WIP - Trash or Treasure?

Can anyone calculate the density?

I was wondering if any of you could calculate the density of this wood.

Until now I had just been going by my thought, "this feels a lot heavier and harder than normal redwood". What I did was take a piece of normal redwood burl and maple burl and trimmed them to the same size as a piece of redwood from this burl. Then I weighed them on a scale.

Normal Redwood Burl weighed 48 grams
Maple Burl weighed 75 grams
This Redwood Burl weighed 90 grams

The pieces are 5&1/2 inches long x 1&1/2 inches wide x 1&1/16 inches thick.
Can anyone calculate the density with this information?

r31001.jpg
 
Man,
That is a hidden treasure.

Always amazes me to see how wood looks on the outside and then to see it on the inside. That grey is just a protective coat for the inside.

Looks like you guys made a good choice.

Kelly
 
I really like it. But you didn't cut off all the sap-wood did you?? I like the pieces that has sap-wood on the top.
 
I got 5.476g per cubic in. for the normal redwood burl, 8.556 for the Maple burl and 10.267 for the other redwood burl. Hope that helps you.

By the way, the formula for density is weight/volume. In this case grams/cubic inches.
 
ArtinNC said:
I really like it. But you didn't cut off all the sap-wood did you?? I like the pieces that has sap-wood on the top.
Click to expand...

This piece was an example of what happens with old redwood burl. The bugs eat the sapwood. It must taste better than the heartwood. All the sapwood was like tunnels in an ant farm. That was part of what had me nervous. Luckily they stopped at the sapwood and didn't go into the rest of the burl.
Here is a photo of a cut off piece.
002-2.jpg
 
When I asked you guys about figuring density it didn't help that I used mixed means of measurement. Thank you to everyone who worked the numbers anyways. This comes from a forum member who sent me a message after making the appropriate conversions from my mixed up info.

Your goal is to find grams per centimeter cubed. This will give you specific gravity. Water is 1g/cm^3

I first calculated the volume at 8.76 in^3. I then used an online converter to convert that to 143.6 cm^3 (multiply cubic inches by 0.0610237438368). It's easy after that, simply divide grams by cubic centimeters.

redwood - .334
maple - .522
hard redwood - .627

This looks pretty correct to me. Something like desert ironwood should be right around 1.1, and balsa at .18 (I think).
 
Very nice wood and a great find. I think to calculate an acurate density to compare the blocks, you will also have to factor in the moisture content of each block. The same block will weigh more and appear more dense at 90% moisture than at 12% moisture.
 
dennie said:
Very nice wood and a great find. I think to calculate an acurate density to compare the blocks, you will also have to factor in the moisture content of each block. The same block will weigh more and appear more dense at 90% moisture than at 12% moisture.
Click to expand...

For the sake of the comparison I used pieces that were old and dry. The heavy redwood will be the driest of the bunch.
 
Burl Source said:
I was wondering if any of you could calculate the density of this wood.
r31001.jpg
Click to expand...

lol!
All I know for sure is that that block on the right looks really familiar...
in fact,it's a dead-ringer for the one in my hand!

(hm,I wonder if there's a way to measure the density of a big ol' grin?):D
Thank you Mark!
 
Ironwolf said:
lol!
All I know for sure is that that block on the right looks really familiar...
in fact,it's a dead-ringer for the one in my hand!

(hm,I wonder if there's a way to measure the density of a big ol' grin?):D
Thank you Mark!
Click to expand...

Now you have to make a cool knife and post some photos.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top