Wood that grows slower, of the same species, is harder than wood that grows faster.

Keith

The color and grain pattern resemble American chestnut, which was once very common in your area. However, since most of the chestnuts died decades ago, any of the recently harvested residual logs (the last 50 years or so) seem to all have worm holes, which show up as small, black holes in the finished boards. I don't see the typical "wormy chestnut" pattern in your pic.

I see Chestnut a lot in the older houses and barns that I work on. It could be chestnut. Maybe the old woodworker that passed found some in a barn somewhere that was 100+ years old.

Here’s a picture of an old tongue and groove chestnut floor that I just refinished, it’s just in the upper landing area of the stairs.






We were originally going to do the landing and both upstairs bedrooms but they had a luaun underlayment down and must’ve bought stock in the nail factory judging by the excessive amount of nails they used. And then there was some sort of vinyl tile over that. Also, the boards must’ve put down before they were completely dry because there was a lot of shrinkage. I used $120 worth of epoxy to fill gaps just in this 10 ft.² area.

So we stopped with the landing and just re-carpeted the bedrooms.

Ash

There pic of the end grain still leads me to believe it may be alder, was leaning toward cherry myself at first, but the end grain seems very “open” and not dense. Tough to say without holding it.

I have The Wood Database (the book) in my shop. I mostly use the end grain to help ID woods I'm not sure of. I have a 10X magnifying glass with a light so I can compare to the 10X end grain pics in the book.

The Wood Database is also available for free online.

Here is what is shows for Black Cherry

Here is what it shows for Red Alder

Beech

Black cherry makes sense both from appearance and location. The pore density matches cherry rather than alder as shown on the wood database links posted by Lugnut.

Thanks folks.