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Serge said his sample is hard, dense, heavy

Well American sycamore is not very hard, dense or heavy and I have never seen it used for pallets or crates. I have seen nicely quartered hard maple and beech look like that.

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Billy, you jujugoo master, you ain't gettin' my chunk o wood!

Bob, i think you're right with hard maple, makes sense if we look at the grain pattern IMHO.

Hi all,

This looks and sounds (hard and dense, easy to crack) like lacewood. I just bought 4 board feet of fully figured stuff, cost me 40 bucks. Lucky you to have found it in a pallet! I plan on using mine to carve an electric top, those medullary rays become dramatic when carved to a curved profile.

To me I am sure that it is Acer pseudoplatanus, sometimes called Sycamore Maple because it is similarity to American Sycamore. Sycamore Maple is I believe the same wood as the London Plane that Colin referred to. It is in my opinion definitely European Maple.

Over the past 100 years European Maple has been planted extensively in urban parks because of their tolerance of ambient light and pollution found in cities. Almost all of the European Maple that has been planted in the US (other than as an ornamental tree) have been naturalized in New York, New England and the Southeastern parts of the Canadian Provinces.

The trees look very similar to Hard (sugar) maple and cross pollinate freely.

At one time I was part owner of a sawmill in New Hampshire sawing mostly maple for wooden dowel production and we often saw variations in maple that did not fit once species. Sycamore Maple does tend to have a darker heartwood.

my guess: quartercut beech (or maybe maple)

Regards,

Martin

    This looks similar to sycamore but the color is wrong. Most sycamore I see is a pinkish tan color. I think this is a rare form of OLD GROWTH TREE WOOD , it is indegenious to the earth and grows upward with limbs spreading from a veriticle stem called a TRUNK. Many a young boy has broken an arm when falling from about 20 feet.
     The leaves of this variety are often green though they may change to red or yellow and fall off when the temerature falls.
     I am sure if you dig under the tree there will be downward growths . They keep the tree from wandedring the countryside and thus the term PLANTED was formed. I think this was a Gaelic variety.
    I am sure there are experts here that can add to this. I am looking forward to the other explainations
john
    

I think John nailed it!

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

You guys are overlooking Sycaple as a candidate...

I'm with the hard maple group.

Great post Shawn! Thanks

John and Larry, that was hilarious!

I figured it out you guys! It's a cross-breed! Looks like a maple,and a beech mated. Really, I don't know. First impression was maple, because of the grain in the upper left of the pic., but I've never seen maple with all those flecks, so ya got me. Beech has those little lines similar to oak, but smaller. Does this wood have those? Hows the grain run-out on this stuff? Alan.

Alan,

A cross breed Maple & Beech would have to be a Baple or a Meech

[QUOTE=Shawn] Alan,

A cross breed Maple & Beech would have to be a Baple or a Meech [/QUOTE]

That or a Mach or Beeple....

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
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You guys are all medicated, aren't you?

Don't know what the heck this wood is but i sure plan on usin' it!

[QUOTE=Larry Davis] You guys are overlooking Sycaple as a candidate... [/QUOTE]

And it's close relative, Mapamore.

Steve

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Stop kidding around you guys!  If that would, oops, I mean wood, has runout, it's not gonna bend easily, and he should find out if it can bend. Looks like it should though, IMO. Alan.

What was the country of origin for the pallet? With the global economy Stuff moves all over the place. When I worked in the shipyards I scrounged pallets that had purpelheart skids, ones made entirly of mahogany (crappy mahogany but useable for jigs & endblocks), red & white oak & others.

I think it is a species of the Freebus family

GD