Deep breath; I’m almost through.

Liriodendron is a derivative of a Greek term for “lily.”  Tulipfera, the species name, attempts to describe the flowers of the tree as well, and they are tulip-like, so the Latin name for yellow poplar is either redundant, or an oxymoron, depending on how you look at it.  Regardless, they do produce lovely blooms in the spring. Yet, few people ever see them as the yellow poplar tends to be tall, straight, and clear of lateral branches for a good distance up the tree.

And I mean a really good distance.  Yellow poplar can reach heights of 160 feet, making it the tallest of eastern American hardwood trees.  It can also reach a diameter of 8 feet.  The best and largest yellow poplars tend to occur along the Appalachians, but I commonly find high quality trees in the upper coastal plains of Mississippi and Alabama.  For reasons only known by Mother Nature,  yellow poplar never gained much of a foothold west of the Mississippi River.  It is truly an Eastern tree as it occurs from Massachusetts to North Florida, across to Louisiana, and on the hills along the Mississippi River Valley and up into Michigan.

The most popular use of yellow poplar lumber is for interior parts of furniture, toys and other manufactured items.  Many millions of board feet are used annually in plywood, trim, crates and pallets. The reasons it is so widely used in manufacturing are many, but not the least of them is how easy it is to work with.  It is straight-grained (a result, no doubt, of its usual “straight-as-a-broomstick” growth habit), lightweight, and uniform. It also tends to be stable when dry and is fairly pleasant to work with when planing, drilling, turning, and painting it.

The other reasons it is so readily available and widely used are that it grows almost as fast as pine, occurs over a wide region, and the trees have few problems with rot, sweep, crook, knots, and twist. As a forester, I would consider it as almost the perfect tree to grow for lumber.

But all is not roses (or tulips) with yellow poplar.  It may surprise many woodworkers to learn that yellow poplar ranks lower than most important American hardwoods when it comes to bending strength, impact resistance, crushing strength, shear strength, and tensile strength.  It so highly regarded for many uses we tend to ignore these shortcomings.  (After last month’s yellow pine post, I was asked by a friend of mine how I could mention yellow poplar (which he uses a lot) and yellow pine in the same breath.  Well, these shortcomings are the main reason.)

The U. S. grows about 2,137 million board feet of yellow poplar and harvests about 30 million. So, it is truly a sustainable forest resource.  It is my go-to wood for many of my woodworking projects.

Tim Knight

The post A Popular Hardwood for Interior Parts appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

I know. The words cheap and good usually aren’t used together when the subject is wood for woodworking. But in the case of the Southern yellow pines, this wording is well-suited.

Southern yellow pine is a catchall phrase for all of the Southern pines. They include loblolly, shortleaf, slash, longleaf and Virginia, as well as some other minor species. They are commonly known as “softwoods” and are mostly sold as dimensional lumber for construction.

There are perhaps a couple of reasons many woodworkers are biased against the yellow pines for use in woodworking projects. Since the Southern yellow pines are known as “softwoods,” it is felt that they are not appropriate for furniture projects due to lack of strength and possible dents and dings they will inherit. A second reason is the notion that Southern yellow pine will shrink and swell much more than commonly used hardwoods. Lastly, and this part is true, it is very difficult to stain; it begs to be painted.

The term “softwoods,” as it is used for the Southern pines, doesn’t mean exactly what you think. This lumber is soft in that it is easy to saw and very easy to work,

but this has nothing to do with “hardness.” Hardness in lumber is usually rated on the Janka Hardness scale, which measures the relative force needed to drive a .444 inch steel ball into the wood to one half the depth of the ball. This has become the standard to determine if a wood is suitable for flooring and can also be used to compare woods used in cabinet making. The Janka hardness rating for most yellow pine is 690, whereas red oak is 1,290. With no other information, it appears pine is not useful. This would be a mistaken conclusion. Sure, it is much softer than oak, but check this out: the other woods commonly used for internal parts for furniture and cabinets are not as hard as pine. Examples are poplar at 540, American chestnut at 540 and Douglas fir at 660; longleaf pine is even harder than mahogany. So, based on hardness ratings, Southern yellow pine is a winner. It is cheaper, too. A quick check with my big-box store today revealed that a 1″ x 8″ board of yellow poplar is 30 percent higher than pine. Poplar was priced at $3.09 per linear foot, and the same size and quality of a board of yellow pine was $2.37. If you are painting it, you can find yellow pine in lower grades than yellow poplar at an even deeper discount. Compare that to red oak, which was more than twice the cost of yellow pine at the same store.

