Choose Your Material
White Oak
Walnut
Sapele
Ash
Red Oak
Cherry
Hard Maple
Hickory
White Oak
A rugged but clean and classic wood with a tan/blonde color and a humble grain texture that’s right at home in projects with unique designs. White oak is tough and especially good for exterior projects. Strong, beautiful, rot-resistant, easy to work, and economical: white oak represents an exceptional value to woodworkers. It’s no wonder that the wood is so widely used in cabinet and furniture making.
Sapele (Mahogany)
Red Oak
The pride of the American heartland, red oak evokes a sense of rugged Americana for woodworkers – bold grain, good workability, and timeless appeal. Arguably the most popular hardwood in the United States, red oak is a ubiquitous sight in many homes. Even many vinyl/imitation wood surfaces are printed to look like red oak. Handsome, strong, and moderately priced, Red Oak presents an exceptional value to woodworkers—which explains why it is so widely used in cabinet and furniture making.
Hard Maple
Nothing else compares to hard maple’s alluring combo of clean white color, smooth grain, and incredible strength. Its wood is stronger, stiffer, harder, and denser than all of the other species of maple commercially available in lumber form. In tree form, hard maple is usually referred to as sugar maple, and is the tree most often tapped for maple syrup.
Walnut
One of the most enjoyed American hardwoods for its fine-yet-open grain, unique patterns, and bold dark color. Walnut is easy to cut, shape and sand, and the wood takes on an amazing look with a clear finish. It would be hard to overstate black walnut’s popularity among woodworkers in the United States. Its good working characteristics, coupled with its rich brown coloration puts the wood in a class by itself among temperate-zone hardwoods. To cap it off, the wood also has good dimensional stability, shock resistance, and strength properties.
Ash
White Ash has excellent shock resistance, and along with hickory, it is one of the most commonly used hardwoods for tool handles in North America—particularly in shovels and hammers where toughness and impact resistance is important. When stained, ash can look very similar to oak although oaks have much wider rays, which are visible on all wood surfaces—even on flatsawn surfaces, where they appear as short, thin brown lines between the growth rings. Ashes lack these conspicuous rays.
Cherry
Cherry tends to get better looking with age. Freshly cut or sanded cherry has a light tan color but it soon transitions to a more stately and classic russet color. Black cherry develops a rich reddish-brown patina as it ages that’s frequently imitated with wood stains on other hardwoods such as yellow poplar. This aging process can be accelerated by exposing the wood (in a judicious manner) to direct sunlight.
Heartwood is a light pinkish brown when freshly cut, darkening to a medium reddish brown with time and upon exposure to light. Wide sapwood is a pale yellowish color. It is not uncommon for boards to contain at least some sapwood portions along the outer edges.
Hickory
Extremely tough and resilient with the rustic charm of colory variety and open grain. Don’t be fooled, hickory can be difficult to manipulate by hand, but it looks wonderful when finished. Hickory is among the hardest and strongest of woods native to the United States. On average, Hickory is denser, stiffer, and harder than either White Oak or Hard Maple. The wood is commonly used where strength or shock-resistance is important. Heartwood tends to be light to medium brown, with a reddish hue; sapwood is a paler yellowish brown. Boards with contrasting heartwood and sapwood create a somewhat rustic appearance that’s sometimes marketed as Calico Hickory.
