What's This?

[Mark J]

No, that was phinds.  

[phinds]

6 hours ago, curlyoak said:

I never made the quote above!!!! Curlyoak

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

[curlyoak]

Thanks phinds. I couldn't figure that out. No problem.

[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.

 

[Mark J]

Thank you very much for your time and analysis!  Now that I know what it is I am going to try very hard not to acquire any more .