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Have you ever seen Walnut exhibit spider webbing like Ziricote or BRW before? The reason I ask is my wife and I were at our favorite pool hall last night (run by close friends of ours Doc and Debra) and played on a new table Doc just bought and installed it is a 100 year old Brunswick from a high end hotel in the hill country of Texas that was recently torn down. It has massive side railing of what he was told to him was American Walnut. But I swear to you that this piece had the color of very old BRW or so unusually light Ziricote and more spider webbing than any set of Ziricote I have ever seen. This was to die for wood. I told dock next time he re-clothed that table I wanted to see the unfinished side of the wood because I wanted to sand a place and smell it. I believe it is BRW. Anyway has anyone seen Walnut exhibit spider webbing?

bump

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

I've seen some walnut with blackline spalt that kinda sorta looked like that....but not really the kind you see in BRW or ziricote.

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The member formerly known as erikbojerik....

Here in California, walnut taken from the area of the graft between the English walnut rootstock and the claro walnut bole (this is usually a couple of feet above the ground) often displays black lines similar to spider webbing on rosewoods. But walnut doesn't look to me much like a rosewood. If you can sand it anywhere, the smells of both are distinctive.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

It'll be a veneer anyhow....

You can remove a bumper and see what it is(and do the scratch 'n sniff thing). The bolts are hidden behind the trim piece that surrounds the outside of the table. The cloth is fixed to the bumpers, so they can be removed without harm. You may be able to do the test by simply removing one of the pockets, also.

I've helped re-cover more than a few tables, and watched an old ace re-cover the bumpers, too. Quite an art....

It was not uncommon for ultra high-end tables back around the turn of last century to be made of Brazilian Rosewood. In fact, there's one like you describe up for sale in Boston for some serious cash. Like the price of a really nice home cash.... so it probably was Brazilian. Frequently, they used rosewood for the top rails. My dad had a table that old that we had in our basement most of my life, and before he "restored" it, I believe the rails were rosewood. He replaced the veneer with formica. Ick. most of it was in poor shape anyway.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Grumpy you are wrong about it being a thin veneer it is not a thin veneer. I know this for a fact because there are about 3 or 4 chipped in various areas around the side and end rails and two or three worm holes. The wood is solid boards glued up to the inner frame. The dress planks or in other words the wood exposed to the player look to be about 1” thick. You could call it veneer because it is glued up to the basic table frame but it is not thin by any means. Yes I to have helped re-cover a table or two and you are right that most the exterior woods are veneer but not all tables are done in that matter.

Also I am referring to spider webbing not just black lines. The more I look at the more I think it is Ziricote but not totally sure.

I take some pictures tonight and post

Did I say thin veneer? Never said thin veneer....

Pardon me Grumpy I assumed you meant like furniture veneer. Did not mean to attribute something to you that you did not mean.

I would never call a 1" thick layer a veneer. It might be technically correct, but the term is certainly not used in industry to describe a "plank".

I doubt it will be an inch thick. Many of these older high end tables had thick veneers(relative to what we think of today as veneer), running anywhere from 1/16" to maybe 1/4". But they will be glued to a substrate for stability, and that makes them a veneer...

I have worked on several old brunswick tables, usualy the top rails( which have a tendancy to split where the pockets are attached ) , that the cushions are attached to are solid wood , usualy walnut , but sometimes I think they did use rosewood . the aprons are sometimes solid , sometimes veneered, the skirts , and legs ( if they are not turned ) are usualy veneered the way Mario has described. some of the smaller trim pieces , are solid wood . Jody