The second perceived problem is with shrinkage and swelling. All yellow pine on the market today is kiln dried. The problem is that once it is kiln dried, it is frequently stored outdoors and regains much of that moisture. To stabilize it, you need to bring it into your shop for a month or two for it to dry back out. Check it with a moisture meter, and when it is at the same moisture content as your hardwood, it is plenty stable.

So if you’re into saving money on your painted projects, try Southern yellow pine. It is strong, stiff, and fairly shock-resistant. About the only difference I have noticed between it and poplar is that the resins in pine tend to clog sandpaper faster. The pleasant smell of pine resin more than makes up for that in my book.

Tim Knight

The post The Cheap, Good Wood appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

American holly (Illex opaca) is native only to the United States but, since it closely resembled English holly to the Pilgrims, it quickly became the Americans’ symbol of Christmas. It was, and still is, found along the coast of Massachusetts and all the way down through the southeast to East Texas. It grows in the same geographic areas as the Southern yellow pines, but since it can’t tolerate fire, it is rarely found in those pine forests that are regularly burned. So, most large trees are more commonly associated with old hardwood forests. American holly is a slow grower, taking 100 to 150 years to grow large enough for lumber, but it can grow to 70 feet tall and two feet or greater in diameter.

American holly is most widely known simply as “holly” or “Christmas holly.” Its principal use is for decorating, using its leaves and twigs. It was harvested so heavily in some areas in the past that most of the trees in those places were killed. Thankfully, holly “farms” have all but replaced the harvest of wild holly foliage today. American holly is an evergreen and has beautiful curled leaves and bright red berries. The berries are distributed by cedar waxwings and other songbirds. A flock of waxwings have been observed to completely strip a full-grown holly of berries in just a few seconds. American holly is also known as “white holly,” and that is the name of most interest to woodworkers.

The wood of American holly is probably the whitest of all woods. It has an ivory white heartwood and white sapwood. The growth rings are so indistinct as to be almost invisible. Because of the rich white color of the wood, it is widely used as inlay. It provides sharp contrast to darker woods when used this way. As far as other wood properties are concerned, it is not really unique. It is relatively dense and somewhat heavy, weighing about 40 pounds per cubic foot. It is smooth textured and close grained. The wood doesn’t have an odor or taste so is well tolerated by some sensitive woodworkers.

Most importantly, American holly is rather easy to carve, turn and work. Because of its tight grain and white base color, it is a great candidate to stain. It takes almost any dye or stain very well. This property is what makes it a great candidate to mimic ebony. Since it exhibits little in the way of grain and presents a white palette with which to work, black dye will turn any piece of holly into instant “ebony.” It has been used in this way to produce piano keys, violin pegs and fingerboards. So if you have a project idea which calls for ebony and you don’t want to pay gold prices, or a very white inlay will make your project shine, try the “Christmas wood.” I think the results will please even the most discerning woodworker.

Tim Knight

The post Christmas Wood and the “Poor Man’s Ebony” appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

Still known at times as “masonite,” it is more commonly referred to as hardboard. It is made in as many as 28 plants in the United States and in many more throughout the world. It is most commonly made in flat sheets of 1/8” to 1/4″ thick. Hardboard is much denser than the wood from which it is made and is very heavy. In fact, it is so dense that it may sink in water and will rapidly dull carbon steel woodworking tools.

The advantage of hardboard is its near-perfect uniformity. It is made from many species of wood with vastly different properties. These properties are made uniform in the manufacturing process. The original Masonite was an all-natural product consisting simply of wood, water, and linseed oil. (Linseed oil is produced from the seed of flax, a grain crop. Linseed oil was also the main ingredient of linoleum, which was developed in England in the 1860s).

Since its inception, hardboard has been used for things as varied as license plates during steel shortages of the Second World War to roofing underlayment. Today, since hardboard is an all-natural product, it is used by commercial bakeries to support cakes. It is also in wide use as skateboard ramps, to protect high-end floors during construction (and to enable smooth rolling of dollies across those same floors), to construct film and theater sets, musical “wobble boards” and in some electric guitar bodies.

