Top 10 Wood Species For fine Woodworking

hi I'm Robert coz and welcome to my shop I could decorate my home with just pieces of wood and a finish on them I'm going to show you what my 10 favorite species of wood are you might be surprised at what number one is Stay With Me I'm Rob Cosman and welcome to my shop we make it our job to help you take your woodworking to the next level if you're new to our Channel be sure to subscribe turn on that notification Bell and don't forget to turn on the notification on your mobile device so you'll know every time we release a new video good all right back to the bench so what I'm going to do is just take them one at a time start number 10 and walk you through it tell you whatever I can tell you whatever I can share with you about that particular species of wood that may as I said entice you to start using it ready let's go I'm gonna try to do as much as possible is take the piece of wood I'm talking about hand playing it quickly put a wax finish on it show you what it looks like show you if I can a piece that I've had for a while so you'll see what it ages or how it ages that's a pretty critical part because everything oxidizes and you need to know what that piece of wood is going to look like in some cases as little as a week from the time you've put a finish on this is a piece of black cherry this comes in at number 10. it's a nice furniture wood furniture grade wood it has that pinkish hue which is really quite pretty it's a warm wood and by that I mean it's just it's inviting to your touch um medium hard not as hard as I don't know what the actual specific gravity is but I'd say it was somewhere around Walnut not quite as hard as maple now I'll just put a little bit of wax on this corner just to show you what it looks like the sapwood which is the part of the tree that grows close just under the bark a part that is still alive it is a creamy white not and not not what you most people would want they try to stay away from that part so the Heartwood is the fleshy color very pronounced grain easy to see so that's what it looks like the the biggest chain the biggest feature of cherry is how rapidly it changes color so rapidly that if you had two pieces I remember one time doing a uh some cabinet doors I had several of them and I taken them outside to let them cure a little bit faster and after they were dried I had stacked them in front of each other so there was a tall one and then a shorter one and it wasn't there more than an hour or two and in the sunshine when I took the took the shorter one away you could see a line across the top that was a result of oxidation so you got to be careful that way so this is fresh cherry here's a jewelry box I made my daughter Erica and the date on the bottom is 1988. this just has an oil finish on it so that's the color that it is achieved after 35 years now a little bit of a warning if your cherry is in strong sunlight I have cherry Furniture that's exposed to the sun side of the room and it's almost to the color of it would be the color of this bench top Maple completely bleached out yet on the other side of it it looks kind of like that there's the inside where it's kind of maintained the color a little bit more just because the lids closed and there's no UV light getting in there but ages quite well just be careful you can't put it in strong sunlight planes well um I can't really think I suppose the only negative side is that it burns quite easily with power tools if you go too slow with your router bit or just ripping a board if there's at least a little bit of tension and it closes up it'll burn and the burn can be rather deep when you're trying to get rid of it but for a nice furniture grade wood it's lovely Choice my number 10. my next wood is Holly I wasn't going to mention price but this one's a this one is expensive it grows in the eastern United States and you may be asking what would be so why would I like such a plain wood well I guess the beauty is in the plainness it's just White it it comes off the hand plane in the most incredible ribbon I'll get us I'll uh get this straight now I'll pull the blade in and get a thin shaving for you it's just such a cool wood and why it's such a cool wood is when you use it for contrast so here's here's a little uh I did what was called a trout um standing desk and all the drawer sides were out of Holly well when you open up the drawer you're not going to find a wood that's going to make that dovetail standard any more than something like this so it's a really nice accent wood doesn't come in huge pieces and like I said it's rather expensive but as an accent would here's a box I made out of English Walnut and then what I did is I made some saw cuts with the dovetail saw and then I slipped in Holly and glued it in place as an accent would so when you can use it on areas like that and it's very fine textured too it's um so a very close grain just a really really nice wood I would love to be able to use it on all my drawer sides because it's just coming off the plane it is literally silky smooth incredible stuff don't really notice that there's any smell at all as far as hardness would you say maple about the same as maple um as far as stability goes I haven't worked it in big enough pieces to pass judgment on whether or not it's a particularly stable wood I have used it for some drawer sides that probably the biggest ones would be about three inches by oh I don't know 16 to 17 inches and about that same depth and I haven't had a problem but as I mentioned you can't get it it can't this doesn't seem to be a great supply of it and at the price that it is I don't think I'll be building an entire piece of furniture with it but for accents it's great this is cocobolo yeah cocobolo is uh considered an exotic the dust is really um I think it's glasses being toxic I know if I had to sand it I have to wear a mask for sure it's a oily wood it's really pretty as you can see you've got yellows purples various shades of Browns and blacks really