Isabel's Phoenix I

Allen - nice piece, this wood has a large dark sapwood that gives the piece nice contrast in my opinion. Do you happen to know what kind of wood it is?

Hi Jeff,

I turned this open form from a chunk of oak. There are at least three different species of oak known to be in the area were the tree fell: White, red and pin. There may be others. There were no leaves to examine as we are still in the very early throws of spring.

I cut the blank from the base of the tree very near where it had broken away from a sister trunk.

It was most likely a red oak, but I'm all ears if you can shed some additional light on the subject. By the way, the "Oaken Spheroid I" hollow form that I uploaded yesterday was cut from the same tree, about 30 feet above this piece.

Best Regards,
Allen

Nice piece Allen! I looks like it's ready to take flight.

Jeff and Paul,

Spring has brought an opportunity to revisit the tree which gave us "Isabel's Phoenix I" and the "Oaken Spheroid". The leaves that popped out of the main trunk (still standing) combined with the properties of the bark have made it easy to ID the species: Quercus prinus, otherwise known as the Chestnut Oak. The bark has a very high tannin content, which might explain the deep color gradiation of the sapwood. (At one time the bark was used to tan leather.) There are dozens of these trees on my property!

While doing some research on the identity of this tree I ran across a particularly good web site at Vanderbilt University:

http://www.cas.vanderbilt.edu/bioimages/pages/compare-oaks.htm

The site provides high resolution images of trees and is set up to make it easy to do comparisons of closely related species. FYI.

Paul, your comment about the flight-worthiness of the piece caused me to do a double-take on the color pattern on its front. By golly, there appears to be a pretty good rendition of a wing staring right at us!

Best Regards,
-Allen