Timber - Joinery Timber - Working Properties & Uses
Joinery timber is used in finished product manufacture, rather than structural construction, with softwoods and hardwoods sourced from Scandinavia and Europe.
Slow growth trees such as Redwood Pine and Whitewood Spruce provide fine-grained dense wood, ideal for conversion to a wide range of quality furniture types and components. Both species are easy to work, glue and nail, although Spruce has harder knots.
PAR/PSE (planed all round or planed square edge) timber is produced from the main joinery softwood species, but also from many sustainable hardwood species.
PAR/PSE timber, also referred to as dressed timber, has been planed or machined on the edges to create a smooth surface with sides accurately at 90 degrees. A comprehensive range of sizes and widths is available, ranging from approximately 12mm to 100mm in thickness and from 38mm to 275mm in width.
Timber is generally graded, based on visual quality and form, into the three qualities of unsorted, fifths, and sixths based on the suitability for different end uses. In softwood, unsorted and fifths are qualities used where the visual aspect is important. Sixths are used for hidden and constructional work.
Common uses for hardwoods are :-
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Ash – interior joinery;
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Beech – interior joinery, furniture, flooring;
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Birch – furniture;
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Cherry – furniture, cabinet making;
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Lime – specialist wood turnings;
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Maple – flooring, sports goods, tables;
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Oak – furniture, flooring, joinery;
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Sycamore – interior joinery, flooring, turnings;
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Walnut – flooring, furniture, cabinets, clocks;
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Alder – interior joinery, flooring.
Listed below are some of the most common species of hardwood timber available with a short description of their working properties and main uses.
Ash - machines well, it is good for nailing, screwing and gluing, it stains and polishes well, and there is little movement in performance. It is good for steam bending. Its main uses are in furniture, flooring, doors, architectural interiors, high class joinery and moulding, kitchen cabinets, and panelling.
Beech - machines well, it is good for nailing/screwing, but it should be pre-bored, care should be taken when gluing. It wears well and holds stains and polishes well. It bends readily when steamed. It can be subject to large shrinkage and moderate movement in performance. Its main uses are in furniture, doors, flooring, panelling, internal joinery, and food storage/containers.
Cherry - machines well, it is good for nailing and gluing, it stains and polishes well after sanding, and it dries quickly with moderate shrinkage. It has good bending properties. Its main uses are in furniture & cabinet making, high class joinery, kitchen cabinets, mouldings, panelling, flooring, and doors.
Maple - machines well with care, it glues satisfactorily, it can be stained and polished to an excellent finish, it dries slowly with large shrinkage and it is susceptible to movement in performance. It has good steam bending properties. Its main uses are in flooring, furniture, panelling, kitchen cabinets, worktops and tabletops, interior joinery, stairs, handrails, mouldings, and doors.
Meranti - is easy to work with hand and machine tools, it has good nailing and gluing properties, it takes finishes well, it is moderately slow drying with a tendency to warp, there is little movement in performance. Its main uses are in veneer and plywood, joinery, flooring, furniture and cabinetwork, general construction, and boatbuilding.
European Oak - its machinability varies from well to with moderate difficulty, it is good for nailing and screwing, it glues well and it stains, waxes, and polishes well, it bends well when steamed, it is subject to a large shrinkage and moderate movement in performance. Its main uses are in construction, furniture, flooring, architectural joinery, exterior joinery, mouldings, doors, kitchen cabinets, and panelling.
American White Oak - machines well, it is good for nailing and screwing, gluing results are variable, it stains and polishes well, it can be susceptible to movement in performance. Its main uses are in construction, furniture, flooring, architectural joinery, exterior joinery, mouldings, doors, kitchen cabinets, and panelling.
Poplar (Tulipwood) - is versatile and easy to machine and turn, it is good for nailing, screwing and gluing, it takes paint, stains and enamels exceptionally well, it dries easily, and there is minimal movement in performance. Its main uses are in light construction, furniture, interior joinery, kitchen cabinets, doors, panelling, mouldings, edge-glued panels, and plywood.
Sapele - works fairly well with hand and machine tools, it saws easily, it finishes well, it has good gluing and nailing properties, and it is satisfactory for peeling and slicing for veneers. Its main uses are in furniture and cabinetwork, decorative veneers, plywood, joinery, flooring, and panelling.
