I need a lesson in wood identification

[scottranda]

Since I’ve gotten my fire pit (and hoping next year for a stick burner), I’ve been scouring wood on craigslist and facebook marketplace. I scored and struck out on sourcing wood, but I have a hard time identifying wood. Can someone identify this wood? I got it from a house 5 minutes away, but he said there was white oak, sweet gum, and elm. I know it’s not elm, but I can’t decipher between sweet gum and white oak. I really, really hope it’s white oak! I read online sweet gum is hard to split, and may not have a great burn BTU. Let me know what you think. It’s certainly possible that it could be two different kinds as I got it from two different piles in this guy’s yard.

[CaptainMike]

99.9% sure that's oak. But, I have never seen sweet gum so I can't give you that .1%. Oh, and oak ain't going to be much fun to split either.

[tbob4]

Seeing it I felt the same but hadn't seen sweet gum, either. I have been splitting with the big and little Kindling Cracker. Works really well but it does give you a workout with Oak.

[EdF]

I haven't had too much problem with oak and the cracker, but I'm just resplitting splits. So not sure it counts for much. The wood does look like white oak to me.

[Donw]

What I’m not seeing are the horizontal breaks in the bark associated with white oak. Might be my eyes or the photos.

[CaptainMike]

Good point.

[raven]

Looks more like sweet gum to me than oak. I am pretty sure its not elm. I am not a wood connoisseur however so take that with a grain of salt.

[Dan Deter]

I took down my sweetgum trees, so I can't go outside and look at it for ya I will say, of the 5 trees I took down this summer, the 2 oaks and 2 sweetgum split no problem (hydraulic splitter..it was a LOT of wood), only the tulip tree gave problems. The sweetgum split pretty as you please. Could very well be sweetgum though. I always have trouble telling them apart if theres no leaves or acorns/gumballs around.

[Lock Stock and Barrel]

That wood is the same wood that our elm trees look like. It does not look like oak to me but if I had to guess it is elm. Definitely not sweet gum. Split a piece if its real soft it wood be gum and usually whitish on the fresh cut.

[scottranda]

UPDATE:

I split the wood and I really don’t think it’s sweet gum. Pretty sure it’s oak. I was researching sweet gum, and heard that it’s quite light when you pick it up (in terms of weight). Lighter than you’d think. The wood I got was heavy and about the right weight for the size of the logs I was picking up. Plus, I split two rounds from two different piles, so I think I got 100% oak!

Here are are the splits. Let me know what you think! I’m learning here. Is that darker color just some moisture?

[RonB]

I just dunno. It looks like it's been cut for a fair length of time judging by the color shift from the ends. I've never seen white oak with dark parts like in photos 5 and 6. Of course, that might be water damage if there was a check in the wood.

[scottranda]

No guarantee it was white oak. Or even oak at all. But I don’t think it’s sweet gum since it split relatively easy

[scottranda]

The guy did say it has been cut for a year. He just kept it in rounds.