interesting stuff again it's more of an accent wood just because of the cost but for small boxes I love using it I put a little bit of finish on there and show you what I mean makes a nice tool handle comes out of Central America it oxidizes as well so that means yeah as wild as it looks right now in a year's time you're not going to be able to see much of anything it's just going to be dark keep it out of direct sun and that'll prolong how long you get to look at stuff like that has a has a really unique smell almost a cinnamony smell very hard extremely hard definitely doesn't float so it's has a specific gravity greater than one um doesn't glue really well it as I said it has it's naturally oily so you uh you'll have a difficult time gluing two pieces together I use it for for box ends so number seven is you that's spelled y-e-w there's English U this is Pacific U which grows in the uh Oregon Washington Northern California area just looking for my wax and what I like about it is it is a really fine textured I love the color you can see where it's been oxidized now that creamy white is the sapwood it planes nicely hey if you like this video we have more our monthly newsletter has subscriber only content discounts monthly on tools and anything we bring out that's new subscribers get first crack at it click on the link below let's get back to work you see that nice orangey color of the Heartwood really like this stuff it feels really good too particularly for Tool handles and that's what I'm going to show you is a chisel handle that I made probably a year and a half ago now some may say it looks like Douglas fir but it's extremely fine really fine it's heavy it's dense it feels wonderful but most Woods do coming off a hand plane but the close pores one feel particularly nice so here's here's what it looks like after oxidizing and it just gets this nice deep patina that I think is really handsome beautiful wood now this is Brazilian tulip wood and this was one of the first exotic Woods that I was introduced to back in the 80s when I first was taught by Dale Nash and what I loved about it to this day I love about it it is the most fragrant it literally smells like flowers two looks I guess but you see the Deep pinks and cream color it's it's uh unfortunately really expensive delicious I shouldn't be playing a lot of this away it's gonna cost me look at those colors Wild we'll put some wax on that this is uh this is another really dense tropical hardwood exotic the colors don't stay that brilliant in fact I there's a box that super Dave made well it's actually that's held up quite well but this was only what six months ago four four months ago it really hasn't had any UV light at all in here by the way there's a there's a cocobola one that 1998. so you can see how that has darkened down you lose a lot of those vibrant colors put some wax on this it's really nice when you get an area like this and you can use that cream as an accent would or an accent I typically use this for box Lids box ends again it's not it's a not really oily but it doesn't glue as well as some of our domestic Hardwoods like Maple or walnut or cherry but as long as you have lots of contact surface like I said on that box bottom or the Box base you'll be all right comes out of it comes out of Brazil lovely smell and just really pretty this is shedua s-h-e-d-u-a first introduced to this back in oh the mid 80s this is figured schedule it's quartered quarter sun and this has got some really interesting colors um now again it's an accent wood I wouldn't build a piece of furniture out of it because of the price but um boxes tool handles just a really really interesting wood aren't they all but I love the I love the colors in it just the feel of it can't say a whole lot different about this one other than I think it's just unique in how it looks I don't have anything that I've had around any amount of time to show you what it looks like when it oxidizes but I don't remember it changing a whole lot pretty this is Vera wood now the most important reason I like this because this is Super Dave's favorite wood but this is also known as Argentine lignin it uh it's a cousin to uh lignan vide which is used or was used for stern tube bearings because of its naturally oily properties and how well it would wear when you first cut it if I was over to the bandsaw and I cut into it it's almost yellow and it rapidly oxidizes I've gone I've cut on the bandsaw there'll be a little little pyramid of green dust and you a yellow dust and you come back in a couple hours and it would be a little pile of green dust oxidizes to this this emerald green I mean how can you not like that such a pretty wood of course it oxidizes like everything else but keep it out of direct sunlight and you should get Fair bit of time with these colors really hard really dense definitely does not float we want to make a life preserver out of it but rich vibrant wow I tell people I feel wealthy when I work Walnut it has that it has that uh air about it so I picked out three this is a piece of black walnut but this is some crotch figures so when a tree grows and the main and neither a heavy Branch or the main limb splits and goes off in two directions the grain kind of can't decide which way it's going to go so that's where that came from this is English Walnut wow it survives for one of my favorites of the walnuts it's such a rich and completely different but uh you plane it and it comes off almost like a rubbery skin really really interesting I'm going to throw some wax on this piece of claro Walnut so story behind Clara Walnut is it was found in Walnut Orchards because what they would do to get maximum yield is they would graft Clara Walnut with English Walnut one of them had a better fruit the other had a better root system I can never remember which tell the stories many times they do you think I'd get it straight but I don't and as a result as they started cutting down Walnut Orchards Dale used to get lots of these stumps and