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.
Birch
A pale, fine-grained northern hardwood — cream to white with warm tones, strong and even-textured, and the backbone of quality birch plywood.
Hardwood
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.
Hardwood
Birch Veneer
Thin, rotary-cut or sliced sheets of pale birch used as plywood faces and cabinet skins — light tan, straight-grained, and prized for its clean, even surface.
Hardwood
Silver Birch
Pale cream-white European hardwood with fine, even grain and clear growth rings; tough, plywood-grade, but low in decay resistance.
Hardwood
Sweet Birch
A dense, fine-grained eastern North American birch, famous for the wintergreen scent of its bark — pale sapwood over rich reddish heartwood.
Hardwood
Paper Birch
A pale, fine-grained North American hardwood famous for its white peeling bark; tough, even, and easy to work but not decay-resistant.
Hardwood
Osage Orange
Extremely hard, rot-resistant North American hardwood with vivid golden-yellow heartwood — the legendary bow wood, 'bois d'arc'.
Hardwood
Ormosia
A dense tropical South American legume wood with sharply demarcated reddish-brown heartwood against pale sapwood and clear growth rings.
Hardwood
Oregon Myrtle
Aromatic honey-brown hardwood from the Oregon and California coast — fine-grained, often boldly figured, and a favorite of turners.
Hardwood
Softwood Plywood
Cross-laminated conifer veneers bonded into stable structural sheets — the pale, workaday plywood behind subfloors, sheathing, roofs and rough carpentry.
Engineered
Oriental Plane
A golden-brown Mediterranean hardwood famous for its dazzling ray fleck — the classic 'lacewood' figure on the quartered face.
Hardwood
Soft Maple or Ash (unidentified)
A pale cream-to-tan Eastern North American hardwood — this sample sits between soft maple and ash, two common domestic species that overlap in light stock.
Hardwood
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.
Engineered
Stained or Treated Hardwood
Not a single species but any hardwood whose natural color has been altered by stain, dye, or a preservative or protective treatment.
Hardwood
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
Linden
A pale, feather-light hardwood with fine straight grain and almost no figure — the traditional wood of European carvers and a top choice for detailed relief work.
Hardwood
Engineered Wood
A broad family of manufactured boards built from wood fibers, particles, or veneers bonded with adhesives — uniform, stable, and free of a single natural species.
Engineered
Japanese Maple
The wood of the ornamental Japanese maple: dense, fine-grained, with tight concentric rings and a warm reddish-brown cast in this sample.
Hardwood
Red Alder
The Pacific Northwest's workhorse softwood-of-a-hardwood: pale, even-textured, and famous for the warm orange blush it takes on when freshly cut.
Hardwood
Douglas Fir
A strong, stiff Pacific Northwest softwood — cream to tan with bold growth rings and reddish bands — the backbone of North American structural timber.
Softwood
Bruguiera cylindrica
A dense, hard mangrove hardwood from Southeast Asia's tidal forests — fine-grained, tan to light brown, and cut mostly for poles, fuelwood, and charcoal.
Hardwood
Meranti
Southeast Asian tropical hardwood from Shorea species — a mahogany-like utility wood, golden-orange to reddish-brown, widely used for plywood, joinery, and trim.
Tropical & Exotic
Petrified Wood
Fossilized wood turned to stone — original tree grain and growth rings preserved in silica. A mineral, not a workable timber.
Reclaimed
Shorea
Broad Southeast Asian genus sold as meranti and lauan — a light tan, straight-grained tropical hardwood used for plywood, joinery, and utility furniture.
Tropical & Exotic