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.
Strawberry Tree
A dense, fine-grained Mediterranean hardwood in light tan with pinkish tones — a small-diameter turner's and charcoal wood, hard and heavy but rarely milled.
Hardwood
Golden Chain Tree
Dense, hard European ornamental hardwood prized for its rich color contrast and used in turning, inlay, and woodwind instruments — but every part is poisonous.
Hardwood
Jack Wood
Heavy, tough South/Southeast Asian hardwood in warm tan to light brown, valued for its strength, durability and heavy structural and joinery work.
Hardwood
Petrified Wood
Fossilized wood turned to stone — original tree grain and growth rings preserved in silica. A mineral, not a workable timber.
Reclaimed
Peach
A dense, fine-grained orchard fruitwood from the peach tree, showing light tan to pale brown tones and tight concentric growth rings.
Hardwood
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
Nux Vomica
A hard, dense, close-grained brown hardwood from the South Asian strychnine tree, whose bitter alkaloid-laden timber is used for tool handles, implements, and turnery.
Tropical & Exotic
Ormosia
A dense tropical South American legume wood with sharply demarcated reddish-brown heartwood against pale sapwood and clear growth rings.
Hardwood
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.
Hardwood
Giant Sequoia
The wood of Earth's most massive trees: light, soft, richly tannic, and famously rot-resistant, with a warm golden-brown to reddish heartwood.
Softwood
Carob
A dense, hard Mediterranean hardwood in tan to light-brown tones with fine grain and radiating figure — scarce, mostly a turner's and small-craft wood.
Hardwood
Cork Oak
The evergreen Mediterranean oak prized for its thick cork bark; the wood beneath is a dense, hard, reddish-brown oak used mostly for charcoal, turnery, and firewood.
Hardwood
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
Rowan
A tough, fine-textured European turning and carving wood from the rowan tree — pale tan sapwood, warm brown heart, and centuries of folklore.
Hardwood
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
Cherry Laurel
A minor Prunus wood from an evergreen Mediterranean shrub-tree, cutting fine, even, pale-tan stock with visible growth rings.
Hardwood
Olive
The dense, richly streaked wood of the olive tree: pale tan and cream shot through with darker brown heartwood, prized by turners for its dramatic figure.
Hardwood
Great Basin Bristlecone Pine
Wood of the world's oldest trees — a dense, resinous, extremely slow-grown high-desert pine with tight rings and twisted grain, golden tan in color.
Softwood
Bloodwood
The intensely red South American hardwood: very dense, hard, and fine-textured, prized for its vivid blood-red heartwood in turning, inlay, and accents.
Tropical & Exotic
Bamboo
A fast-growing woody grass — not a true wood — used as round culms and glued into hard, dimensionally stable engineered boards and flooring.
Bamboo
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
Hemp Palm
The fibrous stem of the cold-hardy windmill palm — not a true wood but a monocot with bundled fibers set in soft tissue, light tan with a dark speckled fiber pattern.
Tropical & Exotic