How can I tell if this cabinet is oak or pine ???

Somerset

Not sure if this is the right place, please move it if it isn't.

I bought a c1900 pine cabinet to 'do up' myself. It was in need of a fair bit of TLC ie broken bits, small bits of rotton wood, and the whole thing had been varnished a dark brown colour.

Anyway I've been happily sanding it down and it looks a hell of a lot better albeit there's still a lot to do with it.

Thing is I'm starting to have doubts about it being pine. It 'looks' like pine but my partner thinks it's light oak for two reasons :
I asked him to ask his mate ( who's a cabinet maker ) what I could do to get rid of the black marks, where nails, metalwork had 'affected' the wood. He gave him the answer - oxi something which leaves a white mark instead, but said this normally ( black marks ) only happens with oak not pine.
Partner then says to me ' I thought it was too heavy for pine'. Now it is big but it weights a ton. Oak it heavier than pine apparently.

Now if it's oak it's not a problem. I like it, I've spent a lot of time on it and hopefully it'll look beautiful when finished. But I'm curious - I would like to know what the wood is. Any thoughts ???

Smiley_Mum

Here is a link here about antique woods etc and how to tell the difference. I did think that if you can dig your nail into the wood then it is pine as pine is soft and oak is a hardwood, therefore you wouldn't be able to make indentations with your fingernail. Check and see in an inconspicuous spot on the furniture.

http://www.antiqueweb.com/articles/antique%20wood.html

Also came across a link that said that some pines (heart) can be as hard as oak. Hope you find out what's what with it.

Rikki

I thought oak tends to take on a greeny tinge as it ages, where as pine tends to go more orange. This is why pine warms with age.

Somerset

Rikki

Trouble is there is no 'age' tinge to this because it was varnished/scumbled. Was just a heavy brown colour. With the sanding it's gone back to the bare wood. - as I said it 'looks' pine but light oak is not a dissimilar colour.

Smiley_Mum

This link may help you to identify the wood.


http://www.woodbin.com/ref/wood/

kroome

Pine has a more open end grain than oak which tends to be solid with no pits or holes. Good hard pine will be as heavy as Oak especialy on an older piece.

Debt_Free_Chick

Agree that the grain is the key. The Victorians hated pine - they thought it was cheap & nasty. Trouble was, many couldn't afford more expensive wood like mahoghany & oak, so pine was often carefully stained to imitate a more expensive wood.

They would have been horrified at us stripping back pine floorboards, window frames, doors etc ... they'd think we were right chavs

aliasojo

DFC.....although you offered useful info about the grain....the thanks was 'cos you made me laugh!

Mr_Proctalgia

If you have black stains from nails them I think it is Oak - You were referring to Oxalic Acid to remove the stains, the stains will unfortunately go right the wood and be abit of a !!!!!! to remove. I used to clean up and resore old furniture and found the quickest easiest way was to get the gardening gloves on and use pieces of broken glass to scrape the surface, it comes up ready to refinish! Oak will be tawny/browny with a grain covered in little ticks that are almost black and is very distincive, pine is soft and will be anything from almost white to a honey brown, you can dig your nails onto pine - not Oak!
Hope this helps

Somerset

Mr_Proctalgia wrote:

You were referring to Oxalic Acid to remove the stains, the stains will unfortunately go right the wood and be abit of a !!!!!! to remove. I used to clean up and resore old furniture and found the quickest easiest way was to get the gardening gloves on and use pieces of broken glass to scrape the surface, it comes up ready to refinish!

Thank you very much and yes the tip about the broken glass/black marks I'll try out this weekend.

This site is amazing - seems there's nothing you can't get help with :T

bunking_off

I'm no expert, but the black nail stains do point to oak.

If you're at the bare wood level, and handle the wood then find your hands go black when you touch anything metal afterwards, it's definitely oak. I used to work in a kitchen factory and the acid that leached out of the oak would get on your hands and react with anything metal....only way I found of getting my hands clean was with dilute bleach. However, I'm not sure if being varnished/sealed then left for 100 years would diminish this property so it's probably not foolproof...