Green/grey area in beech
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30 July 2023 at 11:21 am #808791
Hi everyone,
I was hand planning this beech board, and I realized that it has this kind of grey/green area around what I suppose it was a branch.
When I bought it at the saw mill, I didn’t realize it was like this, because it wasn’t visible.
It only became visible after I hand planned it and removed the rough cuts.
The board was bought already dried.
It’s the first time this happened to me.
It seems that it’s somekind of rot area.
Was the branch already rot when the tree was cut?
Do you advise using it anyway?
It will be used as bottom for a cabinet, so it will be on the floor.
Will this spread to the rest of the board with time, and “contaminate” it?Thanks
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You must be logged in to view attached files.30 July 2023 at 8:12 pm #808797Hi Antonio,
Looks to me as the tangential aspect of a flat sawn board with the grain not running completely parallel to the surface. There is a little pin knot, but I don’t see the pattern of a major branch taken off. Am good at being wrong, though.
The slight change in colour at the upper right of the second photo (left on the first), looks like an ordinary growth ring in transition between tangential and radial, and having absorbed some form of extractive. The rot in beech that I’ve seen has been dark grey or black and with fissures running along the wood.
In summary: looks like very decent beech, that I would be happy to use. The kitchen top at our croft looks quite similar.
I agree that this looks perfectly fine to me. I’m far from an expert, but the off-color areas look more like heartwood to me, rather than any kind of rot. Perhaps the pictures don’t do it justice, but I don’t see nearly the amount of green/grey that I had in some poplar that I used in my workbench for the aprons and wellboard. I was somewhat concerned about the “off color” at first, but it is still holding strong and the green/grey has even faded some over the years to be more like the coloring of the other areas of the boards. I’ve therefore assumed the coloring was due to moisture that took longer to release for some reason, but either way it hasn’t affected the integrity of the wood.
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