How To Identify Wood

Semi-trained or untrained personnel in the timber industry usually has no choice but to identify timber by its color appearance or other specific features on the wood.

How to identify wood. Look for growth ringsformed by the yearly growth of a treewhich will be a dead-giveaway that the wood sample in question is a solid genuine chunk of wood taken from a tree. These characteristics are the most distinguished identity of a wood. Pick the piece of wood to get a sense of its weight and compare it to other wood species.

There are additional variations within each wood type such as knotty pine or birds-eye maple that can complicate the identification process. Hickory typically forms consistently straight close grain lines with few curves. The type and arrangement of the grain determine its physical appearance.

It has been designed to serve both the amateur and experienced person in identifying unknown wood specimens. Maple grain has broad patterns of differing colors with fewer sharp edges than oak or ash. Second the wood of many species looks very similar if not identical.

Ash wood may show a similar pattern but with more complex grain lines that come to a sharp point. With a myriad of ways to cut and stain wood it can sometimes be difficult to determine the type of wood used in antique furniture and trace it to a specific period. Hardwood has bold grain lines while softwood has a little to no grain pattern.

Identifying wood is not easy for a number of reasons. There are 3 types of grain pattern identification these are the face-grain end-grain and the side-grain. Secondly take into account whether the piece of wood youre looking at is stained or weathered since these processes alter the visual appearance of the wood and can make it tricky to see its true color grain direction and composition.

Multiple types of wood come together at this indooroutdoor porch. Softwoods usually have smooth grain patterns while hardwoods have rougher more porous patterns. Manufactured wood such as MDF OSB and particleboard all have a distinct look that isin nearly all caseseasily distinguishable from the endgrain of real wood.