Help with ID


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100 years old. Came over on a boat from Ireland. Chopped down from a tall hall table to a short coffe one by my grandmother. I believe it was refinished at that time. Some severe finish damage led me to strip. The figure was obvious after stripping so I am working to bare wood for a new take on the finish. Fairly light, it works beautifully with hand tools. It is not a specie I am familiar with. The dark blotching is just water. post-9382-0-62594400-1393546106_thumb.jppost-9382-0-20615600-1393546115_thumb.jppost-9382-0-15961900-1393546124_thumb.jppost-9382-0-96927000-1393546132_thumb.jp

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If you hadn't thrown in the Ireland curveball, I would have said sycamore.  But I'm not very familiar with European species, so who knows.  It looks like sycamore, though. :)

 

Edit: Then again, maybe it is.  I gargled "european sycamore" and the images look close.  However, wiki states that European sycamore is not closely related to other sycamores, but was named that because of the similar bark and round fruitballs.  It's gonna remain my guess.

 

Sycamore_European_Hardwood_.jpg

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That's very exotic to be 100 years old and Irish ..... There wasn't a lot available in wood back then but that doesn't mean much

I don't want to throw another curve ball at you but initially I was thinking mahogany aswel but here's a picture of steamed beech with the fleck .. The only thing throwing me off is the color, steamed beech is pink but I've never seen an old piece in steamed beech

post-14825-0-20032100-1393591885_thumb.j

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It looks like a mixture of timbers to me and I can see what Steve means with mahogany by that darker looking board in the middle. However I'm leaning towards European sycamore, that I am very familiar with, for some of the other boards considering those medullary rays although I'm not 100% sure.

Post some pictures when it is dry as those water marks are muddling it.

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Good call Marco!  That could be it...the beech and sycamore appear to have very similar grain.  The color is a wild card...who knows what its real color was before it was tortured with that finish and then the stripper.  If Carus could resaw one of those boards the mystery might be unlocked. :)

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It's Beech C, 99% sure. Looks like my wooden hand planes, worktops and cabinets fascia we have made wit it   ;). The colour and medulary rays are the give away. No wild card on colour Eric, euro beech does than when it gets old. 

 

Sycamore looks more like maple, very white, 90% sure it does not have rays.

 

Now I'm really going to look a fool if I'm wrong!

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It's Beech C, 99% sure. Looks like my wooden hand planes, worktops and cabinets fascia we have made wit it   ;). The colour and medulary rays are the give away. No wild card on colour Eric, euro beech does than when it gets old. 

 

Sycamore looks more like maple, very white, 90% sure it does not have rays.

 

Now I'm really going to look a fool if I'm wrong!

 

quartersawn american sycamore is white like maple but does have rays.  here is a picture of some QS sycamore I have in my shop.

 

post-14089-0-31763800-1393600806_thumb.j

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Here's one I made earlier.

The sycamore bits are the outer wings of the body of this guitar. I can confirm it's European as it came from a syc in my garden. 

Rays are quite clear on this one :)

 

post-3084-0-57357200-1393603111_thumb.jp

 

Although I'm still not 100% convinced about the original query. Could be beech too as you say.

 

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It looks like a mixture of timbers to me and I can see what Steve means with mahogany by that darker looking board in the middle. However I'm leaning towards European sycamore, that I am very familiar with, for some of the other boards considering those medullary rays although I'm not 100% sure.

Post some pictures when it is dry as those water marks are muddling it.

That's actualy a very good point it could be a mixture of woods ..... The original table could have been painted and they wouldn't care about matching

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post-9382-0-90741000-1393706591_thumb.jp

This is for better color analysis. I have planed, sanded and scraped to correct for some warp so I do not think stripper bleaching is a concern. Further support would be that I did not chemically strip the bottom and its tones are similar. However, I am shooting with my phone so I sought better light. I included a piece of ash and a well known product logo for color comparison. With regard to mixing species, this is certainly evidenced in the under carriage. The center post that joins the legs I believe the wood to be something other and the table support appears to be oak. I cannot say with certainty that I believe this top to all be the same so the paint grade argument has merit. I believe I may have to move as dark as I removed to blend the tones the way the original finish did.

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