Thread 2842144

If someone with enough experience in a relevant field saw the lines on a small piece of wood (like this cocobolo pen blank), could they determine roughly how old the tree it came from was at the time of removal? Like, from details like the curvature of the lines and the space between them? Or is that pretty much impossible?

I'm not trying to make a point, it's late and I'm just curious.

>>2842144 (OP)
>Or is that pretty much impossible?
This.

>>2842144 (OP)
it's not an exact science but you can estimate the size of the tree by looking at the curvature of the ring line segments and figuring out how big the complete circle would be and then figuring out how old a tree has to be to be that thick
the problem is you need the outer rings for that and you can't tell if that little chunk was cut from near the bark or near the core

>>2842144 (OP)
If there's dendrochronology data for the tree type and location where it grew (which maybe could be determined through isotopic analysis) then you could determine when that piece of wood grew. If you knew when it was harvested then you'd at least have a lower bound on how old it was when it was harvested.

>>2842147
>>2842155
>>2842218
Cool beans y'all.

I was just curious. Looking at little bits of trees rings I thought, I wonder if someone way smarter than me figure out how this is...