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.
African Mahogany
The mainstream mahogany substitute: an open-grained West African hardwood with warm reddish-brown color and a ribbon-striped interlocked figure.
Tropical & Exotic
African Ebony
Dense, jet-black West African hardwood with an extremely fine grain, prized for instrument parts, inlay, and fine turning.
Tropical & Exotic
African Walnut
A golden-brown West African hardwood with fine, lustrous, gently interlocked grain and a ribbon stripe — walnut-like in look but botanically a mahogany relative.
Hardwood
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
Honduran Mahogany
The benchmark cabinet wood — Swietenia macrophylla — prized for warm reddish-brown color, superb stability, and easy working; this sample shows rare pommele figure.
Tropical & Exotic
Genuine Mahogany
The classic cabinet wood: a medium-density tropical American hardwood, reddish-brown with an even grain, prized for stability, workability, and CITES protection.
Tropical & Exotic
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
Sapele
A dense reddish-brown African hardwood in the mahogany family, prized for its lustrous interlocked ribbon stripe and use in furniture, joinery, and guitars.
Tropical & Exotic
Abachi
A very light, soft, pale West African hardwood with fine even grain — the classic sauna-bench and core-veneer wood, low in weight, heat, and resin.
Tropical & Exotic
Mansonia
A fine, even-grained West African hardwood often sold as a walnut substitute — attractive but notorious for its highly irritating dust.
Hardwood
Okoumé
A light, soft, golden-tan Central African hardwood with fine even grain — the classic marine-plywood and core-veneer wood, low in weight and easy to peel.
Tropical & Exotic
Nigerian Hardwood (possibly Direm)
A cream-to-warm-tan West African hardwood from Nigeria, tentatively identified as Direm, with prominent rays and reddish-brown vessel highlights.
Hardwood
Koa
Endemic Hawaiian hardwood prized for its golden-to-reddish-brown color and shimmering chatoyant curly figure — the signature wood of the islands.
Hardwood
Iroko
West Africa's durable golden-brown hardwood — often called African teak — prized for outdoor joinery, boatwork and worktops for its stability and decay resistance.
Tropical & Exotic
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
Wenge
Dark brown-to-black Central African hardwood with a bold black-and-tan striped figure, coarse texture, and high density — a favorite for flooring and accents.
Tropical & Exotic
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
Afzelia
Dense, richly reddish-brown West African hardwood prized for its outstanding durability, dimensional stability, and use in flooring and joinery.
Tropical & Exotic
Azobe (Ekki)
Extremely heavy, dark chocolate-brown West African ironwood valued for outstanding durability in marine piling, decking, and heavy hydraulic construction.
Tropical & Exotic
Common Hook-thorn Acacia
A dense southern-African thorn tree yielding dark reddish-brown heartwood with cream sapwood — a hard, tough, mostly local-use timber.
Hardwood
Brazilian Cedar
The aromatic 'cedar' of cigar boxes and guitar necks — a light, soft, spicy-scented tropical wood that is botanically a mahogany relative, not a true cedar.
Softwood
Cannonball Mangrove
A mahogany-family mangrove hardwood from Indo-Pacific tidal forests — pale tan sapwood, warm brown heartwood, and moderate, evenly spaced growth rings.
Tropical & Exotic