I am trying to identify exactly what wood was used (in 1961) to make the
parquet block floor in our hall and living room, so that we can extend
the hall fairly seamlessly into the extension.

It doesn't look like oak to me - the grain is far too fine, surely - so
it may be one of any number of odd African hardwoods.

Can anyone tell by a photograph?

http://www.ellington-music.co.uk/images/IMG_2110.jpg

If anything the exposure is a fraction on the light side, but you can
see, thanks to the piece of furniture placed deliberately in the shot,
that the parquet is a little darker and a little more on the red-brown
side than teak veneer.

Any suggestions?

Michael

"Michael Kilpatrick" wrote in message
...
I am trying to identify exactly what wood was used (in 1961) to make the
parquet block floor in our hall and living room, so that we can extend the
hall fairly seamlessly into the extension.

It doesn't look like oak to me - the grain is far too fine, surely - so it
may be one of any number of odd African hardwoods.

Can anyone tell by a photograph?

http://www.ellington-music.co.uk/images/IMG_2110.jpg

If anything the exposure is a fraction on the light side, but you can see,
thanks to the piece of furniture placed deliberately in the shot, that the
parquet is a little darker and a little more on the red-brown side than
teak veneer.

When my dad re-varnished their parquet floor of the same period, I seem to
remember that the wooden blocks came up far lighter after sanding. So the
colour as shown is probably not that applicable - you would want a lighter
wood, then the trick would be matching the varnish, surely? It might just be
simpler to sand and refinish the whole floor once extended.

As for the actual wood - not sure - the grain in one of those looks almost
psychedelic. But I'm sure that using your photo, a parquet floor 'shop'
could probably find you some with a suitable grain - and probably advise on
the colouring too - though I can't imagine that they would stock more than
one type of the old style/size parquet to be honest. Would a reclamation
shop perhaps be a good place to look? Or are there any old schools being
pulled down nearby?

Michael Kilpatrick wrote:
I am trying to identify exactly what wood was used (in 1961) to make the
parquet block floor in our hall and living room, so that we can extend
the hall fairly seamlessly into the extension.

It doesn't look like oak to me - the grain is far too fine, surely - so
it may be one of any number of odd African hardwoods.

Can anyone tell by a photograph?

http://www.ellington-music.co.uk/images/IMG_2110.jpg

If anything the exposure is a fraction on the light side, but you can
see, thanks to the piece of furniture placed deliberately in the shot,
that the parquet is a little darker and a little more on the red-brown
side than teak veneer.

Any suggestions?

Michael

Not unlike this, which is elm

http://creativecarpentryandbuilding....s/DSC00928.jpg

Michael Kilpatrick wrote:

http://www.ellington-music.co.uk/images/IMG_2110.jpg

If anything the exposure is a fraction on the light side, but you can
see, thanks to the piece of furniture placed deliberately in the shot,
that the parquet is a little darker and a little more on the red-brown
side than teak veneer.

Any suggestions?


An american maple?

I remember being amazed at the old BR coaches, which had a deep red surface
on inside window and door frames, being sycamore and when the panels were
replaced on the Bluebell railway they where white.

AJH

andrew wrote:
Michael Kilpatrick wrote:

http://www.ellington-music.co.uk/images/IMG_2110.jpg

If anything the exposure is a fraction on the light side, but you can
see, thanks to the piece of furniture placed deliberately in the shot,
that the parquet is a little darker and a little more on the red-brown
side than teak veneer.

Any suggestions?


An american maple?

I remember being amazed at the old BR coaches, which had a deep red surface
on inside window and door frames, being sycamore and when the panels were
replaced on the Bluebell railway they where white.

AJH


Interesting that all of us have suggested elm and maple.

maple parquetting is still available - I have seen it somewhere.

Elm is completely out though.

New maple might match if the old and new were sanded down to bare wood,
and refinished.

Michael Kilpatrick wrote:
I am trying to identify exactly what wood was used (in 1961) to make the
parquet block floor in our hall and living room, so that we can extend
the hall fairly seamlessly into the extension.

It doesn't look like oak to me - the grain is far too fine, surely - so
it may be one of any number of odd African hardwoods.

Can anyone tell by a photograph?

http://www.ellington-music.co.uk/images/IMG_2110.jpg

If anything the exposure is a fraction on the light side, but you can
see, thanks to the piece of furniture placed deliberately in the shot,
that the parquet is a little darker and a little more on the red-brown
side than teak veneer.

