Wood Encyclopedia

Search and identify wood species from around the world — with origin, Janka hardness, grain and color, working properties, common uses, and how to tell them apart.

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Softwood Plywood

Softwood Plywood

Cross-laminated conifer veneers bonded into stable structural sheets — the pale, workaday plywood behind subfloors, sheathing, roofs and rough carpentry.

Yellow Birch

A tough, fine-grained North American hardwood — pale to golden-brown, strong and shock-resistant, and the primary birch of furniture, flooring, and plywood.

Fig

The soft, pale, lightweight wood of the common fig tree — an orchard hardwood rarely milled for lumber, valued mainly for small turnery and carving.

Hawthorn

A very hard, dense pale European hedgerow hardwood with a fine even grain, prized in small sizes for turning, tool handles and engraving.

Sugar Maple

Dense, pale North American hardwood prized for its hardness, tight even grain, and prized figure like bird's eye and curl.

White Poplar

A pale, lightweight European hardwood of the poplar family — soft, fine-textured, and odorless, long used for boxes, plywood core, and utility work.

Silver Fir

A pale, lightweight European softwood — creamy, fine, even grained and resin-canal free — long sold with spruce as generic 'whitewood' for building and joinery.

Rowan

A tough, fine-textured European turning and carving wood from the rowan tree — pale tan sapwood, warm brown heart, and centuries of folklore.

Eastern White Pine

Eastern White Pine

The classic soft, lightweight, pale North American pine: fine even grain, distinct growth rings, and a wood that carves, planes, and paints with ease.

Lodgepole Pine

A pale, lightweight, straight-boled Rocky Mountain softwood — the classic tepee-pole tree — valued for framing lumber, house logs, and utility products.

European Hornbeam

European Hornbeam

A pale, exceptionally hard and heavy European hardwood with fine, even grain — the classic wood for mallet heads, gears, tool handles, and piano actions.

Peach

A dense, fine-grained orchard fruitwood from the peach tree, showing light tan to pale brown tones and tight concentric growth rings.

Blackbutt

A dense, pale golden-brown Australian eucalypt hardwood with fine even grain — a workhorse structural, flooring, and decking timber prized for strength and bushfire resistance.

Spruce

A light, soft, pale cream-to-tan European softwood with fine even grain — strong for its weight, easy to work, and the classic tonewood for instrument soundboards.

Norway Maple

A pale, fine-grained European maple with even diffuse-porous texture and a clean cream-tan color — a good-turning, easily finished utility hardwood.

Oriented Strand Board (OSB)

Oriented Strand Board (OSB)

An engineered structural panel of cross-oriented wood strands bonded with resin under heat and pressure — the pale, mottled tan sheathing board of modern construction.

Gray Mangrove

Dense, hard tidal hardwood from the world's most widespread mangrove — pale tan wood banded with the concentric rings typical of Avicennia's unusual growth.

White Ash

A strong, pale, ring-porous North American hardwood with bold straight grain and outstanding shock resistance — the classic wood for tool handles and baseball bats.

Paulownia

An exceptionally light, soft, pale hardwood from the fast-growing kiri tree — prized in Asia for chests, clogs, and instrument parts for its low weight and stability.

Black Alder

A pale tan-cream, light and soft European hardwood with even growth rings — easy to work, quick to turn and carve, and long the wood of choice under water.

Holm Oak

A dense, very hard evergreen Mediterranean oak with fine grain and gleaming rays — pale pink to light tan, heavy, and tough to work but exceptionally wear-resistant.

Ponderosa Pine

A soft, light Western softwood — pale yellow sapwood and warm orange-tan heartwood, straight-grained, easy to work, and the classic knotty-pine millwork timber.

Tree of Heaven

Pale cream-to-tan ring-porous hardwood from a fast-growing invasive tree — ash-like grain, light, satiny, and essentially free where it grows.

Crape Myrtle

A dense, fine-grained ornamental hardwood cut from the crape myrtle shrub-tree; pale cream to tan with tightly spaced rings and a smooth, uniform texture.