Why is it that the lumber companies drool all over old growth pine, but would have much less of a headache by the environmentalists if they harvested new growth in the form of fast growing birch type trees? Is there something about birch that makes is undesirable to build with? Sure, you can get more boards out of a 100 foot pine than you can a 30 foot birch, but what about quantity over quality? Will I be seeing birch 2x4’s at my local Home Depot anytime soon? It grows faster than pine, and there’s more birch/aspen/poplar in the northern woods than, well, than you can shake a stick at.
IANACarpenter, but aren’t those woods kind of springy?
Fast growth wood species are already being harvested, processed, and used in engineered dimensions. It’s easier to process the entire tree into strands than go for some solid sawn and process the remainder.
Don’t look for it any time soon at a big box. So long as Canadian softwood remains plentiful, it will continue to be a lower cost alternative to anything engineered.
Birch is used in a lot of construction, but mostly in the form of plywood.
I am unfortunately away from my spouse’s serious wood library or I’m sure I’d have a more informative contribution.
Generally speaking, slower growth = stronger lumber.
You may get ‘quantity over quality’, but sometimes quality is too important to sacrifice.
Would you want your house made out of weak lumber?
For some uses, the lumber must be a certain strength for safety reasons. (This is known as Machine Stress Rated or ‘MSR’ lumber.)
I’d actually be surprised if birch grew faster than pine. It’s certainly not my experience, at least with white birch.
I don’t believe that birch is particularly rot-resistant, so it might not make a very good framing lumber.
Maybe in your neck of the woods, but birch plywood is generally reserved for cabinetmaking, generally never for construction. You can make the box of birch and use a nicer wood for the fronts/sides. That said, A/C plywood (usually oak) is a cheaper alternative to birch plywood. Birch is sometimes used for drawer insides/bottoms, though it’s expensive. These days, of course, stock cabinet cases are seldom made of even birch. Most is a particle or flake board that’s covered with contact paper. Yuck.
One problem with birch is that it doesn’t always take stain well. It’s unpredictable and can yield splotchy, irregular results.
Another wood one seldom sees is hickory. Occasionally, you’ll see it in, say, a low-end bathroom vanity, but it doesn’t look that hot.
Ditto sycamore.
We like our Amish-built solid birch cabinets. The birch facing is quite beautiful–like spalted maple–and does not look blotchy. We used a very light stain called “pickled oak”.
The OP referred to “birch/aspen/poplar”, not just birch. We built a real nice solid house for a neighbor with home-sawn poplar 2x6’s (full dimension). It also makes very good sheathing. Most farms in Wisconsin have plenty of poplar-type trees, and people use them. My guess is that the lumber companies are just stuck in the pine habit, especially with all the Southern yellow pine available (Loblolly). Old growth pine just fits in with what they are already selling anyway.
Yeah, you might use any of those woods, if a mill has enough time to process the logs. It reminds me of a guy in NH-he had a bunch of red oak trees…cut them down, and had them milled into 2X4s…and decided to build a house with them. Only he forgot-oak is very hard to nail into-he had to drill a pilot hole for every nail.
So,no advantage touse oak for framing lumber!
I’m about 20 feet from my wife’s moderately serious wood library, so if you narrow down what you’re looking for, I can dig it out. I’m pretty sure you’re interested in relative weights and strength of unsupported spans (for joists, etc); that’s where I’d start looking.
One possible reason is that Poplar is about twice as expensive as pine. That said, poplar is not infrequently used (at least here in Toronto) as replacement wainscoting, molding and paneling. It takes a stain well and has nice grain patterns. On a completely unrelated side note, we built our built-in book cases out of poplar; it is a nice wood and roughly equivalent to pine in its working. Poplar, in addition to being to expensive, is used extensively in other applications.
I have information only on Yellow Birch, but it weighs a LOT more than pine (43 lbs per ft^3, vs. about 30 for pine, depending on the species), and it is “prone to large shrinkage, checking and warping, and low in decay resistance”*. It is probably the expense and the difficulty in machining with hand tools that limit its applicability.
A review of the characteristics of pine (sorry, I tend to work with hardwoods), and the species used in making houses, seems to have been decided upon due to a combination of factors, primarily machinability, the ability to hold fasteners, the ability to withstand pullout of fasteners, and the general availability of long, straight pieces with well known warping and shrinkage characteristics. The species you list, while nice woods to work with, have different characteristics that may make them problematic for use as general lumber. Nothing I’ve read indicates that they can’t be used, merely that they aren’t optimal.
*Cabinetmaking and Millwork, John L. Feirer, 1967.
bashere, I looked when I got home but got sort of stuck because of the many varieties of aforementioned trees. And the engineering manuals were way over my head. What I was hoping for was a nice write up like you find in the magazines put out by the International Wood Collector’s Society. They always cover what a species is used for, and why it’s more popular in some applications than others.
Incidentally, my husband has used poplar in furnituremaking, but in a piece that was painted.
I have used birch for to make a bathroom vanity, it works well, stains evenly, in my experience, looks a lot like hard maple, but is softer. You can slightly gouge it with a fingernail, unlike maple, but not nearly as easily as pine or spruce. It is quite stable as well.
IIRC, there is a significant difference between yellow and white birch, one being called paper birch, which, again IIRC, is less suited to furniture making.
Well, lacking a formal handbook, you can think like this:
Does this wood come as a plywood veneer? If it does, then it is a more precious wood, not so utilitarian. For example, you could buy cherry, mahogony, oak, maple (tiger. curly, birdseye), and even birch of course. Birch might be at the botom end of ‘precious’ type woods. You’ll see it stained, and it is popular in furniture building, esp mass-production, because it is good enough and cheap enough…and strong enough. Looks good with good techniques of staining, etc.
Birch flooring is more popular now, because with the array of stains and urethanes available, it dresses up real nice. Used to be that you had to pick a nice oak or cherry to feel like you were getting a dynamite floor. In old farm houses – utilitarian places – pine boards were used on the floor.
Pine is alot more of of a utility wood. Fairly resistant to weather, strong, nails up well, etc. Chances are you don’t ‘see’ pine, and if you do, it has been painted over. That explains alot right there. Sure, some Pine is displayed (knotty pine), but pine boards are hidden or they are used for casing, mouldings and trim that will be painted.
Because birch is on the low end of woods that can be stained or displayed nicely, it is frequently painted, or used for the carcass of a cabinet, armoire, etc. Doors, raised panels and other key areas are likely to be something else.