Wood Identification How to Identify Lumber Wood By Wright 2

How do you identify different types of lumber and wood? here is my attempt at describing how to identify wood in your shop. We will be looking at red oak and white oak, different types of maple, ash, cherry, and walnut. I may also have a video in a few days where we look at all of these woods individually.

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[austinthompson]

Im a woodworker myself i go out on hikes and collect different types of woods not knowing what some of them are some times this really helped me gain some more knowledge on identifying what im working with i have been carving wood pipes for about 8 years now and have carved some from driftwood to hardwoods i usually have people go out on their own and find a branch or scrap piece so they are connected to their own pieces but most people aren't willing to get their hands dirty so i have so i go out on my own to find unique makes for quite the adventure and it make sure not one pipe i carve is ever the same.

[benvinje]

I took a wood identification course in university when studying for my forestry major. This was a really good breakdown of the main characteristics to look at. For me smell, relative weight, and sheen when plained are the core factors I look at, but I tend to work in softwoods from the west coast of Canada.

[rougesunset]

Your passion in describing how you just need to get to know the wood hands on (and nose on) is very infectious! I hope to have space to work with wood at some point in my life, follow in the footsteps of my grandpa

[Sokane]

Australian woodworker Morris Lake has actually produced two books that scientifically identify and categorize the 1000s of different Australian trees, called "Australian Rainforest Woods" and "Australian Forest Wood". I don't think anything similar exists for European or American tree species, but for anyone wanting to branch out (see what I did there?), Morris Lake's work provides not only great knowledge on Australian woods, but a very interesting method of categorizing which may be used across the pond.

[BuddWolf]

I know what you mean by getting to know the difference between woods by touch, look and smell. After about a year or so working there, I learned more about wood than I did when I was in the Boy Scouts. Thanks for the video post. Best of luck 🍀 to you and your family.

[LaraCroftCP]

I can proudly say: i can identify all of my usual wood!

Because i saw my Lumber in my little tiny forrest by myself, and i know most of the trees by name😄!

Really, i see some Trees growing up, fall in Storms and then i come with my Saw and make nice things out of it. So often i can say by the bark what is what. But even without i can tell every Wood by color and grain. Some are unique like oak and by others i know them because they only grow in my forrest.

It is nice when you really know the tree before you use them as lumber and i try to use and treat them as well as i can. They will be treated as a former bit of Life how has a History, i love to touch, feel and smell them🥰.
Sometimes i even take some pieces of wood or tools to bed with me because i have a really strong bound to my Wood and Tools.
Yes, i really love Wood😅!

Many greetings from Lara ❤️

[kdb_]

I am not an accomplished wood worker like you are. I have done a lot with wood and am just starting to use hand planes and tools. I love wood and I can see and hear your love for it in your videos.
Thanks for your content

[martihelives]

I'm finding wood identification a complicated thing. I have picked up various tree logs from others curbside cutoffs and throw-outs but I don't know what wood they are. You have at least made a great stab at it to get me started. Thanks for you enthusiasm and posting this video, much appreciated.

[gregsarsons]

Great video, lots of enthusiasm. My wife won’t be happy as I now need to go by lots of different types of wood to experiment with lol. Two woods that I’ve found distinct in smell were Sapele and Yellow Cedar.

[alexisjust]

You are such a great teacher, like a young Paul Sellers!

[danielcox]

Thank you for this video. This is one of the most insightful things I have watched in quite some time!

[tdkrei]

Thanks for sharing James and I realize this is a very difficult subject to portray on a video. However I got good information with he comparison of red and white oak but the rest are still sketchy. May in a intro for a video you could just take 2 woods like maple and cherry for difference. Again thanks. Keep on smiling.

[bripod]

Thanks so much for putting this info out here. Your approach to sharing this complicated subject is very interesting, where it could just as well be very dull.

[mattydominic]

"Buy a stick off all these different types of woods & play with them". Best advice in general. Not only does play = fun, it's also a keystone to creativity.
Great vid, man!

[danalaniz]

Thank you. I love that you share your knowledge. I just a beginner so this left me far, far behind. I'll keep watching.

[LaraCroftCP]

Good evening Dear James👋,
You forgot a further impress that wood can have: Sound!
I can tell by the Sound of my Axe, Saw or Plane what kind of wood it is. Oak sounds when i saw eg like there is a bit of Sand in it, it sounds bright and hard.

[RIBill]

I hit the 'like' button as you were closing out the video, but the last line had me wishing there was a 'love' button!

[adamwilson]

I just started a new job at a hardwood retailer and custom woodshop, you learn fast when you stack it by the bunk lol

[cjtoombs]

That piece of cherry with the really wide growth rings reminded me of a tree like that. When I was a teenager I worked with my grandfather logging in southeast Missouri. We were cutting trees in the flatlands around a lot of farm country on that job. Every morning we had to cross a drainage ditch to get back into the place. We were nearly done with that job and were cutting the trees on the road out, very near that crossing and cut an oak tree that was about 3 1/2 feet across at the stump right on the edge of that ditch. I was eating lunch near that stump and noticed that it looked funny. After clearing the sawdust off it I counted the growth rings and it was only about 33 years old. It was right on that drainage ditch which drained farm fields that were regularly fertilized, so I expect it never wanted for anything.

[phragmunkee]

Taking apart a pallet can be interesting. I managed to get white oak, red oak, poplar, hickory, and pine out of a single pallet. Because of the aging, it was almost impossible to tell them apart by sight. However, once I started cutting, I could tell the poplar by how easy it was to cut and the highlighter yellow sawdust coming out of it. I knew I found white oak simply by the smell -- it has an almost sweet smell to it. Pine is obvious by the ease of cut and the piney smell. Red oak was harder. I knew it was an oak by the grain (even through the aging), but it wasn't white oak simply because of the smell (and I really knew it was red oak once I started planing it). Hickory was easy -- it was a pain in the butt to cut with a hand saw!


If you have a store like Woodcraft nearby, they may have an offcut bin where they sell offcuts of random stuff by the pound. That is a sure fire way to really get to know different woods (including exotics), although there may be a bit of sleuthing since none of them are labeled. wood-database.com is a another good resource to try and figure out what kind of mystery wood you might have.