Better wood

[Gary_S]

I use a couple of sources for wood but it is all construction grade. I am amazed at its lightness (lack of weight). It seems also to be less tightly bound in structure than a couple of pieces of wood I was given that were as far as I could tell mahogany. It doesn't saw as crisply and chisel as well. Is there a reason for that and if it is an uncuttable truth, what wood do you recommend a person plays with to improve technique s such as dovetail cutting and chiselling and making crisp mortice and tennons?

Gary

 

[John15]

Gary,

For a softwood you would be better off using Redwood and for hardwood try Oak.

John

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Yes it sounds like you're buying Scandinavian white "Deal" which is incredibly fast grown. It doesn't have time to lay down numerous fibres with such fast growth hence it's low density (that which you describe as weight) and it's somewhat "crumbly" texture.

Any hardwood would suit you for close up crisp work but as the chap above says, also better quality softwoods which often get called joinery grade or "redwood". The white Deal is for structural work like stud walls etc.

 

[custard]

IMO American Cherry is the best all round hardwood with which to learn furniture making. Here's why,

-reasonably stable
-kind to your tools and reasonably easy to cut and plane without tear out
-strong enough for all furniture applications including chairs
-tight grain which makes for crisp joints
-very easy to mark out clearly with pencil or knife
-very widely available in both sawn and PAR boards, and mid priced for a quality hardwood
-available in a good range of thicknesses (many new woodworkers overlook this and then get stuck if they suddenly need 75mm stuff for table legs and or 50mm stuff for desk legs and chairs)
-reasonably homogenous so a board from one Cherry tree will usually be a reasonable colour match to a board from any other Cherry tree (see finishing).
-takes glue and fastenings well
-stands up very well to sunlight, i.e. won't bleach out in a sunny room
-gives you a decent chance of discovering one or two figured boards of Curly or Rippled Cherry if you regularly buy sawn boards

The biggest downside with American Cherry for many woodworkers is finishing, Cherry has a reputation for blotchiness. However, there are strategies for dealing with this, but even if you just use an oil finish (which will tend to exacerbate blotchiness) then time is the great healer. Very few other timbers patinate as quickly as Cherry, five years even in a fairly dark room and Cherry will have matured to a rich warm colour with the blotchiness and any colour variation between boards receding to invisibility. Another issue is that there are very few timber yards who stock "boules" or "flitches" of waney edged American Cherry, i.e. the full sawn log which allows you to select sequential boards from the same tree. However, by the time you've progressed to the stage where this becomes a concern you'll have probably figured out who those specialist timber yards are, or you'll have a repertoire of alternative timbers for when sequential boards becomes an issue.

Good luck!

 

[Tetsuaiga]

You could consider Poplar/Tulipwood. It's cheap, a hardwood but pretty soft so helpful when you are just starting out. Working with something like Hard Maple can give extra challenges which aren't helpful when you're new.

 

[AndyT]

I only know them by reputation, but I wonder if a short trip to Vastern Timber at Wootton Bassett - http://www.vastern.co.uk/ would be a good idea, to see what offcuts etc they might have.

 

[jlawford]

I can attest to hard maple being tricky- not so much planing, but chiselling the damn stuff! I would recommend a good quality redwood pine. Works easily, finishes well and is strong.