Any suggestions?

Michael

Well it doesn't look totally like oak, no, but on the other hand it
doesn't look tropical either, Most tropical wood does NOT have such
marked figuring as growth is constant through the year.

It might be oak stained red..you need to sand off a bity and see what
the real colour is. It might be elm too. Looks a bit elm like.

Or even stained maple. A lot of that wavy figuring looks very like the
maples I used to use on guitar necks.

If I were you, I wouldn't even try to get a match, I would make a solid
wood threshold set in flush with the parquet to end the old house - oak
is nice - and then continue with a deferential parquet in the new section.

Its not a bug, its a feecha

On 7 Oct, 22:26, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Well it doesn't look totally like oak, no,

it doesn't look anything at all like oak.

but on the other hand it doesn't look tropical either, *Most tropical wood does NOT have such
marked figuring as growth is constant through the year.

Eh? It's just crown cut grain, not some 'marked figure'. That's just
as common in any african hardwood as in any european hardwood, and is
just a function of the way it has been sawn. It looks like an
tropical hardwood to me, and given the date, it probably was.

Bolted wrote:
On 7 Oct, 22:26, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Well it doesn't look totally like oak, no,

it doesn't look anything at all like oak.

but on the other hand it doesn't look tropical either, Most tropical wood does NOT have such
marked figuring as growth is constant through the year.

Eh? It's just crown cut grain, not some 'marked figure'. That's just
as common in any african hardwood as in any european hardwood, and is
just a function of the way it has been sawn. It looks like an
tropical hardwood to me, and given the date, it probably was.
I bow to your superior arrogance.

On 8 Oct, 00:00, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Eh? *It's just crown cut grain, not some 'marked figure'. *That's just
as common in any african hardwood as in any european hardwood, and is
just a function of the way it has been sawn. *It looks like an
tropical hardwood to me, and given the date, it probably was.

I bow to your superior arrogance.

OK. It will help everyone hear you talk out of your arse more clearly.

Bolted wrote:

On 7 Oct, 22:26, The Natural Philosopher wrote:


Well it doesn't look totally like oak, no,


it doesn't look anything at all like oak.


but on the other hand it doesn't look tropical either, Most tropical wood does NOT have such
marked figuring as growth is constant through the year.


Eh? It's just crown cut grain, not some 'marked figure'. That's just
as common in any african hardwood as in any european hardwood, and is
just a function of the way it has been sawn. It looks like an
tropical hardwood to me, and given the date, it probably was.


Thanks for all the comments. I have to agree with Bolted. It looks to me
more like some sort of tropical hardwood, but what exactly, I don't know.

I emailed my photograph to a flooring company and they replied saying
"It looks to me like it is a Genuine Teak Woodblock". Despite the fact
that I pointed out it was quite a different shade from the teak
furniture which I placed in the photograph for reference. It's too dark
for teak.

Then again, the photograph of the Elm, that Stuart Noble directed us to
in his posting, looks reasonably similar if I allow for sanding and
polishing and a possible lightening of the shade a little.

As for maple, I've no idea. Oh, bleargh, this is frustrating...


Michael

As for maple, I've no idea. Oh, bleargh, this is frustrating...

I do appreciate that it is for you - though for bystanders it is
actually quite interesting. So interesting in fact that I tried Google
Images for teak parquet flooring. The results
http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl...v =2&aq=f&oq=
included several with what look to my untutored eye good enough images
to be worth a closer comparison with your photos by you or others with a
better eye.

--
R

On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:00:07 +0100, Michael Kilpatrick wrote:

I emailed my photograph to a flooring company and they replied saying
"It looks to me like it is a Genuine Teak Woodblock". Despite the fact
that I pointed out it was quite a different shade from the teak
furniture which I placed in the photograph for reference. It's too dark
for teak.

But is under n layers of varnish/polish/wax that will have darkened
with age/collected gunk. To really identify what a particular lump of
wood is needs very close examination without any treatments.

We have a table, some of the markings are Beech like, it has pores in
the dense grain like Oak, the figuring is similar to Elm... We think
it might be actually be Ash...