they'd be full of figure now somewhere around here I have a piece I wish I had it to show you it's the actual graft line that shows where the two trees grow together I'll see if I can find it before we shoot number this is number nine and number eight I think this is number eight and look at the color and the figure in that and tell me how could you not love that wood but all three of them completely different but wow what an incredible wood my number one would for a longest time was Maple this is bird's eye and it's really weird or what's weird about this is if you look at it this way it looks rather Plain Jane but if you turn around and look at it this way the bird's eyes really pop out at you now I plan this piece but these black spots are called mineral deposits and you run your plane over them and it takes the edge off right away so I've got a smaller piece right here and I'll just plain this up and then put a bit of wax on it and show you what it looks like no harder to plane than uh regular maple you just have to have a light pass and a sharp blade obviously to avoid tearing out now as you plane you see those holes that means you still got some tears in the surface so you just keep planing until your shaving comes out intact no holes and then you've essentially gotten rid of any of the tears I'll take it down a little bit deeper now one of the nice things about this is such a tough wood it uh it really stands up to abuse it's what is it on the Janka scale one four five fourteen fifty so it's it would be one of our harder when I say our North America's harder Woods doesn't come close to something like desert Ironwood but of the ones that are commercially available Maple or sugar maple Rock Maple there's a lot of different names bird's eye doesn't describe a species it just describes this these little pecks or eyes the best example the best reasoning I ever heard was it's just a dormant bud so a limb that started and stopped for whatever reason but it creates a really interesting look in the wood where's my uh which ways to look best this way or the other way this way really nice texture comes off the hand plane beautifully people always ask can you plain bird's eye of course you can and when you do it just you get just such a silky finish so you'll also find that the eyes change are you can find different size eyes these are relatively relatively big eyes and sometimes they're little tiny ones decide what you want if on a box I'd want smaller eyes not big ones big piece of furniture probably want bigger ones and staying in that Maple family there's also what we would call you can't really call this fiddleback I would just call this figured which weighs best to look at it that way or this way like that and that's just got Swirls and grain that's it's rippled grain like that so the light reflects differently and that's why you get that that fiddleback appearance right here but it's almost I wouldn't call it quilted but just the term figured would fit and you can get it in uh there's lots of different figures but I like the Eastern Maple best because it is nice and hard it's very durable tends to be a really stable wood and rather plentiful so you may not have guessed but my what has become my favorite wood to work is Northern white pine and the reason why it is such a beautiful wood it is so warm to the touch but more importantly after woodworking for the last oh Ford oh my goodness it's been a long time 50 plus years started when I was a kid it's it doesn't there's no wood that ages any better and you'll notice that there's all kinds of dings in this if you have a piece of furniture around your house for more than 10 years you are going to have dings in it Pine for some reason it just looks the part when it's got dings in it and it's been lived whereas a piece of hardwood Furniture it looks terrible when it gets marked up the patina that it develops this is a replica of a 17th century French Canadian traveler's chest so that's why the nails were just cinched on the inside because they didn't have screws there's an oil finish I think the linseed oil finish and that's the look and it just keeps getting richer and deeper it develops that honey patina it machines beautifully people think oh it's easy well it actually isn't you've got to be extremely careful with it because if you not careful you'll mark it up very easily I start my students off cutting dovetails in Pine because it requires a level of finesse that you don't always pick up working a hardwood it's easy to get relatively easy to get in in wide widths it's uh it's not cheap especially if you're buying the clear variety it's soft you can easily mark it with your thumbnail it doesn't take much but as I mentioned it seems to look the part when it has those scars in it I love the smell of it I love sawing it I love chiseling it I love planing it it's just it's a really wonderful wood so those are my top ten subject to change but right now that's what I'm sticking with Northern White Pine also called Sugar Pine there's lots of different Pines but this is the one that I I think is the nicest of the bunch well try some of them see you if you like my work and enjoy my style of teaching click on any one of these videos and help take your woodworking to the next level I've always said better tools make the job so much easier if you click on the link below the Chisel and plane icon it'll take you to our site and introduce you to all the tools that we actually manufacture right here in our shop it'll also give you information on our online and in-person workshops

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 242,917

Keywords: best type of wood, exotic wood species, handtool woodworking, top 10 wood, top 10 wood in the world, wood, wood id, wood identification, wood identification guide, wood species, wood species for woodworking, wood species identification, woodwork, woodworker, woodworking

Id: OS-px2VzU78

Length: 24min 13sec (1453 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 10 2023