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A friend of mine gave me a piece of wood that i think is from the leg of a kang table a few days ago. His thinking was that it was zitan, though i'm not sure whether its zitan, hongmu or something else.
I was wondering whether anyone who knows more than me could possibly help me to identify what kind of wood it is?

I've taken photos of some spots that i scraped and sanded back, to see whether the dark reddish black colour was just a surface stain over a much lighter wood. The sanded bits look a a little bit like red sandalwood/zitan to me, but i'm not sure.


Any help would be very much appreciated.

The first photo shows a sanded section.

The second photo shows a sanded section, with the unsanded areas above and below it showing the colour the piece was when i was given it/before i sanded it.

The third photo shows a rougher section of the piece where it attached to the rest of the table.

Sorry, not zitan. It is hongmu which can vary in color from red/brown (the color of your piece) to brown/black. The literal translation of 'hongmu' is black wood.

Hongmu and zitan can be mistaken for each other. However, the grain is completely different.

Below is a close up of an 18th c. zitan table I once owned. Notice the twisted grain.

well no, not zitan, huali.
look I'm really sorry to have to tell you this, but expensive lesson that it is - better that you take heed before you do it again.
you should NEVER sand huali wood, it takes any value out of it.
huali is only valuable when it becomes huanghuali. you can only achieve this through natural oxidation over hundreds of years. you cant bleech it, that just exposes the axial parenchyma and makes it look like jichmu. there are ways to bring out the natural colour and grain, but sanding is certainly not one of them.
moral of the story.....
if you are not a conservation specialist
DON'T TOUCH IT!!!!!

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