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.
Poplar Burl
Highly figured burl cut from European poplar — a soft, light hardwood prized for its swirling eyes and warm golden-orange, dark-pored face.
Hardwood
Padauk
Dense, durable Southeast Asian hardwood famous for vivid orange-red heartwood that ages to a deep purple-maroon, prized for furniture, flooring and turning.
Tropical & Exotic
African Padauk
The brilliant orange-red African hardwood: hard, heavy, and durable, prized for its vivid vermillion color, medium interlocked grain, and easy working.
Tropical & Exotic
Coast Redwood
The famous rot-resistant softwood of California's coast: light, straight-grained, and a warm reddish-brown that reads unmistakably as redwood.
Softwood
Coast Redwood or Giant Sequoia
California's iconic reddish softwood — light, straight-grained, aromatic-free, and prized for its exceptional natural decay resistance in old-growth heartwood.
Softwood
European Maple
Pale, lustrous European hardwood prized for curly and burl figure; the classic tonewood for violin backs and fine turnery.
Hardwood
Pacific Madrone
A dense, warm-toned Pacific Coast hardwood prized for wild curly and burl figure, but notorious for moving and warping as it dries.
Hardwood
Lacewood
Australian rainforest hardwood whose quartersawn face bursts with a lacy ray-fleck figure — reddish-brown ground splashed with pale cream flecks.
Tropical & Exotic
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.
Softwood
Bird Cherry
A fine-grained European Prunus with reddish-brown heartwood, tight annual rings, and a warm satiny surface — a small-scale cabinet and turning wood.
Hardwood
Kauri
A golden, fine-grained New Zealand softwood — even-textured and stable, famed for huge clear boards and for ancient bog-buried 'swamp kauri'.
Softwood