Hardwoods & Softwoods

There are hundreds of wood species available from worldwide sources, each with unique characteristics that affect every aspect of your work. Wood varies not just in color and grain pattern, but also strength, weight, compatibility with adhesives and finishes, and the ease with which it can be worked with various types of tools. It you are a maker of Windsor chairs, there are some properties that make certain woods easier to bend than others. If you are a luthier – a maker of musical instruments –some species conduct sound or produce more pleasing tones. If you build boats, certain species will fair better when in constant contact with the water. To choose the best wood for a project, you must understand the attributes and properties of the available species.

1.Wood Botany

2. Mechanical Properties

3. Physical Properties

4. Health Hazards from Woods
Jewlry Chest made of curly cherry, walnut, and lacewood

This jewelry chest is not just an example of fine craftsmanship. It's also an eye-popping demonstration of how wood species can be combined to produce a stunning visual effect.

  • SPECS: 21" high, 18" wide, 10" deep.
  • MATERIALS: Curly Cherry, Walnut Burl, Lacewood.
  • CRAFTSMAN: Jim McCann, Clayton, Ohio.

Your most common choice is a botanical distinction. Commercial lumber is commonly divided up into two broad categories, hardwoods and softwoods. This has little to do with their relative hardness, although as a group, hardwoods rank harder than softwoods. Rather, it denotes a difference between lumber sawn from trees with encased seeds and leaves versus those with cones and needles.

For a woodworker in North America, there are actually three types of woods — domestic hardwoods, domestic softwoods, and imported woods or “exotics.” Most imports are hardwoods, but we have come to think of them as a class by themselves. However you wish to divide them up, there are over 250 types of lumber commercially available in the United States and perhaps as many as 1,000 worldwide. Even if you work with just a few species that are available locally, it’s useful and exciting to know about the incredible variety of available globally.

chisel edge geometry

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