In article , Steve Manes wrote:
On Wed, 14 Feb 2007 15:02:39 -0500, Don Wiss
wrote:
I have an 1891 row house in Brooklyn. One of my newel post finials is
missing. But neighbors with identical houses still have theirs. So a friend
of mine that is adept with a lathe has offered to make me a new one. We
have photographed and measured it. But what is the wood?

Hey, fellow Brooklyn row house owner!

It looks like white oak to me, which is pretty ubiquitous in Brooklyn
row houses built around this time.

Absolutely not. Oak has a distinctive ray-flake figure visible in its
quartersawn surfaces. This figure is completely absent in the photograph. The
wood in the photograph is ash, not oak.

My house was built between 1901
and 1906, depending on what reference source you use, and the two
lumber types used here were white oak and poplar.

Pardon me if I'm a bit skeptical, after seeing you mis-identify the photo as
white oak. Mistaking ash for oak is easy to do; ash was often used as a
substitute for oak in medium-priced furniture because (a) it's cheaper, and
(b) most people can't tell the difference, especially after it's stained.

White oak isn't easy to come by in the yards around here but
Rosenzweig in the Bronx has it. Because this wood was typically
stained dark you could probably use red oak without anyone being the
wiser.

And if he uses ash, he'll have an exact match -- because that's what it is.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.