Tropical versus temperate
Q: Why are woodworkers always wetting themselves over tropical hardwoods? Is it the color or the hardness or something?
A: No. There are some spectacularly colored tropical woods (bloodwood, koa), and some (notably teak and wenge) are crushingly dense. Yet some of the most sublimely colored (cherry, walnut), figured (birdseye maple, tiger maple, quilted maple) and sturdy (white oak) woods are from temperate trees.
Particular colors or other properties of a tropical hardwood may draw you to it, but the strongest common feature is their regularity of grain. Temperate trees like ash lay down two types of rings: wide light ones in the summer months, and narrow dark ones in the winter months. Tropical trees like mahogany and sapele experience little temperature variation and thus put down more uniform rings throughout the year. The result is less striping, as is dramatically evident here:
Needless to say, I am working on the lid of the hopechest. You can see photos in process here. I'm updating this set each day, and I'll post again when the project is done.
A: No. There are some spectacularly colored tropical woods (bloodwood, koa), and some (notably teak and wenge) are crushingly dense. Yet some of the most sublimely colored (cherry, walnut), figured (birdseye maple, tiger maple, quilted maple) and sturdy (white oak) woods are from temperate trees.
Particular colors or other properties of a tropical hardwood may draw you to it, but the strongest common feature is their regularity of grain. Temperate trees like ash lay down two types of rings: wide light ones in the summer months, and narrow dark ones in the winter months. Tropical trees like mahogany and sapele experience little temperature variation and thus put down more uniform rings throughout the year. The result is less striping, as is dramatically evident here:
Needless to say, I am working on the lid of the hopechest. You can see photos in process here. I'm updating this set each day, and I'll post again when the project is done.