spruce sitka or oregon ??

[werner]

Is it very easy to tell spruce from oregon pine?
(except perhaps calculating specific weight, Hardness test?

What do I have to look out for ? This is for an excisting mast; I have my doubts, think it is oregon.

regards ,
Werner

[Bob Smalser]

Weight. Color and grain are unreliable, as there is a lot of varience.

"Oregon Pine" or Doug Fir as we call it here weighs 34lbs/cu ft...about the same as the heaviest pines. Sitka Spruce weighs 28lb/cu ft....just slightly more than most cedars.

[werner]

so I better try to calculate the specific weight ratio ??(this is an old full wood mast) but will not be sure if it is sitka or another kind of spruce .

regards Werner

[Bob Smalser]

Got a Forest Products Lab you can send a slice of the end grain to?

[Steve Miller]

I think spruce and douglas fir smell different. No idea of how to describe it. Can you get a small piece of each to test your nose?

[Mrleft8]

In general, Oregon pine (Douglasfir) is darker in color. A kind of redish tan, with fairly bold grain. Sitka tends towards a yellowish white color, with a less distinct grain.

[werner]

Thank you for the advice ,
it seems not so easy to determine this wood.Read somewhere S Spruce doesn't have any smell? (So when I have a cold it will be spruce.)
As adviced, having a sample looked at in a woodlab will be the 100% certain way.think i'll do that.
regards Werner

[lagspiller]

Wouldn't Oregon Pine be an odd choice for a mast? I have only seen it in hulls and decks as a lighter alternative to mahogany. All of it very reddish in hue - in fact, much closer in appearance to a light colored mahogany (honduran?) than any sitka I have ever seen.

[Steve Miller]

Douglas fir is a fine choice for a mast. It is similar to sitka spruce in the qualities that make wood good for a mast but it is heavier.

[Bob Smalser]

I fact, Doug Fir is 20% heavier than cedar but almost that much harder, stiffer and stronger in every aspect except shear loading, where they are about equal.

DF also is a durable wood where spruce rots very quickly.

Problem is, if you can't take a slice of that end grain to a lab or forester with an identification key, then you won't reliably identify your mast.

Generally, Coastal DF grain as represented by the latewood is a little wilder and the heartwood is a little pinker...and spruce has more of a turpentine smell...but I can also show you Sitka that's a dead ringer for DF and vice versa. Plus interior and mountain DF often looks entirely different.

If you don't have a local college botany or forestry department to help, the best factor in my mind to differentiate them is workability:

Take a fine-set hand plane to a section of it and take a few shavings both with and against the grain. Spruce planes crisply and cleanly....like cedar or H. Mahog. DF, on the other hand, is usually a horror story to plane...stringy, splintery, and gummy. A sharp, fine-set plane can do a decent job on spruce against the grain...that same plane will make a fuzzy mess in DF against the grain.

[ 03-10-2005, 08:29 PM: Message edited by: Bob Smalser ]