The manufacturing process involves very high pressures and heat. I remember, as a young man traveling through Laurel, Mississippi, the very distinctive smell of hot wood and linseed oil coming from the Masonite plant. It was not an unpleasant odor. You have probably encountered hardboard in many places. It was commonly used in the backs of televisions in the 1970s and 1980s. Another use of that type of hardboard is for the pegboard most of us use in some way in our shops. This kind of hardboard has one finished side and one rough side (S1S). This is the result of how it is manufactured. I commonly use a second type of hardboard to protect my workbench and countertops in my shop. It is finished on two sides (S2S). It is much easier to flip this board over when paint or glue spills on it or I accidentally damage it, than to replace the benchtop. There are two different processes used to manufacture hardboard, and these result in differing identities and qualities. I’ll identify the differences in the different manufacturing processes in the next installment and how they affect your uses of “Masonite” in your woodworking projects. I’ll also show you how Medium Density Fiberboard is a direct descendant of the original Masonite.

Tim Knight

The post Hardboard and Masonite: Uniform Wood Products appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

White Oak:

• Janka Hardness: 1,360 pounds
• Density (KG/m3): 900

Red Oak:

• Janka Hardness: 1,290 pounds
• Density (KG/m3): 780

In many projects, these differences may not mean much, but they need to be pointed out. There are others, including the extent of work needed to fill pores and sand when finishing the wood.

So how do you tell them apart? The first answer you will usually get is that red oak wood is reddish in color and white oak is more brown or tan. Dr. Gene Wengert, former wood science professor with the University of Wisconsin in Madison, points out that red oak is not always more red than white oak. For example, black oak, water oak, and willow oak (which are red oaks) have no red at all. Wengert advises that color is about 50 percent accurate.

You may also hear that you can blow bubbles in water through a short piece of red oak but not white oak. This is not a very reliable test either. Red oak growing under stress will not let you blow bubbles. Smell of fresh sawn wood is a little more reliable in that most white oak will smell somewhat like vanilla, and red oak will smell like…well, not very pleasant. This vanilla smell is one characteristic which makes white oak an attractive material for building barrels in which to age fine wine.

All is not lost. There are two very good tests. You can separate most white from red by noticing the ray length in the flatsawn portion of the lumber. This is the method used by most lumber graders. After a little practice, it is a very effective method. The rays in red oak are usually no longer than 3/8” or 1/2” long. In white oak, many are 1″ long or longer. In the photo, white oak is on top. Notice the very short length of the rays in the red oak. This is a common characteristic of red oak species.

Finally, the only test that is 100 percent accurate involves a chemical test. This test requires putting a few drops of sodium nitrite solution on the oak, and if it turns dark colored after a few hours, it is white oak. Sodium nitrite can be purchased from any well-supplied pharmacy, but if you use this test, don’t buy more than you need. It can be a hazardous material if used inappropriately.

Tim Knight

The post Oak Lumber – White or Red? appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

The single-sided hardboard originally invented by Mason had one smooth side. The other side is rough and has a regular pattern embedded in it. In this process, known as the Wet Process, the ground wood fibers are mixed in water slurry. This is put on screens in a uniform mat, and the excess water drains through the screens. Then the screens go into a press that applies many tons of pressure to squeeze out the rest of the water and heats the fiber to a temperature of 350 degrees Fahrenheit. The combination of heat and pressure causes a chemical reaction of the lignin that bonds the wood fibers into hardboard. When it is removed from the press, the screen is removed, leaving the impression on the rear side. In the alternate process, known as the Wet-Dry Process invented later by Mason, the thin mat of fiber is not put on a screen but is sent into a tunnel dryer to evaporate the excess water before going to press. It results in hardboard with two smooth sides. Both wet processes result in two-dimensional fiber layers.

In the Dry Process, the wood fibers are air-dried by tumbling in a rotating drum dryer basically like your clothes dryer at home. The fibers are then blown into “forms” in a layer that can be several inches thick, where it is then pressed down to 1/8” or ¼” hardboard. The heating in this process must be higher than the wet process to cause chemical changes to the lignin, and can get to 400 degrees. This process results in three-dimensional fiber layering.

