Thread: Most common timber types

How you doing fudge me boy

"tasmanian oak" is one of the most common "commercial" timbers.

But thats not going to get any body excited.

do a trawl on timber sites and the timber section of this forum , theres heaps to read.

If you can get hold of a coppy of "australian carpenter and joiner", do.
Borrow if you can..... If you are into this stuff its a good book to have.
a good cheat book. coppies com up on ebay once in a while.
If there isn't one in the school libruray or in the man arts dpr there should be.
I'm a grown up woodie with some experience & I wont part with my coppy.

If your a bit skint for cash and you want something with substance and don't mind a bit of work to get it, have a look at KD hardwood, its common hardwood structrual timber therfor a bit cheaper, it can be spotted gum or othe nice stuff, youll have to reasw or reprocess buy its kiln dried (KD that will be in an exam some day) so its stable.

cheers

Fudge - you'd better be prepared for a barrage of flippant answers to your question. It's a bit like asking how long a piece of string is........

There are literally thousands of species of trees in the world, hundreds in most states of Aus, and dozens in any given locality, not to mention the imports you can buy from numerous merchants.

You would do better by posing your question as 'what woods would be suitable for a CD tower, of such and such a colour. I have little/moderate/advanced skills and zero/some/everything-that-opens-and-shuts tooling. That would narrow the choices down to a few hundred species!

Trees are divided into two major groups, Hardwoods and Softwoods according to botanical characteristics that are very clear if you have any biology training. Their woods are quite different structurally. Unfortunately, some Hardwoods are extremely soft (Balsa) and some Softwoods are very hard (our native 'cypresses', Larch, etc.). We should talk about Hardwoods that have hard woods, which covers the majority of our Eucalypts and Acacias.

So if you tell us what colour wood you have in mind, and what your ability to work it into the required shapes is, you might even get some useful advice from the forum members.
No guarantees, though!!!

Cheers,

Fudge good to see you back and happy Im with Ian that youl get a small barrage of info. And their arnt just thousands of different trees but well in excess of 35,000 around the world and even here in Australia we have thousands and even the largest inland forest in the world. Check this link for a few pics. Even though its veneer its still wood Theirs both Aust and imports here. Have fun

http://www.gfethers.com.au/ven_indx.htm

OK.. for a CD rack you can use almost any wood, even radiata pine if you have nothing else.

Common woods are the ones available in your area. Radiata pine is an exotic in some parts of the word :confused: .

How about you check what woods are available to you, then ask about the the properties of those woods. That will narrow it down from several thousand to 5 or 10

Hardwood / softwood is a very general thing, but once you get into the species of tree we can tell you about the wood.

Cheers

Ian

Heres another thaught

see if you can find a coppy of "world woods in colour".

I'ts not exaustive, or particularly applicable localy (although many ausie wood in it) buy is gives a prety good run down on a few hundred common timbers worldwide, with descriptions & stuff and a prety decent picture in colour.

Cauition. be seen with this book and you will be branded a wood geek:eek: go to the top of the class

cheers

Originally Posted by fudge_316

What are the most common timber type names?

I know of radiata pine, hardwood and softwood (dont know too much detail)

I am in the process of designing a CD Tower and getting all my material possiblities together so i can decide.

Thanks

Good question and nice to see you've got a reasonably thick skin - it goes well with some of the thick heads it's likely to bump into here.