Wood ID?

[demonx]

I was given this slab a while back and at the time I was told it was Fir, however the person who gave it to me was unsure and said the guy he got it from" doesn't know much"!

Only info he really knew is it came from the Castlemaine area in Victoria.

I'm wondering if it's really Mountain Ash or something similar?

What do you guys think?

[curly]

Gday Allen ,
Bring it across some time , I'll have a stab at an ID . Lets just say it's not FIR ! Abies or Pseudotsuga . It's not conifer , the pore structure looks Eucalypt , would need a closer look .
Pete

[demonx]

Gday Allen ,
Bring it across some time , I'll have a stab at an ID . Lets just say it's not FIR ! Abies or Pseudotsuga . It's not conifer , the pore structure looks Eucalypt , would need a closer look .
Pete

I also guessed Eucalypt, hense the suggestion it might be Mountain Ash.

When you've got some stock that you think I'd be interested in let me know and I'll throw this in the back. In fact, I just had an idea, I'll shoot you a PM.

[Steve.Toscano]

My guess is Mountain Ash, I had a slab of the stuff a few years ago and by memory it looked very similar to your slab pictured.

[hooked]

I have recently used Mountain Ash from two different suppliers and it is quite a lot light lighter in colour and without the colour variation shown in your pics. I've also been resawing quite a bit of local blackwood that looks very similar to your pics. I'm only a novice but my guess would be blackwood.......a sniff test would give a defining answer.

[demonx]

I have recently used Mountain Ash from two different suppliers and it is quite a lot light lighter in colour and without the colour variation shown in your pics. I've also been resawing quite a bit of local blackwood that looks very similar to your pics. I'm only a novice but my guess would be blackwood.......a sniff test would give a defining answer.

Definitely not Blackwood and in person it looks nothing like BW. Being that BW is one of the most common timbers I use I can say this with a certainty.

[RobDyball]

Pores and colour looks like a camphor laurel slab I have, but I'm no expert. Does it stink?

[demonx]

Pores and colour looks like a camphor laurel slab I have, but I'm no expert. Does it stink?

Funny story - Before I had a insulated room to store timber in the shed I used to keep a lot in the house. The first time I ever bought Camphor it stunk the whole house out! I'm quite familiar with the stench of Camphor and can assure you this slab is not!

It is a Eucalypt of some sort.

[curly]

The blonde Eucalypts are famously hard to identify , after all there's literally hundreds of them . Without any science to back it there's a few species that readily come to mind . Shining gum E. nitens certainly can have the goldey heart and wide sap of the sample though I'd expect more prominent growth rings as it's a montane tree . Tallow wood E. microcorys has the colour and sap too though it's pretty rare to not show some amount of interlock figure . I reckon my best bet would be White Ironbark ( also known as yellow gum ) E. leucoxylon . It does afterall grow in Castlemaine , looks just like that . It is pretty heavy , you definitely wouldn't mistake it for an Ash type Euc .
As an aside the locality the timber was sourced , even if the tree was cut locally can mean very little . On my way back up from a Blackwood harvest run down the Otways just now I pulled up and got a couple of little logs from a farmer that had blown down out of a planted shelterbelt . It was a York Gum E.loxophleba . They are from the WA goldfields predominantly ,though like Wandoo , Gimlet and others are planted all over the place as shelterbelt trees.
Pete