040 Basswood: The Eastern Hardwood Made for Carving

Know Your Woods: The Softer Eastern Hardwoods

Sometimes the best way to learn a wood is to meet it at the sawmill.

When I normally identify wood, I have a lot of clues. I may see the standing tree, its bark, its leaves, where it is growing, the freshly cut log, and finally the lumber that comes off the saw. At a sawmill, however, those clues are not always available. Sometimes what I see is simply a stack of rough lumber—and identifying the species from the wood alone can be surprisingly challenging.

Basswood is one of the woods I have been learning to recognize this way. It is light, relatively soft, usually rather plain-grained, and freshly sawn boards can look different after they have been exposed to the air for a while. I have noticed at the mill that fresh basswood begins changing fairly quickly, developing more of a yellowish-brown or tan appearance after sitting for a day or two. Observations like that become useful clues when you handle different species every day.

So let's get to know basswood—not just as a tree, but as lumber.

American Basswood

American basswood (Tilia americana), also commonly called American linden, is native across a large portion of eastern and central North America. Its natural range extends from parts of eastern Canada through the Great Lakes and northeastern United States and south into portions of the Appalachian and central states.

It is a genuine eastern hardwood, but the word hardwood can be misleading. Hardwood is a botanical classification, not a measurement of hardness. Basswood comes from a broadleaf flowering tree, so it is a hardwood—even though its wood is remarkably soft and light.

A Soft Hardwood

Basswood is a good reminder that hardwoods do not necessarily produce hard wood.

Its Janka hardness is only about 410 pounds-force, and its average dried weight is roughly 26 pounds per cubic foot. Compare a piece of basswood with hard maple, oak, or hickory and the difference is immediately apparent.

That softness is not a weakness when the wood is used for the right purpose. In fact, it is one of basswood's greatest advantages.

Identifying Basswood Lumber

Once a tree has been converted into rough lumber, we lose many of our easiest identification clues. With basswood, I look for a combination of characteristics rather than depending on any single one.

• Color: Usually creamy white to pale tan or light brown, although heartwood can become somewhat darker or reddish-brown.
• Weight: Noticeably light compared with many eastern hardwoods.
• Hardness: Relatively easy to dent or mark with a fingernail or tool.
• Grain: Usually straight and subdued rather than strongly figured.
• Texture: Fine and remarkably even.
• Growth rings: Often difficult to distinguish compared with woods such as oak, ash, or yellow pine.
• Pores: Small and distributed fairly evenly through the growth ring.

That last characteristic is important. Basswood is a diffuse-porous hardwood. It does not have the large, obvious bands of earlywood pores that make ring-porous woods such as oak and ash relatively easy to recognize.

When identifying rough lumber, weight, color, grain, pores, end grain, hardness, smell, and even how the board reacts to a knife can all become pieces of the puzzle.

Freshly Sawn Wood Can Change

One thing I have noticed at the sawmill is that basswood doesn't necessarily look exactly the same a day or two after it is sawn. Exposure to oxygen, light, moisture changes, and the drying of freshly exposed wood can alter its appearance.

That makes time another identification clue.

A board may come off the mill looking very pale and fresh, but after sitting it can develop warmer cream, tan, yellowish, or brownish tones. I have started mentally recording these changes because they can be surprisingly useful when I return to a pile of lumber later.

This is also an important lesson in wood identification: don't memorize only what a finished board from a lumber supplier looks like. Learn what the wood looks like fresh from the saw.

Why Carvers Love Basswood

If basswood is famous for one woodworking use, it is carving.

Its combination of softness, fine texture, relatively straight grain, and lack of prominent pores allows a sharp carving tool to move through it cleanly. Details can be carved without constantly fighting dramatic differences between hard and soft portions of the growth rings.

For relief carving, figures, decorative work, whittling, and detailed hand carving, that predictability is extremely valuable.

It is interesting that a wood without dramatic grain can become extraordinary when the beauty comes from the shape created by the craftsperson rather than from the figure of the wood itself.

More Than a Carving Wood

Basswood has been used for far more than carving. Historically and commercially it has been used for:

• carvings and turned objects,
• furniture components,
• patterns and models,
• mouldings and millwork,
• veneer,
• boxes and containers,
• toys,
• musical instruments and instrument components,
• Venetian blind slats and shutters,
• drawing and drafting boards,
• woodenware,
• and pulp and fiber products.