Walnut - is easy to machine, it is good for nailing, screwing and gluing, it takes paint and stain very well and can be polished to an exceptional finish, and it has good stability. It has good steam bending properties. Its main uses are in light construction, furniture, cabinet making, architectural interiors, high class joinery, doors, flooring, and panelling.
Flooring
Floors are specifically designed to suit different rooms, working environments and public areas.There are various types of wood flooring such as solid wood flooring, engineered wood flooring, laminate flooring, and vinyl flooring.
Solid wood flooring is invariably hardwood that has been carefully cut and treated to create a pure natural floor. Each board is made from a single piece of wood, typically 18-20mm thick. An advantage of solid wood is that it can be refinished many times over its lifespan. Solid wood flooring presents beautifully and it is best laid in areas with a relatively constant atmosphere, particularly in hallways and living areas.
Common flooring hardwoods are Beech, Black Walnut, Cherry, Chestnut, Idigbo, Maple, Meranti, Merbau, White Ash, White Oak, Sapele, Teak, and Wenge. European Whitewood softwood (Pine) can also be used for flooring.
Engineered wood flooring is a man made product where multiple layers of wood are placed perpendicularly on top of each other and are then treated and finished to give the final look. It has a top layer veneer of real wood, usually 3-7mm thick, that can be sanded up to five times. It has the advantage over solid wood that it is much more stable and much less susceptible to changes in temperature and humidity than solid wood.
Engineered wood is a good choice for kitchens and basements, as well as for installation over under-floor heating systems and over concrete floors.
Laminate flooring is a synthetic, man made product that is made up of various layers that are fused together using a lamination process. It is a compressed fibreboard plank, covered by a photographic image of wood, stone or tile, with a protective overlay.
Vinyl floor tiles are composed of coloured PVC chips formed into sheets of varying thickness by heat and pressure. Vinyl flooring is frequently chosen for high-traffic areas because of its low cost, durability, and ease of maintenance.
Hardwood Flooring Examples
Timber Sizes - Nominal and Finished Sizes, Customary Sizes and Cuts
Although timber structures and non-structural applications can be designed using many sizes, the sawmills producing timber generally do not know the intended end-use for that material at the time it is cut.
They therefore produce a range of ‘customary’ sizes. Specifying timber in these is the most economic method both in terms of material usage and cost.
Timber is now sold in the nearest metric sizes to the old standard imperial sizes, and lengths are sold in sizes of 300mm increments that approximate to an imperial foot measure. Hardwoods are available in lengths and increments from 1.20m – 4.80m, and softwoods are available in lengths and increments from 1.20m – 7.30m. Hardwoods range from approximately 12mm to 100mm in thickness and from 38mm to 275mm in width, and softwoods range from approximately 16mm to 300mm in thickness and from 75mm to 300mm in width.
Nominal size is the actual size of timber that the board is machined from, and , as such, the Finished size of the product will have a smaller size than the nominal size.
This can be demonstrated by using a dimension of 50mm x 100mm as a ‘standard’ rough sawn piece of timber, it is ‘fully dimensioned’ as it has not been machined in any way, it is the nominal size. If that piece of timber was regularised i.e. planed on all sides with the corners rounded the finished size would be 45mm x 90mm.
If it was CLS grade, which is very similar to regularised in appearance, the finished size would be approximately 38mm x 87mm, and if it was PAR/PSE, planed all round or planed square edge, the finished size would approximate to 45mm x 90mm.
The finished size will usually only be a few millimetres different to the nominal size of the wood, however, if a project requires precise measurements then this could be important.
When specifying timber it is important to note that the dimensions of a piece of wood can vary depending upon its moisture content and how it has been treated.
The moisture content in European standards relating to sizes is 20%. The change in size with change in moisture content is calculated as follows :-
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there shall be a 0.25% increase in thickness and width for every 1% increase in moisture content over 20% up to 30% (above 30% no further increase in size occurs);
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and, conversely, there shall be a 0.25% decrease in thickness and width for every 1% decrease in moisture content below 20% e.g. a 200mm joist could shrink by 4mm if it dries from 20% to 12% in use.
The Range Of Customary Sizes Of UK Timber
Examples Of Customary Timber Cuts For Cladding, Flooring, Decking, & Mouldings
For further detailed information the TRADA Wood Species Database contains the physical properties of more that 150 species of timber, and this site's Guides page details the workability, durability, and price indicators of many timber species.
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