Given this floors age I'd still go for teak. Bearing mind that that
coffee table is venered and veneer has a very different look to real
solid lump of teak. Veneer is made by rotating a log and taking a
continuous shaving off it, not simply planing a block.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:00:07 +0100, Michael Kilpatrick wrote:

I emailed my photograph to a flooring company and they replied saying
"It looks to me like it is a Genuine Teak Woodblock". Despite the fact
that I pointed out it was quite a different shade from the teak
furniture which I placed in the photograph for reference. It's too dark
for teak.

But is under n layers of varnish/polish/wax that will have darkened
with age/collected gunk. To really identify what a particular lump of
wood is needs very close examination without any treatments.

It should also be photographed outdoors in good natural light for any
sort of accurate representation of colour. We know how digital cameras
interpret tungsten lighting

We have a table, some of the markings are Beech like, it has pores in
the dense grain like Oak, the figuring is similar to Elm... We think
it might be actually be Ash...

Given this floors age I'd still go for teak. Bearing mind that that
coffee table is venered and veneer has a very different look to real
solid lump of teak. Veneer is made by rotating a log and taking a
continuous shaving off it, not simply planing a block.

On 8 Oct, 13:00, Michael Kilpatrick
wrote:

I emailed my photograph to a flooring company and they replied saying
"It looks to me like it is a Genuine Teak Woodblock".

It could be teak, but it would be crappy modern small-growth teak, not
the big old stuff that would have been available back then. Much
"teak" nowadays is just plain nasty (look at that garden furniture):
even though it's the same species botanically, the resultant timber is
nothing like it.

Which isn't to say that the teak on the shelf in the parquet shop
might not be a good match.


Colour is the least of your worries. You can change that. The most
important match is that ring figure (the big stuff), to get the shapes
and the texture through each ring to match. Secondly is the grain, the
smaller-scale stuff between the rings.

On 9 Oct, 10:09, Andy Dingley wrote:
On 8 Oct, 13:00, Michael Kilpatrick

wrote:
I emailed my photograph to a flooring company and they replied saying
"It looks to me like it is a Genuine Teak Woodblock".

It could be teak, but it would be crappy modern small-growth teak, not
the big old stuff that would have been available back then. *Much
"teak" nowadays is just plain nasty (look at that garden furniture):
even though it's the same species botanically, the resultant timber is
nothing like it.

I have a shed full of panga-panga (or possibly wenge) parquet, which
has just has much or more crown cut figure on a similar scale (yeah
ok, figure, my real point was that the figure in that photo is not
proof that it is not a tropical hardwood, because that is just
nonsense).

Muhuhu
http://www.lassco.co.uk/typo3temp/ev...897/LWB401.JPG
Panga panga
http://www.lassco.co.uk/typo3temp/ev...947/LWB102.JPG
Burmese Teak
http://www.lassco.co.uk/typo3temp/ev...066/LWB101.JPG
Rhodesian Teak
http://www.lassco.co.uk/typo3temp/ev...066/LWB101.JPG

All subject to caveat that Lassco may not have full provenance, but
none of it is domestic timber, that's for sure.

On 7 Oct, 22:26, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Most tropical wood does NOT have such
marked figuring as growth is constant through the year.

Growth is constant, but not consistent. Big rainforest tropicals, not
having the seasonal variation to encourage the early-/late-wood
differences, develop their own concentric rings of reversing spiral
grain, just for stiffness and strength. This is the cause of the
striping that's so obvious in sapele etc.

Small tropicals and equatorials also see seasonal variation (mostly in
rainfall) so they show much the same variations that we're familiar
with, although for rainfall reasons rather than temperature.

This looks like ring figure (and it is figure, not grain) though, and
it's small scale, so it's probably from smaller trees rather than the
big canopy trees.



Also, why is elm completely out? There are plenty of elms around,
they grow as well as they ever did - it's just that when they're tall
enough, the beetles find them and kill them off. Talk to the right
people and you can get elms, you just can't get it in a particularly
useful size. It would make parquet though.

Just a year or two back I was working elm in boards a few feet across,
for a restoration project. It wasn't cheap in that size, as bog, old,
wide elm certainly is hard to find - but it's still out there, if you
have the money.

Andy Dingley wrote:
On 7 Oct, 22:26, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Most tropical wood does NOT have such
marked figuring as growth is constant through the year.

Growth is constant, but not consistent. Big rainforest tropicals, not
having the seasonal variation to encourage the early-/late-wood
differences, develop their own concentric rings of reversing spiral
grain, just for stiffness and strength. This is the cause of the
striping that's so obvious in sapele etc.


