Need help on wood ID

[Tom Hoffman]

Can't recall for sure where I got this wood. Likely Etsy or Ebay. I bought it because I liked the spalting. It's been on the shelf with tree saver coating for a few years. It has some peculiar grain characteristics I would expect from a tropical wood. But unlike most tropical woods I've come across, this wood is light in color and light weight. End grain 2 and flat grain 2 are just enlargements of a portion of end grain 1 and flat grain 1.
A small amount of paste wax has been applied.
I don't know why the flat grain pictures have a yellowish hue.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Gabriel Hoff]

It looks to me like some kind of sycamore. The flat grain photo looks similar to sycamore I have turned, but I can't be certain..

 

[Adam Cottrill]

I looks like spalted American Elm (Ulmus americana) to my eye and is consistent with light weight and light colour. One of the distinguishing characteristics of elm (and hackberry I believe) are the "wwww" patterns evident in the end grain and flat sawn surfaces. The pattern is known as "ulmiform".

 

[Kent Reisdorph]

Elm or hackberry. Seems too light in color for elm but I don't have a lot of experience with that.

 

[DON FRANK]

I would go with hackberry. Sycamore has a specific smell to it.

 

[Peter D'Attomo]

End grain Elm

looks pretty close.

 

[robo hippy]

That #2 picture says elm to me. Which elm, not sure, but elm.

robo hippy

 

[Tom Hoffman]

Thanks to all who took the time to chime in. I think I'm gonna go with Hackberry. When someone said Hackberry, it rang bell for me. I now remember buying some hackberry online. I bought it because I'd never seen it before, and it was a curiosity.

 

[Michael Brown]

I say spalted sugar maple. I inherited a 8' x 30" trunk from my parents house back east after it sat all summer, and that's a spitting image of a bowl I turned from it... Coloring is very similar but the grain is nearly identical. The light weight is another indicator. The 8" blanks I broke down felt as light as fir or northern pine.

 

[Kent Reisdorph]

Michael, the end grain in the first pic is the giveaway. Elm and hackberry have that interlocked grain pattern.

 

[Leo Van Der Loo]

American Elm, aka as White Elm for a reason can be quite light colored, other Elm species are all darker, here is a Spalted American Elm bowl.
In my ezxperience, Hackberry does not have the wwww grain as prominent, but I have turned it only a few times, here is a Hackberry wobbly bowl.



As for Sycamore, it has a quite different grain, here a natural edge Sycamore bowl.


The only picture I have from Sycamore showing the fleck grain was the background for Bottle stoppers, but you can see the flecks clearly.

 

[Kent Reisdorph]

American Elm, aka as White Elm for a reason can be quite light colored, other Elm species are all darker, here is a Spalted American Elm bowl.

I realize now that the elm I am familiar with must be red elm. It's quite dark.

 

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Kent most Elm trees are gone, succumbed to the Elm disease, though the Siberian Elm is kind of immune to the disease, it was introduced by government, it grows all over and gets quite large, I have cut down and turned quite a lot of it, as these would get damaged by heavy wet snow and so it then got trimmed or cut down.

Red or slippery Elm is basically all gone where I lived, I remember all the very large dead Elm trees in the bush and the stumps of the Elms removed from along the roads, a lot were white Elm, but other species also died.

The Siberian Elm tree wood can have very dark heartwood, yes it smells some, but pretty all woods do, some more pleasant ;-)

These here are all Siberian elm turnings.

 

[John Ames]

if its as yellow as the picture indicates I'm going to throw out Mulberry for your consideration

 

[William Rogers]

Just turn some, American elm.