# Anyone recognize this dark orange wood?



## gfixler (Feb 21, 2009)

There's a picture at Woodcraft at this 2-inch bowl sander link. It's the darker of the 2 woods in the example bowl being sanded. I thought maybe padauk by the color, but it's not really like any padauk I've seen. I like it, and would like to one day use it, but I'm the detail-oriented sort and like to read up on everything I use first, where possible.

Thanks!


----------



## reggiek (Jun 12, 2009)

Looks alot like mango, but could be several different woods…Pashaco…Isiago….you might check out www.forgottenwoods.net they have alot of orange colored woods…


----------



## teenagewoodworker (Jan 31, 2008)

the grain kind of reminds me a bit of mahogany. a little to dark though


----------



## OCG (May 17, 2009)

Hi Gary
you may like this site, if you don't already know about it. http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/
Occie


----------



## jato (Apr 29, 2009)

I agree with teenagewoodworker…mahogany; maybe south american.


----------



## commajockey (Jun 2, 2009)

It actually looks like Bolivian Rosewood in color and grain. I have a small amount that, when first cut, reveals a very orange/amber color. But once a finish is applied it becomes a deeper red. That's my guess.


----------



## blackcherry (Dec 7, 2007)

Look like pecan to me…Blkcherry


----------



## gfixler (Feb 21, 2009)

Thanks for all the replies everyone. They got me investigating all of the woods, and now I want to try several of them. I decided a little earlier today to go to Woodcraft's customer service page and just fire off an email asking them directly. I got a reply back a couple of hours later from Sam who had asked around at the office and got the reply that it looked like padauk and maple. I had looked up padauk before even posting here, and it just didn't seem right, but I thanked him for checking around - great, friendly customer service on their part, and not even about a product I wanted to buy! - but then later at night, after I got home, I remembered I had a piece of padauk in my collection. I've never used it, nor have I used the purple heart I picked up with it. They're just lying in wait.

Anyway, the little slab of padauk I have is a 100% dead ringer match for the wood in Woodcraft bowl example I posted. D'oh! I knew I was going to end up smacking my forehead for one reason or another with this post, especially as all I ever do is research wood 

Oh, and Occie - I do know Hobbit House! It's one of my very favorite ID sites. My only complaint is that it's a one-way lookup. Great if you know the name, or have some ideas between a few species, and great as a tool to just browse and learn, but next to impossible to ID anything you know nothing about. I wish I could get his site set up in a database with stats you could key off of to reduce the list. These would be things like closed/open grain, density (weight/volume), general color (lightest - holly - pale/maple - oak - walnut - wenge - ebony - darkest, and designation for oddballs, like bloodwood and purple heart), certain end-grain features, like large pores, stripes (zebrawood), or uniformity (poplar), and then any distinguishing stuff, like the purple mineral streaks prevalent in tulip poplar. That would be a really amazing database for the woodworker.

Thanks again, everyone!


----------



## Durnik150 (Apr 22, 2009)

I've worked a lot of Padauk and that wood just doesn't look like Padauk. The grain and coloring look a lot like Mahogany as several people have already mentioned. Keep in mind that for the photo on the website, they had probably already finished the wood so it looked good for the ad. The true appearance of the unfinished wood is most likely several shades lighter than in the picture. Padauk has a very intense color.

That said, Padauk does change color as it ages or with direct exposure to UV rays. It evolves from it's almost vivid orange to a deep burnt umber color. If the piece were very light Padauk that had already been exposed to UV for a while, I could almost see it as Padauk. Almost.


----------



## whit (Jul 6, 2007)

Gary,

Might be Padauk, but I doubt it. If it were, there would be orange dust EVERYWHERE - on the lathe, the Maple would take on an orange tint; there would be an orange fog in the air; your KEYBOARD would be orange from having LOOKED at the picture!! 

Whit


----------



## Mattias (Jan 27, 2008)

Merbau?


----------



## chriswright (Nov 13, 2008)

I just doesn't seem like Padauk to me. The Padauk I've used is reddish orange. The grain pattern is to distinctive to be teak to me. I'm going to say it's something like Ipe or Mahogany.


----------



## gfixler (Feb 21, 2009)

teenagewoodworker, jato, Durnik, and Chris - vindication for you folks!

Sam wrote me back today and followed up. Here's what he had to say:

"Hi Gary,
I did find out that the bowl is on display at the Woodcraft
Supply Corp Store here in Parkersburg, WV. It is Mahogany and Maple.
Sorry about the Paduak confusion earlier."

I got my piece of padauk out again last night and had a deeper look. It didn't actually look 100% like a match as I had thought in my previous, groggy, late-night state.

Whit - haha! Sounds like a good warning to me for whenever I get around to turning some padauk. I was originally considering a padauk-purple heart segmented, but I think it would look a little too "carnival."

