Saturday, May 07, 2005

Mystery Wood

If anyone can tell from this photo, what kind of wood my back door is made of, I'd love to know. I am guessing either poplar or fir. The wood is way softer than oak. We need to replace on piece of moulding on it and I kind of want the wood to match because I am going to stain it rather than paint it.


Back door still to be sanded more and stained.


And if it helps, here is the other side, which has quite a different stain left on it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would venture to say neither Poplar or Fir - It looks like pine. I am in the middle of building kitchen cabinets out of Fir and poplar,(The fir for the faces and doors, and the poplar for structural frames) so I have been staring at quite a bit of both woods! If all else fails, go to Home Depot or Lowes and buy a length of pine, fir and polar and do a side by side comparison. You can always return the ones that don't match...

Gary said...

If your house is 100 years old it is probably yellow pine. The last of the virgin forests were being used up about this time. In Ohio the pines were gone by 1911. I suspect that is shellac on both sides of the door. If so, you could wipe it down with a denatured alcohol soaked rag and put some fresh amber shellac over it and it will look like new! I just showed my neighbor how to do that two hours ago on his oak door that he had stripped. He was in awe!

Jocelyn said...

Thanks- I suspect it may be old growth pine. I am definitely going to try the shellac. Steve has amber colored shellac flakes, which we have used for handmade wood filler in the past. I'll let you know how it goes.