After pressing, both types of hardboard are then “tempered.” Most commonly, the panels are flooded with linseed oil, excess oil is pressed off, and the board dried in a hot air oven. At this point, the hardboard is at 0-1 percent moisture, so has to be sent through another oven which is injected with moist air to bring the moisture content up to normal relative humidity. After that, it is ready to go.

As you can see, hardboard is truly a natural product; it consists of wood, water, and linseed oil. Actually, this is basically what distinguishes it from Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF). MDF is manufactured in almost the same way as hardboard but uses chemicals rather than heat to bond the wood fibers. MDF uses the same dry process as some hardboard, but a synthetic resin is added when the boards are pressed in order to bond the fibers and high heat is not applied. Without the high heat, MDF comes out of the press at 4 to 6 percent moisture. With the savings in energy to produce heat, and to eliminate the re-moisturizing step, MDF is less expensive to manufacture than hardboard. Since MDF does not rely on extremely high pressures to its inner structure, it can be produced in much thicker sheets than hardboard. Next time, I’ll point out the different qualities of each type of hardboard that you need to know before you use it in a project.

Tim Knight

The post Hardboard: the All-Natural Wood Product appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

The U. S. Attorney’s Office in Tennessee originated the warrants for possible violations of the Lacey Act, as amended in 2008. This act makes it illegal to import any wood or any item containing wood that was harvested, manufactured, or exported in any way contrary to the laws of the originating country. In other words, when Gibson imported wood from India, if any Indian laws were broken in doing so, then the wood becomes contraband and then Gibson is liable for illegally importing that wood into the United States.

The problem is, the Attorney General’s Office decides if the foreign country’s laws have been broken, and in this case, NOT the Indian Government. In fact on September 16, Vinod Srivastava, an official in India’s foreign trade office, issued a letter explaining that the wood imported by Gibson was legally exported from India. However, in a sworn statement to the courts, the Fish and Wildlife Service basically implies that the Indian Government is not as capable of interpreting their own law as is the United States Attorney’s Office.

This is not the first time Gibson was raided by the Fish and Wildlife Service. In 2009, most of the guitar makers were legally importing ebony and other woods from Madagascar. On March 16, 2009, the military in that country over threw the government. Since the Administration found the new government of Madagascar to be illegal, then they allegedly decided that any laws of that government were illegal so any wood bought from that country was now contraband. So, on November 17, 2009, they raided and confiscated wood from Gibson Guitars and they still have it, and no charges have been filed.

In a true twist of fate, Gibson Guitars, along with many other luthiers, were instrumental in getting the 2008 amendment to the Lacey Act passed. It was meant to level the playing field against Chinese instrument makers who did not have to abide by the international trade restrictions our manufacturers were living under. Now, under the current interpretation, Lloyd Loar would be a common criminal. As most well-meaning environmental legislation is inclined to do, it has brought unintended consequences.

In January of this year, a Georgia piano dealer was fined $17,500 and given three years probation for importing elephant ivory. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided that the 100 YEAR OLD ivory keys of the antique pianos he bought overseas and brought to Atlanta to refurbish were “illegal trade in ivory” and confiscated the pianos and other items belonging to the company.

So, your Brazilian rosewood cufflinks which belonged to your Grandfather are now illegal contraband. You could be arrested and fined up to $500,000 for leaving the country and then coming back in with those cuff links without proof of where, when, and how the wood was harvested. It kind of makes you look at your collection of antique rosewood smoking pipes in a different light doesn’t it?

Tim Knight

The post Gibson Guitars, the Lacey Act, and You appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

I’ve talked about this before. The lumber industry has always been happy to name a wood anything to take advantage of a market, or to describe a wood that was similar to another. So, it appears that any resinous and/or aromatic wood coming from mostly evergreen trees has been dubbed “cedar.”

There are only four true cedars in the world and all carry the genus name of Cedrus (from the Greek work Kedros which means “resinous wood”). Cedrus are in the pine family (Pinaceae) and naturally occur in species specific habitats in Morocco to Lebanon and Syria and in the Himalayas of Pakistan and India. They have short needles similar to pine or hemlock. We rarely, if ever, see lumber from these species in the United States.

The other “cedars” are not. White cedar, incense cedar, Port Orford cedar, Eastern red cedar, and Western red cedar are all in the Cypress family (Cupressaceae).