I didn't claim different. But tropical grain is quite different from
temperate grain, and that wood looks very temperate. its rare to see
knots in tropical timber also. Rain forest wood is all straight up and a
crown at the top.


I've only seen grain/figure (whatever it is) like that in elm and
maple. Never in sapele and its cousins, or even oak. Not in ash, not in
lime/bass or beech. Chestnut maybe, and possible fruiot - I have no
experience with cherry and its ilk tho.


Parquet that I HAVE come across has been one of oak, some sort of
tropical mahogany style, teak and maple. I've never seen beech, elm,
birch, chestnut or indeed anything much else, as the above are the woods
that are hard, and take the punishment. And after staining varnishing
and decades of dirt and floor wax, they all end up the same sort of dark
reddish brown anyway.



Small tropicals and equatorials also see seasonal variation (mostly in
rainfall) so they show much the same variations that we're familiar
with, although for rainfall reasons rather than temperature.

This looks like ring figure (and it is figure, not grain) though, and
it's small scale, so it's probably from smaller trees rather than the
big canopy trees.


There's figure AND grain.

I think the problem is that everyone is talking 'coloor' but its most
likely stained anyway.


Also, why is elm completely out? There are plenty of elms around,
they grow as well as they ever did - it's just that when they're tall
enough, the beetles find them and kill them off. Talk to the right
people and you can get elms, you just can't get it in a particularly
useful size. It would make parquet though.


Not round here it wouldn't.

The trees get to about 4" diameter and die. Most of the elm I have seen
for sale is either old stock, or recycled.


Just a year or two back I was working elm in boards a few feet across,
for a restoration project. It wasn't cheap in that size, as bog, old,
wide elm certainly is hard to find - but it's still out there, if you
have the money.

indeed, the latter being very much the point.

"Michael Kilpatrick" wrote in message
...
I am trying to identify exactly what wood was used (in 1961) to make the
parquet block floor in our hall and living room, so that we can extend the
hall fairly seamlessly into the extension.

It doesn't look like oak to me - the grain is far too fine, surely - so it
may be one of any number of odd African hardwoods.

Can anyone tell by a photograph?

http://www.ellington-music.co.uk/images/IMG_2110.jpg

If anything the exposure is a fraction on the light side, but you can see,
thanks to the piece of furniture placed deliberately in the shot, that the
parquet is a little darker and a little more on the red-brown side than
teak veneer.

Any suggestions?



Go into Google Images and look at Cherry wood and see if that looks like it.
http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/d/de/decar66...rry_wood_1.jpg

Don't rule out teak just yet, just because it isn't the same shade as a
known sample of teak.

It is not oak, ash, beech, elm.

mark

On 7 Oct, 17:14, Michael Kilpatrick
wrote:
I am trying to identify exactly what wood was used (in 1961) to make the
parquet block floor in our hall and living room, so that we can extend
the hall fairly seamlessly into the extension.

50 years old - the exact same species probably isn't available. If it
is, it's probably significantly different now from how it was then,
owing to different growing conditions. If it is the same, then it's
probably virgin forest clearance rather than plantation and you
shouldn't be using it either.

it may be one of any number of odd African hardwoods.

If it was imported into the UK post-war, then that's always a pretty
safe bet. "Africa" also means Western equatorial coast, because Ghana,
Nigeria etc. were the countries that we traded with, rather than the
French or the Portugese.

Can anyone tell by a photograph?

Usually takes three of them (one on each axis) and they have to be
almost micrographs too.

If you're a USA-ian, their forest products lab will do it for free.
There are also books like Bruce Hoadley's which are easy to follow
self-identification guides for a whole range of species - nearly all
US natives though! If you're an obsessional collector of old
woodworking books (whistles), you'll have a shelf of titles like
"Commonwealth timber marketing board handbook of stuff we get from
those funny brown chaps overseas, then we mis-spell their names". The
'50s vintage of these are usually good quality glossy, but black &
white, photos so aren't easy to work with either.

On the whole, I'd assume the art of the possible. Take one (or photo)
along to the seller of blocks and see what they have to sell. Knowing
the exacxt species wouldn't help you much anyway, if you don't have
anywhere to buy more of it.

Also check recyclers. There's a lot of old school parquet flooring
from demolitions of early '60s school buildings, and it's probably the
closest you'll get.