What kind of tree is this wood from ?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Thanks, if I ever get up to knoxville again, will check em out.

Was kinda making a note to self to keep an eye out for an osage log. This year started ripping fallen trees on the property, but I'm real slow and will be another year before I get the stuff ripped that is laying on the ground in my acre of back woods.

The first ones I cut are just now getting dry enough to start looking at. Santa brought me a thickness planer and I tested it out on about 3 foot X 3" x 5" slab I cut out of a "bend" about 12 feet up a small black walnut. The tree probably started growing crooked to get mor light.

After planing it, the piece is covered in deep quilting. Looks like you can see the pattern an inch down inside the wood, on both sides of the wood. The board is flat to the touch, but the eye beholds the surface as deeply rippled as a washboard. Dunno what makes the illusion of transparency in the opaque wood.

The tree man cut out the weak fork of a front yard black maple, that was threatening to fall off into the street. Ripped it and put it up to dry last july. Nephew wanted a 3 foot board as a backer for a wall decoration he was making so he liked the black maple and we planed off a 3 foot piece of 5/4 rough sawn, and the grain was just killer. Maybe quilting comes from limbs under stress, but that black maple was quilted the whole length of the board. Put linseed oil on it and it knocks yer eyes out.

So I'm currently just getting kicks messing around with wood out of my yard.

Is there some kind of transparent stain that exaggerates the grain like oil, without changing the color of the wood? Poly finish doesn't seem to make the grain "pop" like oil, unless it is stained first, but a lot of the colors, I don't want to change.

[Guest PapaB]

Lester Weevils,

Unfortunately I'm not aware of a finish that makes grain 'pop' the way oil does without some warming of the color.