Wood Craft Introduction-Material Types

Category : Wood Crafting

Name : Wood Craft Introduction-Material Types

Description : Wood is the oldest material used by human being. There are different kinds of materials to use and different kinds of methods to process. Including natural wood and processed board, we can consider as main kinds:

1-Hard woods :

Mahogany – Straight, fine, even grained, red-brown colored wood. Mainly preferred for high class furniture making. The grain tends to be a deep brown and it has a straight grain, which takes to staining very well.  It has excellent workability, and is very durable. However, the trees that mahogany comes from are not being grown on farms, so it is an expensive wood that will probably not be found at your big retail stores.

Ash – There are more than 40 different trees for ash wood. This wood is lighter in color, though and very strong and elastic. This wood mainly uses for making bows, tool handles, baseball bats, hurleys, etc. Especially for high strength and resilience demanded crafts.

Cherry – It is a light pinkish brown when freshly cut, darkening to a medium reddish brown with time and upon exposure to light wood. It has a usually straight grain and easy to work. It is one of the best all-around woods for workability. It is stable, straight-grained, and machines well. The only difficulties typically arise if the wood is being stained, as it can sometimes give blotchy results—using a sanding sealer prior to staining, or using a gel-based stain is recommended.A lot of folks who craft wood use this wood. It stains well, is easy to craft and stays strong for a very long time. It’s common for use to build furniture, flooring and interior millwork . It’s easily shaped and it polishes well. Unstained, it has a rich, beautiful color but expensive and sometimes the color darkens with age.

Birch – This wood is available in many different types with white and yellow colors. Grain is generally straight or slightly wavy. It is not expensive and easy to find, even at DIY stores. Generally easy to work with hand and machine tools, though boards with wild grain can cause grain tearout during machining operations. Turns, glues, and finishes well. Common Uses are boxes, crates, turned objects, interior trim, and other small specialty wood items.

Maple –  It has two varieties: soft and hard. A lot of people who do craftwork don’t go for the hard version because it is tough to work with. Hard maple is the wood of choice for bowling pins, bowling alley lanes, pool cue shafts, and butcher’s blocks. Maple wood is also used for the manufacture of wooden baseball bats. The soft variety is actually very stable. It has a fine grain and will be less expensive that a lot of other hard woods.

Oak – It has a high density which is creating great strength and hardness. The wood is very resistant to insect and fungal attack because of its high tannin content. It is used for furniture making, flooring, timber frame buildings, veneer production and for barrels. It is popular for use in building furniture, it’s easy to work with and also comes in two versions: white and red. The white variety tends to be water resistant, so it’s a good choice for outdoor projects, such as a tree house or outdoor furniture. It is very durable and often cut in a way that makes it resistant to warping. Because of its visible wavy grain, it has a distinctive look. A clear finish nicely highlights the grain. On the other hand, stain can overly darken and exaggerate the grain, so it can end up looking two-toned.

Poplar – Its flexibility and close grain make it suitable for a number of applications. this is a low-cost hard wood that is actually quite soft, so it’s easy to handle. Popular tends to be white with brown streaks, and because of this variation in color, people tend to not use it for furniture that will be out in the open. It’s used for pallets, crates, upholstered furniture frames.

Walnut – It’s dark, handsome, classy, and a downright joy to cut, shape, sand and finish. It is rich in color, walnut is popular because it is easy to work with. It is, however, one of the more expensive cuts of hard wood. A lot of craftsmen use it to enhance a piece as a shelf or inlay. It’s a very strong and stable wood that can take intricate carving. The color can be beautiful. However some may not like the variation from dark to light that’s sometimes found on a single wide board. It’s also one of the more costly woods.

Teak –It is very weather resistant and gorgeous to look at. Heartwood is yellowish in color. It darkens as it ages, sapwood is whitish to pale yellowish brown in color. Wood texture is hard and ring porous. It is suitable where weather resistance is desired. It is used in the manufacture of outdoor furniture and boat decks. It is also used for cutting boards, indoor flooring, countertops, fine furnitures, door and window frames, wharves, bridges and as a veneer for indoor furnishings.

2-Soft woods:

Cedar – It’s Heartwood reddish to pinkish brown, often with random streaks and bands of darker red/brown areas. Narrow sapwood is pale yellowish white, Has a straight grain and a medium to coarse texture. Easy to work with both hand or machine tools.  a lot of craftsmen use cedar for a variety of reasons. One is its distinctive pleasant smell. The more popular cedar is the Western red cedar, and as its name suggests, it is reddish in color. It is commonly used to build furniture and building exteriors (such as decks). This is because it will handle moisture without rotting.

Pine – It is an inexpensive, lightweight wood that can be yellowish or whitish with brown knots. It’s often used for rustic pieces. there are several kinds of pine, such as yellow, sugar, white. Pine is used for furniture. It is easy to work with, so a lot of craftsmen use it for carving. Pine wood is widely used in high-value carpentry items such as furniture, window frames, panelling, floors, and roofing

Fir – It has a generally straight grain or slightly wavy. It has a reddish tint. It’s popular with builders on a larger scale, but people that are looking to craft wood like it because of its lower price levels.  It is used in the form of lumber, timbers, pilings and plywood. Douglas-fir is also used to produce a wide variety of products including general millwork, flooring, furniture, cabinets and veneer.

Redwood – It is is very soft, lightweight and stable, with very little shrinkage or seasonal movements.  It commonly uses for veneer, construction lumber, beams, posts, decking, exterior furniture, and trim. Burls and other forms of figured Redwood are also used in turning, musical instruments, and other small specialty items. It has a natural resistance to water and also easy to work with.

3-Plywood : It is a sheet material manufactured from thin layers or “plies” of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. There are different kinds depends from kind of wood veneer, angle of rotated layers, type of glue, etc. Plywood is used in many applications that need high-quality, high-strength material. It’s also used to create curved surfaces because it can easily bend with the grain. Depends on the types, it can be used for floors, walls and roofs in home constructions, vehicle internal body work, boxes, concrete shuttering panels, high-end loud speakers, furniture, musical instruments, sports equipment.

4-MDF :  MDF means Medium-Density Fibreboard which is an engineered wood product made by breaking down wood chips into wood fibres, mixing with glue and forming panels by applying high temperature and pressure. MDF (medium-density fiberboard) is inexpensive, durable, and a good choice for many woodworking and carpentry projects. MDF is generally denser than plywood and particle boards. According to application places can be produced with different densities (low, medium, high density) and can be added wax. There are also moisture resistant (green) and fire retardant (red) MDF. Since there are producers all over the world, it is easy to find with different dimensions. Also with different surface laminated MDF boards, you can have very wide selections of color, design, structure. You can cut, paint, mill, form, drill and can use for a large range of different applications.

5-Particle Board : It known as particleboard or chipboard. It is an engineered wood product manufactured from wood chips, sawmill shavings, or even sawdust, combined together with glue under hot press. It is much cheaper than natural wood. It is not suitable for milling and bending, but you may cut, drill, paint to make a wide range of furniture. Also it is available as laminated board with lots of different colors and surface patterns.

Additional Sources :

http://www.wood-database.com/

Wood Working Project including decks, sheds, chairs, tables, etc

16,000 Wood Working Project

MDF:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qitenYvpSx4

Colors and Patterns For Laminated MDF and Particle Board:

http://keas.com.tr/en/keas-product-detail/1094/medelam–teknolam–yongalam