Hello mountainwashere,
you have an interesting project here.

Do I have your permission to feed your project from time to time with interesting wood types that I got my hands on and that I can not determine for sure?

I am a hobbyist woodcarver (not a pro) living on the Canary Islands and thanks to friends and neighbours I have (more or less) exclusivly access to a small number of different wood types (round about 30 for now)...

I am always interested to know with which type of wood I am actually working with and I feel a little bit uncomfortable with the situation that I do not have enough knowledge about wood to be sure what I am talking about.

To give an example:
The wood that is shown in the photographs I added to my comment has been a gift from one of my german talking friends here and this friend told me that the wood is cutted from a tree called "Jamaika Pflaume" (German).
If I do an internet research on that term I finally can not clearly determine the wood type... it could be Spondias purpurea, Spondias pinnata, an other Spondias type or even Blighia sapida... and all of them are called "Jamaika Pflaume" in German what leads me to the conclusion that the informations that I can get about this wood are to blurred to rely on.

Finally I put this wood to the side to wait for an opportunity to talk directly to the guy that planted the tree in the past while hoping that the guy has real good knowledge about what he planted once...

Maybe your project and you project members can help to enlight me a little bit... :-)

p.l.u.r. ~:-)