phinds

OK, @MarkJ It took me a while, but I now believe that your original conclusion that it is teak was (and is) correct. looking at your pics I thought the wood was ring porous but it is not. It's close to ring porous but it's clearly semi ring porous, like teak. Not only that, but the distribution of decreasing pore size from earlywood to latewood is very similar to teak. See the first image below. These are not really strong indicators of teak (as opposed to many other woods with similar anatomy) but they do at least avoid ruling out teak. The wood clogs sandpaper quickly, like teak. That's a very strong indicator of teak. Many other characteristics are not, each taken by themselves, really strong indicators of teak but when they ALL point towards teak, it gets pretty conclusive. They are, in no particular order: density of pore multiples is about the same as typical teak size of pores about the same as teak size of pores relative to the ray distribution is quite similar to teak (see blue circle 2) ray density very similar to teak expansion of rays as they pass through the earlywood, while not at all unique to teak, is at least another mild indicator of teak (see blue circle 1) my own high magnification pics are not very good since I only sanded to 400 grit instead of my normal 1200. I'd like to see the background parenchyma but it doesn't show up in my pics they way it does in the NCSU pics (see red circles) continuous blob of vasicentric parenchyma all the way across the bottom of the earlywood, also not at all unique to teak, but another mild indicator the size of vasicentric parenchyma around the latewood pores is much smaller than in the earlywood pores, which is not at all unique to teak, but another mild indicator my standard 1/4" x 1/4" end grain cross section, first of your wood and then of one of my teak (Tectona grandis) samples. This is an image of Tectona grandis from The North Carolina State University anatomy site on the left and my own high magnification of your wood on the right. I was pretty sure it was teak as soon as it clogged the sandpaper like teak, but my OCD made me go to this higher magnification than I normally use to really convince myself that the anatomical structure was fully consistent with teak. Details are discussed in the comments above.

http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/texas ebony.htm

I've never encountered any, but it's hard to know just what wood they mean since "wallaba" is a common name that appears in about 20 different species from half a dozen different genera. I think most of the species are South American.

Yeah, sorry. I'm not very good at using this confusing forum.

It's not unusual for indented grain to be quite localized

I went through the few samples that I have of teak and did not find any that were nearly a ring porous as this wood, so I checked the NCSU LUNA site for Tectona grandis and lo and behold, the first one is, while not quite ring porous, at least one that has significantly larger earlywood pores than most of the latewood pores, at least somewhat like this mystery wood, so maybe it IS teak. https://images.lib.ncsu.edu/luna/servlet/view/search?q=Tectona grandis&os=0

How thin IS the piece that has some end grain? If it's less than 1/4" I can't do my normal processing. Send them anyway, but I'd suggest a plain old manilla envelope since any flat rate (small box or even flat rate envelope) is likely to be more expensive. I'll PM you my address

Tons of resource links here for wood id ---> https://woodbarter.com/threads/wood-id-resources.70/ As far as I know, this is the best compendium of wood ID resources in existence (he says, modestly).

Ah, yes, but you're talking about "fluted grain" and that's not what this is. Fluted grain bulges OUT from the growth rings (in the end grain) and this bulges IN. That's in addition the facts that you mentioned plus the absolute inconsistency of the end grain with butternut. http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/_flutedgrain.htm

@Mark J, this is definitely not walnut or oak (those who pointed out the lack of strong medullary rays as ruling out oak are correct). The indented grain (the bumps in what you call the undulating pattern) are intriguing since I don't recall seeing them in something so strongly ring porous. Nothing about this looks like walnut. The face looks a bit like butternut but the end grain says no way. My first thought on seeing the face grain was teak but the end grain, from what I can see, says definitely not teak. I COULD be wrong about that though since I can't really see the end grain clearly enough to be sure. Teak is generally semi ring porous but is sometimes close to ring porous. This wood appears to be strongly ring porous, which is why I say it's unlikely to be teak. @Chestnut is right about the oiliness being another indicator in favor of teak. The indented grain also argues against teak, but it's possible that this is not true indented grain but just a couple of ingrown branches (adventitious buds, which could occur in teak) or even just "aggregate rays" (although I don't think they occur in teak either). So, I'm not coming up with anything yet. I'll poke around a bit. Do you have enough to send me a small sample?

Another thing you could do it put a layer of that heavy plastic goop that smooths out to a thick clear finish that is much tougher than the wood.

Cedar (not "ceddar") is generally pretty soft so a table would dent pretty easily. EDIT: beat to the punch by drzaius

Actually, I go to 1200 for the pics for my site but for ID 400 is usually enough and depending on the wood you can sometimes get reliable ID at 220 or so. For example, to tell if something is ring porous oak 220 is probably more than enough. Live oak can take a bit more.