Tight Grain Hardwood

12 harder than red oak.

Tight grain hardwood.

Creamy white in highest grade. When close grained wood is cut into lumber it has the appeal of being smooth and without the irregular characteristics of wide grained woods. White oak is mostly straight grained with a medium to coarse texture with longer rays than red oak. Lignum vitae a hardwood native to the west indies has the finest grain of any wood known and an ironlike density.

Used where minimal grain or pattern is desired. Contemporary minimalist or modern. Minimal grain extremely tight color range in highest grades. White oak on the other hand has such a tight cell structure that water can t pass.

The sapwood is light colored and the heartwood is light to dark brown. That s why white oak works so well for whiskey barrels and outdoor furniture. Ambers slightly with exposure to light. Close grained wood also called fine grained wood is any wood in which the annual rings in the wood are tight or close.

Wide variation in lower grades. A clean and contemporary hardwood floor. Analyzing wood species grain and sawing methods here s a long and complex but very informative thread that starts off with a wood identification problem moves into a discussion of wood pore structure and then takes off on an interesting tangent about quartersawing flatsawing and other methods for piecing out a log. Hickory carya spp the first strictly american hardwood species since it survived the glacial epoch some 50 million years ago.