050 Building With Wood: Choosing the Right Species for the Job

What is the best wood?

That sounds like a simple question, but there really isn't one answer.

White oak may be an excellent choice for a floor but unnecessary for a wall. Cedar can be wonderful outdoors but expensive where decay resistance isn't needed. Eastern white pine is easy to work and beautiful, but it probably isn't the first wood we would choose for a heavily used workshop floor.

The better question is:

What is the best wood for this particular job?

Once we start thinking that way, choosing wood becomes a balance of strength, hardness, stability, decay resistance, appearance, workability, availability, and cost.

Welcome to Building With Wood: Choosing the Right Species for the Job.

Start With the Job, Not the Species

Woodworkers naturally develop favorite woods.

We may love the color of walnut, the grain of oak, the workability of white pine, or the strength of Douglas-fir.

But a favorite wood isn't necessarily the correct wood for every project.

Before choosing a species, ask what the wood actually needs to do.

• Does it need to support a heavy load?
• Will people walk on it?
• Will it be exposed to rain?
• Does it need to resist dents and abrasion?
• Will it be painted?
• Will the grain remain visible?
• Does it need to remain dimensionally stable?
• Will it be carved or shaped?
• Do we need long, wide, clear boards?
• Is weight important?
• Is cost important?
• Can we actually obtain the species locally?

Those questions quickly narrow the choices.

A Woodshop Built With Two Different Woods

My own woodshop provides a simple example.

The walls and ceiling are covered with tongue-and-groove eastern hemlock.

The floor is tongue-and-groove yellow pine.

Why use two different species?

Because the two surfaces have completely different jobs.

Why Hemlock for the Walls and Ceiling?

When I built the shop, hemlock made sense for several reasons.

It was available and reasonably priced. Those are important considerations when covering the large surface area of walls and a ceiling.

But I didn't want an inexpensive material simply for the sake of being inexpensive.

I wanted wood.

Hemlock provided the full grain and natural appearance I wanted while keeping the cost reasonable.

A shop wall doesn't need the hardness of a flooring species. It doesn't experience thousands of footsteps or have heavy equipment moved across it. Using a harder and more expensive wood would provide little practical advantage.

Hemlock did the job I needed it to do.

Why Yellow Pine for the Floor?

The floor had an entirely different set of requirements.

A workshop floor gets abused.

People walk across it. Tools are dropped. Equipment is moved. Sawdust and chips are ground underneath shoes. Heavy machines may sit in the same location for decades.

For the floor, hardness mattered.

Yellow pine provided a much harder and more wear-resistant surface than the hemlock used on the walls and ceiling.

The result is a building where two woods work together, each selected according to the job it needed to perform.

Price Matters

Sometimes discussions about woodworking treat price as though it shouldn't influence material selection.

In real construction, it almost always does.

If two woods will perform the required job adequately and one is considerably less expensive, choosing the less expensive species can be excellent craftsmanship rather than a compromise.

The money saved can then be used where a more expensive material actually provides an advantage.

That is exactly what happened in the woodshop.

There was little reason to purchase a harder or more expensive species for thousands of square feet of wall and ceiling when hemlock provided the appearance and performance needed.

Availability Matters Too

There is another factor that modern woodworkers sometimes overlook:

What wood can you actually get?

Availability has influenced building materials for centuries.

Before national distribution networks and modern trucking, local forests and nearby sawmills had an enormous influence on construction.

A builder surrounded by white pine used white pine.

A builder with access to hemlock used hemlock.

In regions where cedar was plentiful, cedar became a logical exterior material.

The theoretical best species isn't particularly useful if it costs several times as much and must travel hundreds or thousands of miles to reach the project.

Local Knowledge Matters

Choosing wood isn't always something we learn from a chart.

Local sawmill operators, lumber suppliers, builders, carpenters, and woodworkers often develop an enormous amount of practical knowledge about the species available in their area.

When I was building, I was fortunate to have experienced people I could turn to for advice when needed.

That kind of knowledge can be invaluable.

Building something yourself doesn't mean you need to know everything yourself.

Knowing when to ask someone with more experience is part of good craftsmanship.

Choosing Wood for Floors

Flooring needs to resist wear, dents, and repeated traffic.

Hardness therefore becomes much more important than it would be for a ceiling or wall.

Traditional flooring woods include oak, maple, ash, and yellow pine.

But hardness isn't the only consideration.

A very hard wood that moves excessively with humidity or is prohibitively expensive may not be the best choice.

Flooring is another balancing act between durability, stability, appearance, availability, and cost.

Choosing Wood for Walls and Ceilings

Interior walls and ceilings have much easier lives.

They generally don't need exceptional hardness or strength.

Appearance, stability, workability, weight, price, and availability may become more important.

Pine, cedar, spruce, fir, and hemlock can all make attractive interior surfaces depending upon the desired appearance and local availability.

For a large area, even a relatively small difference in lumber price can become significant.

Choosing Wood for Framing

Structural framing introduces another requirement: strength.

Framing lumber must safely carry loads.

Spruce, pine, fir, hemlock, and Douglas-fir have all been used structurally, but their strength properties differ.

Modern structural lumber is also graded because two boards from the same species can have very different strength depending upon knots, grain direction, growth characteristics, and defects.

For structural work, species is only part of the story.

Choosing Wood for Exterior Siding

Siding must survive repeated wetting and drying, temperature changes, sunlight, wind, and physical exposure.

Dimensional stability and the ability to hold paint or another finish become important.

