Wood I.D......any ideas?

[VikingAl]

Hey all,

A work colleague told me about some wood he had on his log pile for his stove. He said it was black & he'd never seen black wood apart from ebony. At that point I yelled " don't burn it!!!!!!". So, I have 2 lumps of wood briefly as follow,

Black in colour throughout,
Heavy,
No bark but covered in mud ( initially I thought bog oak but I'm not sure on that having only ever seen it on eBay! ),
Pretty tight grain,
Hard to cut & turn ( I'm making him a pen to say thank you however 3 pan blanks have already exploded on me whilst trying it ),
The 1/2 a pen blank I have managed to turn is beautiful with I can only describe as whiteish veins running through it ( no, it's definitely marble!!! ),

I have taken some pics but am struggling to get them up, I'll keep @ it as I know these will help a lot more so please bear with me!,

Any ideas anybody?.....

 

[VikingAl]

As promised, poor pics tho I'm afraid!.

 

[VikingAl]

Again a poor pic...

 

[VikingAl]

Sorry about attaching these individually, all I can manage I'm afraid...

 

[spinks]

Drop a piece of it in water....it looks a bit like well aged greenheart to me.....if it is greenheart it should sink!

 

[VikingAl]

Ok, I'll give it a go, results to follow!.

 

[VikingAl]

Blimey, just googled Greenheart. If it is, then how on earth does a tropical hardwood end up on a log pile in South Wales???, the mind boggles!!.

 

[Peter Sefton]

The first picture looks like Oak to me, but is always hard to see from pics.
Peter

 

[VikingAl]

Another hard to see pic but this is a close up of the wood cut to pen blanks...

 

[VikingAl]

And finally, 1 out 4 so 1/2 way there!, I've taken it on the chin with this pen, the grain won't be flowing through & matching but I'll just be happy if I can complete 1 out of it all!!. Again, apologies for the terrible pic!.

 

[KimG]

In have some Greenheart, it doesn't look anything like these images. Looking at the grain and having a stab in the dark I would put my money on Walnut. Greenheart is very brittle, plus when you sand it, it has a very peculiar property, because it is so very heavy, the dust settles very fast, almost falls to the floor rather than drifts. Walnut is nice to turn, has a soft feel and at least any I have turned has a slight smell of Olives.

 

[VikingAl]

Walnut could be a possibility there as when I sanded the 1st blank, prior to it exploding, the dust did seem to just fall but what I should have mentioned is that it doesn't smell of anything. Is walnut really dark brown because this is jet black.

 

[johnphilip]

I would say its bog oak i got a tree of a farmer he pull out of his field

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

I also think its very very old oak. The first picture clearly shows medullary rays which strongly suggests oak. I recently acquired a batch that had been down and dead since the storms of 1987 and its so hard it's like rock. Its also a deep nutty brown and finishes incredibly well. So I think if you get oak that's been down a long time it seriously improves with age.

 

[nev]

looks and sounds remarkably like a lump of bog oak i was given a while back (from a gent in Neath!) . does have a habit of exploding and spitting at the slightest imperfection.

 

[KimG]

Bog Oak would be very hard, it would come off the tool almost shiny, it would also be pretty black, I am guessing that it could well be that. The pics do not bring out the black so well which is why I thought Walnut (it's the Greenheart dust that sinks quickly by the way, due to it's great weight)

I would not have guessed Bog Oak though, good call!

 

[VikingAl]

Hi fellas, I'm inclined to agree with the big oak idea that you are all suggesting. I'd love to know how old it is, it's absolutely rock hard & has plenty of splits through it, it's a real shame but the pieces I'm getting from it are stunning. I've finished one pen but the twisty bit inside is rubbish, totally messes up a lovely pen, ah well!, onto the next pen!!.

Thanks all, really appreciate your guidance & thoughts!.

Al.

 

[kjmc1957]

This looks very much like bog oak, it's called bog oak as a generic term even though you can get different types of tree, it just whatever sunk into the bogs at the time, I've turned a few pens from this, my way was with a sharp skew to peel it off, and don't be shy with the ca on a regular basis to keep the 'top layer' hardened up.

 

[VikingAl]

I was wondering if it was oak or perhaps another type of species as the grain seems to be a lot tighter than the oak I've got lurking around the Man Cave. Good tip with the CA though, it's really flakey so I'll give that a go!. I'm going to have another attempt 2moro, got 2 blanks with glue & tube inserts setting nicely in the kitchen!. I'll try my hand @ better photography & show how I've got on, fingers crossed!.

 

[Neil Farrer]

This looks very much like bog oak, it's called bog oak as a generic term even though you can get different types of tree, it just whatever sunk into the bogs at the time, I've turned a few pens from this, my way was with a sharp skew to peel it off, and don't be shy with the ca on a regular basis to keep the 'top layer' hardened up.

Bog Oak is oak, the other trees that you can get, amongst others are Bog Pine and Bog Yew. The Oaks that form Bog Oak are a ancestor of the Quercus Robor tree that we have today, there isn't a Latin Species name for it. The Oak that fell in the Fens tends to be lighter and occasionally brown whereas the Bog Oak that comes from Cheshire and Ireland tends to be blacker. In the case of the cheshire trees, they were all valley floor river bank trees, the trees in the fens were plantation trees that fell into the holes left by neolithic man digging the peat in between the trees. The sea level rose rapidly and the peaty soil became sodden and unable to support the huge trees which fell towards the unsupported side - the hole, into which they fell and laid. The top of the tree and the sap wood rotted quickly but the bulk of the trees were submersed and preserved in the highly acidic tannin peat soil, hence the black. If you turn bog oak you can sometimes smell oil as it is in the prefossilisation stage. Bog Oak from the Fens is around 5500 years old, no idea about Cheshire or Irish, and no idea if there is any native to South Wales. The irish bog oak is a lot more brittle and does not show much of the features of the oak, and I'll upset some subscribers from across the water by saying, but it is my point of view only, that Irish bog oak is much inferior as a turning material than Fenland Bog Oak.

As you meander around the roads in the fens you can sometimes see bits of bog oak that farmers have cast on the roadside (or from their perspective, fieldside), in frustration that it has fouled their ploughs. The stuff is generally useless unless immediately planked and kiln dried. The Fenland Bog Oak project recently unearthed a tree which had a dimension to the first lift (or brnch) of 13 metres. It was planked at 60mm and after drying the planks were 38mm. The tree gave up 3.2 gallons of water per cubic foot.