It’s not redwood, right?

November 27, 2018 11:59 AM

What type of wood is this? It has the color of redwood and looks very much like some kind of burl. But there’s no such thing as a burl plank. It’s very soft wood; you can easily scratch it with a thumbnail. The board is 3/4×12×80.
posted by not_the_water to Science & Nature (4 answers total)

There's a wavy variety of redwood also called curly redwood. It looks a lot like photos of that.

It's not burl, it's a variant type of redwood.
posted by GuyZero at 12:07 PM on November 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Wow! that's a beautiful piece of wood. The only thing that comes to mind that would show so many growth rings and also be soft enough to scratch with finger nail is Redwood. Where did you pick-up such a prize?
posted by X4ster at 3:23 PM on November 27, 2018

Here is one retailer of redwood burl slabs. My old property had many redwoods with burls of similar sizes: it was on a creek and the trees along the riparian corridor had to be left alone - though poachers of burls that size would weaken trees that would fall in the next strong wind.

Whether burl or curly redwood it is a magnificent piece.
posted by jet_silver at 6:04 PM on November 27, 2018

Cut along the trunk, not across. Sometimes called quilted.
posted by Max Power at 5:56 PM on November 28, 2018