Timber I.D.

[Steve Bean]

To me it looks like fir, but I would definitely recommend a positive ID and familiarity with its characteristics before building anything with it.

[jimbunyard]

While it's usually notoriously difficult to identify a wood species from its appearance, I think some kind of ash is a good guess.

One of the surest methods for identification (without seeing the living tree of course), is analysis of end grain under low magnification.

Ash





Maple






The end grain must be sanded very smooth or planed to do properly.

Another tool to get you in the ballpark is to weigh a conveniently sized piece, scale the result up to a cubic foot and compare that to the density listed for the suspected species.

Me--- if I had a little to spare, I'd just use it in some sample, representative construction to see how it performs...

[Alan Mighty]

Download a copy of the Wood Handbook (otherwise known as Wood as an Engineering Material) from the Forest Products Laboratory website:

https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/products/p...rouping_id=100

Chapter 4 of the 2010 edition on Physical Properties has a table on the color and figure of some common US timbers.

Chapter 5 of the 2010 edition has tables giving the specific density (and other mechanical properties of most US timbers, commercially important wood imported from Canada, and some timbers imported into the US from non-Canadian sources.