Most unexpectedly, Spanish cedar, Australian red cedar, and Ceylon cedar are members of the Mahogany family (Meliaceae)! They are broadleaved trees which bear no resemblance at all to the cedars and cypresses other than the aromatic nature of their wood. The one thing that sets their wood apart from the others, though, is wood resins. Like other cypresses, the “cedar” cypresses have varying degrees of resin in their woods which has to be dealt with when working with it. So do the true cedars. The Mahogany cedars, however, do not. So, it pays to know which family your “cedar” comes from.

The post It’s Not Cedar appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

A completely different system presently being used across the country is weight scaling. In this system, logs are purchased for a set price per ton. It works out fairly well for species used for construction lumber like Southern yellow pine and spruce. It is particularly well suited for logs meant for paper pulp, in that quality, size, and species are really irrelevant in that market. However, it leaves a lot to be desired when pricing lumber from high value hardwoods. Having a set rate per ton completely disregards the quality of the log, although loads with obviously rotting logs and other gross defects are turned away. Hence, a seller of quality logs will receive an average price for above average timber.

Henry Spelter wrote in “Converting among Log Scaling Methods” in the June, 2004 issue of the Journal of Forestry, “…log scaling, as traditionally practiced in the United States, is imprecise, inconsistent, and biased.” To protect yourself when selling logs from your woodlot, have a professional forester measure and seek bids for your logs. Using this method will more likely result in obtaining a price based on quality rather than some arbitrary log scale. Your sale will probably still rely on an estimate of board feet of lumber, but when bidding takes place, more realistic estimation takes place. If a purchaser is buying a sale of smaller logs, he should not hide his inefficiencies within a log rule, but offer less if that is what he needs to do. Another buyer who has invested in modern equipment may be able to offer more for the same logs because she can more efficiently utilize smaller logs. Hence, the market will rule.

If you are buying a particularly nice log to have it sawn, try your best to pay based on the final yield. If you have to pay for it before you have it sawn, find out what the legal log rule is in your State, and use it for your basis to purchase the log. You will be less likely to end up paying for a log scaled in one log rule for the woodlot owner, and another for you.

Tim Knight

The post Buying (or Selling) Logs for Lumber – Log Rules Part 3 appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

The three most popular log rules used in modern forestry are the Doyle, Scribner, and International ¼. A typical log rule is an equation that seeks to estimate board feet of lumber from a log. This is the Doyle Rule:

Board Feet = (Diameter at small end – 4)² x Length of Log/16

The Doyle log rule was developed by Edward Doyle and first published in Rochester, New York in 1825. This rule allowed for a 5/16 saw kerf and a 4″ slab allowance which is quit high. It was eventually replaced in the Western U.S. by the Scribner Rule, developed in 1846 by J. M. Scribner.

Scribner’s rule was based on a diagram where the actual boards, kerf, and waste were drawn in a circle of the diameter equal to the log, so all formulas subsequently developed to explain it were diameter-specific. The Scribner rule is now used mainly west of the Mississippi River and along the Rocky Mountains and Pacific. This rule does not allow for taper in the log, so any lumber recovered from the slabs cut off to square up the log are not counted. This bias becomes more pronounced as log length increases.

The International rule was developed by Judson F. Clark in 1900. The rule was developed to more accurately allow for saw kerf, waste and log taper. It worked on logs in multiples of 4 feet as there is a different equation for each length from 4 feet to 20 feet. In 1917 Clark updated his International Rule to the International ¼ Rule since most mills during that time were using saws that were not capable of the narrow 1/8-inch kerf his original rule assumed. Although this rule most accurately predicts the actual yield of lumber from logs, it has not gained widespread use.

To illustrate the wide variance in lumber predictions among the three rules, take a log that is 16″ in diameter at the small end, and 16′ long with a value of $500 per thousand board feet. The following table reflects the volume and values based on the three log rules we have discussed.

Adapted from: Forest Landowner’s Guide to the Measurement of Timber and Logs, ID

Authors as Published

James E. Johnson, Extension Forester, Virginia Tech

So, you can see that if a buyer bought a log from a land owner using the Doyle log rule, and then sold it to you for the exact same price per board foot but used the International rule to sell it, he would make a tidy 25 percent profit on the transaction with no change in price.

Next time … why the log rules are important to you.

Tim Knight

The post Buying (or Selling) Logs For Lumber – Log Rules Part 2 appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.