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Black locust? - R Clark - 07-16-2022
Son in law bought a pickup truck load of slabs last year for $140; among them were 5 slabs that the seller said are black locust.
The boards are 7 feet long, 8-10" wide (after cutting off rotted sapwood), and a true 6/4 thick dry. I have no idea how long the logs sat on the ground before milling, but the sapwood is bug eaten and rotted.
LOML has stated a desire for a porch swinging bench, and given black locust's good weather resistance, this stuff might be the ticket.
I've never had black locust in my shop that I know of. So I sliced off one end to look at the grain. This picture is of a section of end grain. It's 1 1/2" from top to bottom in the picture.
[attachment=43397]
I used wood-database.com to look up black locust. The picture above seems to be "close" to what is pictured in their description. But, the description also highlighted Black Locust's characteristic of fluorescing under UV light. I used a small UV penlight to illuminate the grain. This picture doesn't do the color justice, but when illuminated with that UV light, it gave off a bright chartreuse glow. The pic:
[attachment=43398]
Just looking for confirmation. Am I on the right track?
RE: Black locust? - EdL - 07-16-2022
A pic of the board please, black locust is green, rather ugly imo.
What you have looks more like honey locust color wise.
Ed
RE: Black locust? - jteneyck - 07-17-2022
(07-16-2022, 08:47 PM)EdL Wrote: A pic of the board please, black locust is green, rather ugly imo.
What you have looks more like honey locust color wise.
Ed
You must be thinking of some other wood. This is black locust:
![[Image: AM-JKLWJjYXyq2iyERVNIRU0bzDZbvGVkbBGV-bY...authuser=1]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AM-JKLWJjYXyq2iyERVNIRU0bzDZbvGVkbBGV-bY_TRkf9tnBZdRG358XhPHmcUAxc2gyIEofLF9wmenHS8zcMmTovFkOlubOEKrhLnubfq3XYfIlZY7x7ig_xUtxRsJ8WN8x8gYNzkrb2n1lSnpHfpzVnrEBg=w1190-h893-no?authuser=1)
RE: Black locust? - EdL - 07-17-2022
Ours here has a green tint....very hard, not tooling friendly. Used to use it to make pitman arms for my sickle bar mower, only thing that would hold up.
Ed
RE: Black locust? - R Clark - 07-17-2022
Have spent the day doing other stuff.
I'll need to move the boat out of the open bay in the shop and roll out the planer so I can get a good pic of the board's face grain. From the rough side I can see, it looks very much like the bench pic that John linked.
RE: Black locust? - Bill Tindall - 07-18-2022
(07-16-2022, 03:20 PM)R Clark Wrote: Son in law bought a pickup truck load of slabs last year for $140; among them were 5 slabs that the seller said are black locust.Most distinguishing is the density. If locust it will be the heaviest piece of wood you own that grows in US. The end grain of the piece in PIC look like your picture- ring porous with rays. Upon exposure to light it becomes a pleasant brown color.
The boards are 7 feet long, 8-10" wide (after cutting off rotted sapwood), and a true 6/4 thick dry. I have no idea how long the logs sat on the ground before milling, but the sapwood is bug eaten and rotted.
LOML has stated a desire for a porch swinging bench, and given black locust's good weather resistance, this stuff might be the ticket.
I've never had black locust in my shop that I know of. So I sliced off one end to look at the grain. This picture is of a section of end grain. It's 1 1/2" from top to bottom in the picture.
I used wood-database.com to look up black locust. The picture above seems to be "close" to what is pictured in their description. But, the description also highlighted Black Locust's characteristic of fluorescing under UV light. I used a small UV penlight to illuminate the grain. This picture doesn't do the color justice, but when illuminated with that UV light, it gave off a bright chartreuse glow. The pic:
Just looking for confirmation. Am I on the right track?
RE: Black locust? - jteneyck - 07-18-2022
(07-18-2022, 06:18 AM)Bill Tindall Wrote: Most distinguishing is the density. If locust it will be the heaviest piece of wood you own that grows in US. The end grain of the piece in PIC look like your picture- ring porous with rays. Upon exposure to light it becomes a pleasant brown color.
Black locust has a specific gravity of 0.66. Osage orange is 0.76. Both grow around me.
John
RE: Black locust? - R Clark - 07-18-2022
Here's the face grain after a couple passes through the planer.
[attachment=43425]
What I see here doesn't look like the pics in your posts, nor does it really come close to Honey Locust. Now I'm on the hunt and searching through the wood database again. I think I need to sand the end grain to really see features in it.
RE: Black locust? - jteneyck - 07-18-2022
(07-18-2022, 11:38 AM)R Clark Wrote: Here's the face grain after a couple passes through the planer.
What I see here doesn't look like the pics in your posts, nor does it really come close to Honey Locust. Now I'm on the hunt and searching through the wood database again. I think I need to sand the end grain to really see features in it.
That looks a lot like honey locust to me. Here's a slab I flattened recently.
![[Image: AM-JKLXuD5RKshdtVPmMWyqduhDVR0Mq5qUDZZDN...authuser=1]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AM-JKLXuD5RKshdtVPmMWyqduhDVR0Mq5qUDZZDN3z89HuGHBk4_cYRyJLTiiCCFzVM7AzNC89QrwAsLr-ZVGyMklGGWxtPW6oVdRfFzdDO51NinPOtsRZ9NN6r-kGR4r5BRlZgrqco6BGG1_mxx6DNvscTBqQ=w1470-h828-no?authuser=1)
Black locust does not have reddish tones when freshly milled.
John
RE: Black locust? - Petertaylor - 07-23-2022
For being such a hard wood, black locust grows tall very quickly. We heated with it for years. If you’ve never cut it before, you’ll think your chain saw is dull. It cannot be split by hand, and even with a hydraulic splitter, the wedge has to be driven to the last inch. Even then, the two pieces have to be torn apart from each other. In the stove it burns very hot and leaves almost no ash. I never tried to use the wood for anything else.