Mattias - Merbau is really pretty, though reading up on it today (and finding it to look kind of like this wood - good eye!), I was dismayed to see how - at least as of 2005 - it's being clearcut in Indonesia (3rd largest rainforest remaining) with no care about renewing it as a resource.


----------



## HokieMojo (Mar 11, 2008)

Gary,
If you do deecide to try purpleheart and padauk, make sure to take photos AS SOON AS YOU ARE DONE and BEFORE you apply a finish. Then you can go back and look at it months/years later (with or without a finish) and I think you will be surprised at how different it looks. The whole carnival thing will be gone and I think you will end up liking it quite much.


----------



## SCOTSMAN (Aug 1, 2008)

I can honestly say it is IMHO sometimes nigh on impossible to tell a piece of wood from another simply by photograph exactly.It is not impossible to guess most times but we all know sometimes wood can be very difficult to tell.I bought an expensive book or two and found them to be useless to help decide which wood I am working with.good luck Alistair


----------



## reggiek (Jun 12, 2009)

I agree with Alistair…..I have tried to identify some of the woods I see in photos….and get maybe 50%...and thats on the high side.

Photography is such an imprecise art….so many variables….that without seeing the picture of a piece of wood on the tree…it is nigh impossible to identify…especially a piece that has a finish on it.

Now, if you can feel it….slice it…smell it….you would have a significantly better chance of coming up with the right choice…


----------



## gfixler (Feb 21, 2009)

Hokie - ME take a bunch of photos of every step along the way? Unheard of!  Actually, I have been a little lax lately. Thanks for the heads up on how much they'll change. I may just have to give that color combo a shot. I'm both eager and apprehensive to try segmented bowls. The eager bit is about how pretty they can be. The hesitation comes from how much extra work is involved to build up the blank from which to make the turning.

Alistair - I totally agree. That's one reason I really love The Hobbit House website. He posts dozens of photos of each tree, and color-corrects most of them, alerting you to which ones he's worked on that way, and which he's posted without correction, or which he couldn't correct beyond a certain point, complete with descriptions as to how the real wood appears in relation to what he's posted (e.g. "it's not quite this red in real life, and a bit deeper in color.")

reggie - One of the things that's been most amazing to me is how very much wood actually does smell! I've become really aware of it, and now they're all remarkably fragrant when I'm working with them in the woodshop. Eucaylptus has had a lemon smell that was so strong and so sweet, like lemon candy, that I actually gleeked once while smelling a fresh cut! Some Douglas fir I've gotten from Home Depot - green and kiln dried - has smelled remarkably like both warm pumpkins and fresh lemons, sometimes like both at once. Jacaranda is almost exactly like fresh potato peels, and after an hour of turning and sweating, I threw the shirt in the hamper later and it still reeked of that raw potato smell. Walnut to me, especially if your saw is dull and burns it while cutting it smells very much like chocolate bread pudding w/ cinnamon to me. I salivate while cutting it  I really love the normal scent of walnut, too, and never having worked in it, a couple years back I bought my first board, and the smell took me back to a friend's basement lounge/game room. I recalled that the walls were all paneled in dark wood, and realized the room had smelled strongly of walnut wood. The smell itself gives me happy, nostalgic feelings of playing Atari on a shag carpeted basement floor, and I'd really like to panel my own basement game room some day in that smell (need a basement first). I planed some dry red oak and smelled the fresh shavings, and it stung my eyes, kinda like I got glass cleaner spritzed in them. It has a very sharp, stinging smell, not unlike that of ammonia, though distinct and quite different in actual fragrance. There was a scrap board of something very light, and looking a bit like something halfway between pine and cedar that I picked up with some other free boards in an alley once. I planed the edge, and was immediately brought back in time to my gradeschool days. It took me a minute to figure it out, but it was 'old penicls.' I looked it up, and found out there are species of cedar and juniper that are collectively called 'pencil cedar,' and are, or were what pencils are made of. I haven't smelled it in ages, so they must have switched species, at least primarily, but it was very distinct and specific. I passed a bag of shavings around at work, and everyone had similar memories of school days. Paperbark (Melaleuca quinquenervia), upon first cutting into it, had the same salty, musky smell of aquariums I've been to, especially shark exhibits, and the petting tank areas. Again, more flashbacks. It goes on and on like this. Dozens more species. I didn't really think of knotty pine as being very scented, but cutting some up more than a decade later, I had powerful flashbacks to my fledgling carpentry days in my folks' barn. I used only knotty pine back then. It's become almost a fetish for me now. I want to saw open, plane, and sand every kind of wood now, and a big part of it is scent-curiosity.


----------



## jato (Apr 29, 2009)

Identifying wood from photos is very difficult…density, smell, characteristics…the best of photos cant' catch this. I buy tools as I need them and each one has an interesting story (interesting to me at least). I once bought a small box full of 1×3 pieces of various wood species (25 or so). I packed it away somewhere, now I am gonna look for it and try to add to it. Thanks guys!


----------

