I’ve started taking a series of woodworking classes at the Bauhaus Institute and I was wondering what your thoughts are on wood. Does anyone have a favorite type of wood?
Looking through my beginning woodworkers guide, I notice that balsa is categorized as a hard wood. It is also the lightest wood in here at 10 lbs/ft3.
For some reason I’ve liked Ironwood (yes that’s a tree fool), but it says here that it is not being sustainably harvested from the West Indies and tropical America where it is indigenous. Apparently it’s official name is Lignum Vitae. It’s very dark and quite dense. (I was gonna’ say hard, but with you people . . .)
Tulip wood is pretty. The dark part of the rings is really, really red and the light parts are really, really white. Quite striking actually. It’s not really tulip wood since that’s a plant and it doesn’t really have any lips at all, but it is related to the rose family as I hear it.
Then of course there’s ebony. It really is black. That’s not just a stain or something. Again it’s not being harvested sustainably.
Goncalo Alves, otherwise known as Zebrawood (UK) or Tigerwood (US), is striped much like the Tulip wood, but both colors are darker. I’d say black and tan much like the drink.
Brazil wood is the densest coming in at 80 lb/ft3.
Purpleheart is. And brightly so. It darkens with age.
Does anyone here do woodworking? For how long? Made anything you’re particularly proud of?
I used to do a bit of “fine” woodworking, at least until I bought an old house and began to spend most of my creative energy whacking 2x4’s with chop saws and bashing plaster walls with sledge hammers. It’s amazing how having a house sucks up your hobbyist time and energy.
It’s easy to get seduced by the exotic woods, but you really can’t go too far wrong with walnut, cherry, maple, or good old red oak. I particularly like birdseye or tiger maple.
Which isn’t to say that I don’t have a stack of random exotics waiting in the garage for me to decide what to do with them. (Just because I don’t have the time to actually * make * anything with it doesn’t mean I don’t buy it and gloat over it…) I’ve got some osage orange (yup, it’s orange) and olive wood waiting to go on the lathe. Cocobola is an interesting, colorful wood, although it’s apparently slightly toxic, or at least a potent allergen, so it’s wise to use some breathing protection when working with it.
There are so many nice things about working with different timbers - even the ‘ordinary’ ones - it’s hard to choose - olive wood has a wonderful aroma, as does oak, beech is nice for the crisp way it cuts, but the nicest wood I’ve worked with is false acacia (Robinia pseudoacacia) - the timber has a very interesting and lively grain and an overall greenish golden colour - it finishes well and is quite hard and durable.
I used to be very much into my woodworking and I made a lot of items out of recycled timber - at the time, I worked in a warehouse and the imported French perfumes would come on pallets made from quite good oak, the pallets for the far eastern electronic goods would often be made of a reddish tropical hardwood (that everyone called mahogany, but wasn’t) - they were all crudely nailed, so you’d only ever get about 18 inch lengths of usable timber (and it was rough sawn, so it needed milling), but it was useful for making small items such as boxes and small cabinets.
I once had it explained to me that the terms ‘hardwood’ and ‘softwood’ actually refer to how the seeds are packaged. Acorns have a hard, woody shell, thus oaks are considered hardwoods. The seeds from pines, once you get them out of the cone, are soft, hence they’re softwoods. I don’t have a cite. Does anyone know if this is true?
Good luck with the woodworking, Inertia. It’s a wonderful art.
The wonderful thing about woodworking is that you see wood (and trees) differently than you did before. My husband got into woodworking relatively late in life and its been a fun journey.Lignum vitae is pretty cool; my husband has some mallets made of it and also has used it as some accents on mission piece he’s made.
I’ll confess I just love quartersawn white oak, and cherry too. I don’t need exotics to thrill me. In fact, some exotics just seem like too much to my eyes. Some figure is good–it’s subtle and makes one marvel at the amazing beauty of wood. Truly unusual wood, on the other hand, makes me feel like I am not looking at wood at all.
I loathe red oak–LOATHE IT. A fact I’m reminded of every time I walk into my kitchen.
My husband was once working with something–not cocabola, but iroco–and we didn’t know it was also a problem wood for some people. He had some skin and eye problems and we were puzzled. His doctor didn’t know, either. Then we found iroco on a list of potentially irritating woods. I ended up getting all the carpets in the house cleaned (to get rid of all the dust he may have tracked in) and he’ll never work with it again.
Actually, the distinction between hardwoods and softwoods has to do with their botanical origins, not their acutal hardness.
Hardwoods are from flowering plants or angiosperms (yup, oaks and mahogany, etc do have flowers, and produce seeds with coats) Softwoods are from gymnosperms, which is the group that includes pine, redwood, fir and so forth. They produce naked seeds in cones.
There are also major differences in the types of cells that are present or absent in the two groups.
As you have noted, hardwoods aren’t always hard, like balsa and tulip wood.
And softwoods can be pretty hard…try some old virgin growth yellow pine from the north woods.
Wood is one of those special materials…I can look and feel it for hours.
note: There are some killer exotic woods that I exclude from my favorites.
As a woodworker, I fell in love with Maple because it is hard, attractive and stable. And when you see Curly Maple or Tiger Maple, you really start to love it. I prefer light shades in most of my projects, and Maple runs away with it’s ability to thrive in cabinets, veneer inlays, bar tops, floors and so on.
Chestnut is my opposite favorite, standing at the other side of the room. It’s rare (heck, it’s extinct except for a grove or two in Italy)…so rare that only recycled Chestnut is all you’ll ever be lucky enought to use. Brutally stable, loves stains and just rich all around. Great for tables…tops, etc.
I made a custom bar, and stayed with Maple. I didn’t want a dark heavy look like a pub, so Maple was the choice.
I just salvaged an old desk, and it’s in great shape. Good dovetails, all hardwood, etc. I am about to strip it and remove the top, and I want to put in a veneer top of curly maple. The desk will be very dark, like a dark Walnut, with a contrasting Curly Maple inlay on the top. I am almost tempted to simplify my project and just paint the desk ebony and do the maple inlay top. I think it’s criminal to paint good wood, and if I strip and refinish the whole puppy, it’ll be BEGGING for layers of shellac.
I currently have some pre-embargo brazilian rosewood sitting out in the garage that it absolutely gorgeous, but I haven’t figured out the right project to do it justice. Might be sitting out there for a while too; like Finagle, the purchase of a 100 year old house has recently turned me into a rough framer, rather than fine furniture craftsman…
I did a bit of woodworking a few years ago and though the exotics are nice I tend to prefer both maple and cherry. We put maple hardwood floors in the house and built some kitchen cabinets out of it. It’s great wood and takes a beating. I witnessed the price of wood skyrocket from the 80’s when I was heavy into it until now where it is really pretty expensive for good hardwood. I could make cabinets and tables OK but making a light, strong chair I found to be really hard. I admire someone that can do that. Cranky,your husband makes some nice stuff. I like it.