Which red oak (hybrid) is this, maybe?

[Poindexter]

This tree came down three years ago to make room for a house, at the bottom of a pile I have been working for six weekends.

The top half of this log was knotty and had some grubs in it. The bottom end, looks like yet another southern red oak, I was hoping seven or eight feet of knot free 10x10 maybe, a little shoulder work with my broadaxe.

The hook rolls it and I find God's own nest of carpenter ants, so I cut it down to stove length rounds without a second thought, figuring the ants have probably a quarter of it gone already.

Tip my rounds up and darn if the ants aren't sticking to the cambium. And check out the rays.

Bark: typical southern red oak, in my limited experince. Though not shown in this picture, it does have the flat black bark areas where the grey scales are sloughed off.

End grain: All the rays run all the way out to the cambium. Some of them start closer to the pith than others, but they all go all the way. Depending on the light there is lots of pink and purple, plus a little orange in here with the usual red.

I am going to have to call Bailey's to see if they will sell a rip chain for dinky little Poindexter sized Husq 345e. I just had to rip one of these open. Once quartered I sliced parallel to the radius of the original butt, method C on what-his-name's website. Yes, I ran wet wood through a planer.

So is this a normal variant among the 20 odd kinds of red oak? The bad news is the log pile is in Efland, NC, about 20 miles WNW from Chapel Hill, NC. About 1840 some of the alumni brough in one of every tree that would grow in Chapel Hill, including a dozen or so straight up white oak, Q. alba. A 20 year hurricane like Floyd (1997) could get an acorn from Chapel Hill to Efland no problem. A 100 year hurricane like Fran (1996) could get an acorn the 20 miles, uhhh, even faster.

I'll see if I can shave some end grain tissue thin...

Thanks,
Scott

 

[woodshop]

Once you slice any of the red oaks into lumber, it's difficult to tell them apart. They are not separated at the lumber mill either, most only differentiate between red and white oak species. There are more species that belong to the red oak group than the white.

Pretty quartersawn board... nothing wrong with running wet wood through a planer, I do it all the time to an occasional variable thickness board before I sticker it. Only takes a couple uneven thicknessed boards in a stack to throw it off center.