By Donald — Plain-spoken woodworking notes for the small home shop

Plain-spoken woodworking notes for the small home shop

Wood Species Comparison Table

Eight of the most common project woods sold in the United States, compared side by side: relative hardness, how they behave under tools, where they sit on the cost ladder, and what they're usually used for. Ratings are qualitative on purpose — individual boards vary by grade, cut, and region, and a chart full of precise-looking numbers would overstate what anyone can promise about the board in your hand. For the underlying engineering data on any species, the definitive free reference is the USDA Forest Products Laboratory's Wood Handbook.

These are general characterizations of typical retail stock, not measurements of any particular board. Cost tiers are relative rankings, not prices — actual prices vary widely by region, grade, and year.

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Species ▲	Type	Relative Hardness	Workability	Cost Tier	Typical Uses
Ash	Hardwood	Hard	Good; oak-like grain, bends well	Medium	Tool handles, chairs, bent laminations, sports equipment
Black walnut	Hardwood	Medium-hard	Good; forgiving under hand tools, dark dust stains light wood	High	Heirloom furniture, accent pieces, gunstocks, turnings
Cherry	Hardwood	Medium-hard	Good; machines and hand-tools cleanly, can scorch	Medium-high	Fine furniture, cabinets, pieces meant to darken with age
Eastern white pine	Softwood	Soft	Very easy; dents easily, mills cleanly	Low	Practice projects, painted furniture, shelving, shop fixtures
Hard maple	Hardwood	Very hard	Demanding; dulls edges, prone to burning on saws and routers	Medium	Cutting boards, workbench tops, butcher block, flooring
Poplar (yellow-poplar)	Hardwood	Soft-to-medium	Easy; takes paint well, greenish streaks show under clear finish	Low	Painted furniture, drawer boxes, trim, prototypes
Red oak	Hardwood	Hard	Moderate; coarse open grain, machines predictably	Medium	Tables, cabinets, trim, traditional furniture
White oak	Hardwood	Hard	Moderate; denser than red oak, closed pores	Medium-high	Outdoor-tolerant furniture, mission-style pieces, flooring

By Donald is a small reference site for people getting into woodworking in a garage, basement, or one-car-bay shop. It is not a project blog and it is not trying to sell you a router. It exists to answer the unglamorous questions that stall beginners at the lumberyard and the hardware store: why a 2x4 isn't two inches by four, whether poplar or pine is the better choice for a painted bookshelf, which glue actually matters for which joint, and what a shop vacuum can and cannot do about fine dust.

The centerpiece is the Wood Species Comparison Table, a side-by-side look at eight of the most common project woods sold in the United States — how hard they are, how they behave under hand and power tools, roughly where they sit on the cost ladder, and what they're typically used for. It's the chart most of us wish was stapled to the rack at the lumber dealer.

Around the tool are short guides, each answering one concrete question: why boards warp, what the FSC label means, how oil and film finishes differ, and which power tools are worth buying first. Where a claim needs backing, the pages cite durable public references — chiefly the USDA Forest Products Laboratory's Wood Handbook — rather than opinion. Read a page, buy the right board, and get back to the bench.