straighter grained.

 

[Marineboy]

I’m sure that’s right, but our bows did ok at Agincourt

 

[johnnyb]

Our bows were from Lombardy. As people have mentioned making a bow from British yew was difficult at best. Ash was used as well. But all the bows on the Marie Rose we're foriegn wood