Eastern white pine, cedar, redwood, cypress, fir, spruce, and other species have all been used for siding depending upon region and period.

Good installation is just as important as species selection.

A moderately durable wood that can dry quickly may last much longer than a naturally durable species installed in a way that continually traps moisture.

Choosing Wood for Outdoor Projects

Outdoor wood presents one of the greatest challenges.

Rain isn't necessarily the worst enemy.

Wood that stays wet is the real problem.

Species with good natural decay resistance, such as cedar, white oak in appropriate applications, black locust, cypress, and redwood, can be excellent choices.

But design still matters.

A good outdoor project sheds water, avoids unnecessary end-grain exposure, allows air circulation, and prevents water from collecting in joints.

Choosing Wood for Trim and Millwork

Trim requires another combination of properties.

The wood should machine cleanly, hold detail, remain reasonably stable, and provide the desired finished appearance.

Eastern white pine has historically been excellent for many types of trim and millwork because it is lightweight, stable, easy to shape, and available in clear stock.

Poplar is another excellent choice when the finished work will be painted.

If the wood will remain visible, grain and color become much more important.

Choosing Wood for Furniture

Furniture opens an entirely different world of choices.

Here, beauty may become just as important as mechanical properties.

Walnut brings rich color.

Cherry develops wonderful character as it ages.

Maple can provide hardness and subtle grain.

Oak offers strength and dramatic grain.

But even within one piece of furniture, different woods may be appropriate for different components.

Historically, furniture makers frequently reserved expensive decorative wood for visible surfaces while using less expensive secondary woods for drawer sides, backs, internal framing, and other hidden components.

That wasn't poor craftsmanship.

It was intelligent use of material.

Choosing Wood for Carving

A carving wood needs another set of characteristics.

Basswood is a classic example.

It is relatively soft, fine textured, and easy to cut cleanly across changing grain directions.

Those characteristics would make basswood a poor choice for a heavily traveled floor but an excellent choice for detailed carving.

Again, there is no universally good or bad wood.

There is simply wood that is more or less appropriate for a particular job.

Hardness Isn't Everything

It is tempting to assume that harder wood is always better.

It isn't.

Hard wood can be heavier, more expensive, more difficult to machine, harder to nail, and unnecessary for many applications.

A ceiling doesn't need to resist footsteps.

A decorative molding doesn't need to support a roof.

A wall panel doesn't need the decay resistance of an outdoor fence post.

Using more wood than the job requires isn't automatically better craftsmanship.

Strength Isn't Everything Either

The strongest available wood isn't always the best choice.

A strong species may move considerably with changing humidity. Another may split easily. Another may be difficult to obtain in suitable dimensions.

Good material selection means considering the entire combination of properties rather than chasing one impressive number.

Don't Forget Weight

Weight can become important surprisingly quickly.

A lightweight wood can be easier to lift overhead, easier to install, and place less load on a structure.

For walls, ceilings, doors, boats, furniture, and many other projects, lighter material may provide a real advantage.

Once again, the job determines whether that advantage matters.

What About Stability?

Wood expands and contracts as its moisture content changes.

Some species move more than others, and movement also differs depending upon grain orientation.

A beautiful board that changes dimensions dramatically with seasonal humidity may create problems in certain applications.

This is why experienced woodworkers think not only about how a board looks today but about how it will behave years from now.

Sometimes the Best Wood Is the Wood You Already Have

Woodworkers tend to accumulate wood.

Sometimes we bought it for another project. Sometimes it came from a tree we salvaged. Sometimes it was too interesting to throw away.

Before purchasing new material, it is worth looking at what is already available.

A board that isn't perfect for one project may be ideal for another.

Understanding different species makes that lumber pile much more useful.

Restoration Changes the Question

Historic restoration introduces another consideration.

The question may no longer be simply, "What wood would work best?"

Instead we may need to ask:

What wood did the original builder use, and why?

Matching the original species can preserve appearance, machining characteristics, movement, and historical integrity.

Sometimes the original choice may seem unusual by modern standards, but understanding the forests, sawmills, transportation, economics, and building practices of the period can explain it.

Three Properties, Three Different Siding Choices

Our own buildings provide a good example of how wood choices change with circumstances.

Zehr Escape has white pine tongue-and-groove siding.

Zehr Retreat has yellow pine Dutch lap siding.

Zehr Estate has historic beveled clapboard siding made from a wood species we are still working to identify.

Three buildings. Three different situations. Three different woodworking stories.

There is no reason to expect that the same wood would necessarily be the best answer for all three.

Think Like the Builder

When examining an old building, it can be useful to stop thinking like someone standing in a modern lumber store.

Instead, imagine being the original builder.

What trees were growing nearby?

What could the local sawmill produce?

What could be transported economically?

What dimensions were available?

Which surfaces needed strength?

Which needed hardness?

Which needed beauty?

Which simply needed a large quantity of dependable lumber at a reasonable price?

Those questions may tell us more about an old building than asking which species we would choose today.

The Best Wood Is the Right Wood

The more species we explore in the Know Your Woods series, the clearer one lesson becomes.

Every wood has strengths and weaknesses.

Basswood can be wonderful for carving.

White pine can be wonderful for millwork and siding.

Yellow pine can provide strength and hardness.

Hemlock can provide economical, attractive lumber for large surfaces and construction.

Cedar can provide natural decay resistance.

Douglas-fir can provide impressive structural strength.

Walnut and cherry can provide extraordinary beauty.

None of them is the best wood for everything.

Good woodworking isn't about finding the best wood. It is about understanding wood well enough to choose the right species for the job.