[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

Originally Posted by carvnman40

James, loblolly is a southern yellow pine, very resinous with variable hardnesses between spring and summer growth rings...not a very good carving wood. I've never heard of Chihuahua pine. May be a localized name.
Mike

I thought chihuahua pine was dogwood?

[AlArchie]

Chihuahua Pine (Pinus leiophylla) is also know as yellow pine.

One of the best ways to tell these pines apart is by checking their needles. That trait will be divided into general length and then by the number of needles in a bundle.

The chihuahua pine has 2 1/2 to 4" needles 3 to a bundle.
Easten white pine has 2 1/2 to 4" needles (maybe a bit linger in places) 5 needles to a bundle.

There ares so many different species of pine that it is really hard to tell what you are dealing with in different regions of the country, as many of these have colloquial names or are locally mis-named.

This is a blatent reccomendation.....anyone interested in tree identification for whatever reason should pick up a good reference book. My favorite is the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees.....I have both the eastern and western region volumes. They run around 18 bucks at the book stores but you can find them for half that sometimes at discount and reslae shops. both have excellent pictures of leaves, needles, fruit and bark of each specimine and an extended text covering general regions of growth, bar, needle, leafe and fruit description and lists of uses.

Al

[vacation212]

My choice would be the cedar p'ine would be secondary

[Mitchell]

I've seen many nice wood spirts carved in Cedar.

I would stay away from the pine due to resin concerns. You CAN carve oak and hickory and they do carve relatively easy when green....but they will check/crack when drying unless you take precautions. There's been other discussion on that.

On a side note - here's an older thread on Tree identification:

what kinda tree?

[James A]

What precautions should be taken to prevent them from checking and cracking?

[mikeGinSC]

Originally Posted by James A

What precautions should be taken to prevent them from checking and cracking?

I use Anchorseal, ( Emulsified wax), to coat the endgrain of my carving wood to slow up the drying process. The main reason wood splits and cracks is because of faster moisture loss from the end grain as opposed to "face grain". Of course, any kind of paint or even polyurethane will do almost as good. HTH's.

Mike G. in SC