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The bark from some conifer species can have cool looking patterns inside. I've used Douglas fir bark before to make a nice rosette and end graft. I hike a lot in the Cascade Mountains and I keep an eye out for interesting pieces of bark that are lying about and bring them home to take a look inside. Most of them are uninteresting or too fragile to be useful. I found the piece below last summer and finally got around to slicing it in half on the bandsaw and I like the pattern there. Unfortunately, I don't remember where in the Cascades I found it, which would narrow down the species. I know several species that it is not. Can anyone here positively identify what kind of conifer this came from? It would be nice just to know, but it would also guide me where to look for more on future hikes.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Here’s bark from a ponderosa pine. If you had any needles to go along with it that’d help.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Yea, having needles would have been a big help. In the future when I find an interesting piece of bark, I'll pick up some needles to bring home too. And, keep a written record of where I got it.

I'm fairly sure this isn't Ponderosa, but maybe. That's one of my favorite trees and they do grow on the eastern slopes of the Cascades. One of my hikes was in area where there were Ponderosas. I've tried Ponderosa bark before and its scaley structure pretty much fell apart when trying to slice it. I would like to find a piece of Ponderosa bark that would work because it often has cool colors and a nice scale pattern.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Jay, I can’t say definitively, but it looks like it could be from a mature Douglas Fir.

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George :-)

Hmmm if you had enough… stabilize it and use it for a headstock or something! May be cool


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Id second this. We end up burning a lot of Doug Fir in the winter and the bark looks a lot like that.

Thanks George L. and charliewood. There certainly is a lot of Doug fir in most of the places I go on hikes.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Out of curiosity, I got a piece of bark from a Ponderosa Pine I've been milling up. Here's what it looks like sliced open, about a 10" piece.



Been milling some Sugar Pine too. Next log of that I'll check a piece to see if it's different.

That looks cool. I think I may need to be looking at larger pieces of Ponderosa bark. How solid is it?

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Through the center it is very firm. Looking at the side where I initially cut the piece in two, shows layers similar to QS wood. The piece comes from bark peeled off of a tree cut down 1 1/2 years ago.

Looks to me like a spruce. If it was within 50 or so miles from the coast, western slope of the cascades it is most likely sitka spruce . But if further inland then definitely white spruce. Both of these western spruces have the scale look. It's definitely not fir non-fir Douglas, or any other that all have coarser fluted bark. .