Its dimensional stability after drying, ability to glue well, light weight, and ease of machining all contributed to these uses.

What About Finishing and Oil?

Basswood can be finished beautifully, but it behaves differently from a strongly figured hardwood such as walnut, cherry, or oak.

An oil finish will generally warm and deepen the naturally pale color. However, because basswood has such subtle grain, oil usually doesn't produce the dramatic grain enhancement we associate with figured walnut or curly maple.

That is not necessarily a disadvantage. Sometimes the goal is to preserve a quiet, uniform surface.

Basswood also takes paint particularly well, which historically made it useful when the wood itself was not intended to be the visual feature. Staining can be done, but as with many soft, absorbent woods, test pieces are worthwhile because absorption and resulting color may not always be perfectly uniform.

Drying Basswood

Basswood generally dries relatively readily and, once properly dried, has good dimensional stability. It does experience considerable shrinkage during the drying process, however, so good stacking, airflow, stickers, and drying practices still matter.

Another consideration is decay resistance. Basswood is not naturally durable when exposed to moisture and weather. This is primarily an indoor wood unless it is appropriately protected.

The Tree in the Forest

American basswood can become a substantial tree. Mature specimens can reach roughly 75 to well over 100 feet tall under favorable conditions.

It particularly likes rich, moist, well-drained soils and is often associated with northern hardwood forests containing species such as sugar maple, red maple, beech, ash, oak, hemlock, and yellow birch.

Another interesting characteristic is its ability to sprout vigorously from a stump. A basswood that has been cut may send up numerous shoots, sometimes eventually creating groups of stems.

Leaves, Flowers, and the "Bee Tree"

If you have the standing tree available, identification becomes much easier.

Basswood has large, broadly heart-shaped leaves with toothed margins. One of its most distinctive features appears when it flowers. Clusters of small, fragrant, yellowish-white flowers hang beneath a narrow, leaflike bract.

And those flowers can be alive with insects.

Basswood is an important nectar-producing tree. Bees are major visitors to the flowers, and basswood has long been associated with honey production. The connection is strong enough that bee-tree and honey-tree have been used as common names for basswood.

Basswood honey is prized for its distinctive flavor and fragrance.

So this isn't simply a timber tree. A living basswood can be an important food source for pollinators before it ever becomes lumber.

The "Bass" in Basswood

The name has nothing to do with the fish.

The inner bark of basswood contains long, strong fibers historically called bast. Indigenous peoples and later settlers used these fibers for cordage, rope, mats, baskets, nets, and other woven materials.

The term bastwood is believed to have gradually evolved into the name basswood.

This gives basswood an interesting history: people valued not only the lumber but also the living tree's bark fibers.

Learning Wood From the Sawmill

Working around a sawmill is giving me another education in wood.

When I see a tree growing in the woods, I can use the leaves, bark, branching pattern, location, and overall form to help identify it. At the sawmill, sometimes almost all of those clues disappear.

Now the questions become different.

How heavy is the board?

How hard is it?

Are the pores large or small?

Are the growth rings obvious?

What color is it immediately after sawing?

Does that color change tomorrow?

What does the end grain look like?

How does a knife or chisel move through it?

Those observations gradually turn an anonymous rough board back into a recognizable tree.

A Different Kind of Hardwood

I tend to mentally group basswood with woods such as aspen, poplar, and several other relatively light and soft eastern hardwoods. That isn't an official botanical category, but from a woodworker's perspective it can be useful.

These species remind us that the hardwood forest contains an enormous range of materials. Some hardwoods are dense, heavy, and extremely resistant to cutting. Others are light, soft, easily worked, and suited to completely different purposes.

Basswood may not have the dramatic grain of walnut, the strength of hickory, or the hardness of sugar maple.

But hand a good piece of basswood and a sharp gouge to a skilled carver, and suddenly its softness becomes exactly what makes the wood special.

That is one of the things I enjoy most about learning different woods.

There really isn't a "best" wood. There is the wood whose natural characteristics best fit what we are trying to create.