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16,386 Posts
Brendann the comment made about being a member under two user names is because we occasionally get spammers and trolls who do just that. You are the second person very recently to request a driftwood ID and the circumstances were extremely similar so it was just a bit suspicious but no worries. Welcome to the forum.
I was a logger in BC for 25 years and near the end of that time I worked for the BC Forest Service and needed to have a log scaler's license. This required that I be able to identify the local log species just by looking at the wood and I was quite good at that after looking at them while logging all the years earlier. Despite that knowledge there is only one local tree species that I can identify as driftwood and that is red cedar. Some of the others I might be able to identify if I cut an end off and the water, sun, and aging process hasn't altered the wood too much from the original state. As Dan's article said, don't use any softwoods. You might be able to tell if is a softwood by carving a decent sized chip out of it and smelling it to see if you get anything that resembles a Pine Sol smell. You might try boiling a small piece too and see if you get that smell that way. Boiling it would be more likely to release the resins inherent in conifers. If not then it probably is okay to use after following the rest of the instructions in the article.
I was a logger in BC for 25 years and near the end of that time I worked for the BC Forest Service and needed to have a log scaler's license. This required that I be able to identify the local log species just by looking at the wood and I was quite good at that after looking at them while logging all the years earlier. Despite that knowledge there is only one local tree species that I can identify as driftwood and that is red cedar. Some of the others I might be able to identify if I cut an end off and the water, sun, and aging process hasn't altered the wood too much from the original state. As Dan's article said, don't use any softwoods. You might be able to tell if is a softwood by carving a decent sized chip out of it and smelling it to see if you get anything that resembles a Pine Sol smell. You might try boiling a small piece too and see if you get that smell that way. Boiling it would be more likely to release the resins inherent in conifers. If not then it probably is okay to use after following the rest of the instructions in the article.
