UPDATE:
I'd bet its Phenolic and not wood.
Stanton wins. Def not wood. seemed like compressed material of some sort.
After removing the bad manifold I found the left side head heat crossover plugged with some sort of super solid stuff, so I left that.
The right side by the choke well was open, so I left that too. I am using the factory choke setup.
I reused the pan gasket only adding felpro papers to the top side between the manifold and tin. Torqued it down and reassembled all the loose bits I had removed.
Fired that thing up. Ran it on the choke for a few minutes and when the choke came off it was still idling a bit high. I adjusted that and it idled perfectly and drove great. That manifold must have been leaking for quite a while because it idles perfectly steady now.....unlike before.
Thank you to 68CBarge and everyone of you that helped me along the way!!!!
