Mary Ostler

More progress on the x-chair front.

After pulling all the nails out of the skid runners, I moved on to
ripping the runners into 3/4″ x 3″ planks.

My tablesaw got one hell of a work out ripping these boards to size.
The wood is incredibly hard, and after only 2 runners I decided to stop.
My shop was filling with smoke, and one side of the cut was getting 
slightscorch marks.

I had used the blade that was installed on the machine rather than bothering to
switch out one of my newer carbide baldes. Bad Mary….

Considering the outside of the skids are ugly as hell, the inside is very pretty wood.

The pictures below are of the wood for Agnes’s chair. I have yet to cut into the runners for
my chair. My skid runners have super crazy red heart wood, with light grey sapwood. I know
from turning some of  that wood, it dulls my tools VERY quickly.

I spent the better part of two hours last night refering to my books on Lumber…
comparing grain, coloration, cell structure…etc. I came to the conclusion…
I have no idea what kind of wood this is!

Tree identifaction is so much easierthan lumber identification.

Do you have a guess?

my only other idea is to weight out a given area of wood, and
compare it to species averages. This wood is very heavy and hard.
That should narrow the field down somewhat.