Oak Is Soft Or Hardwood

All of the soft maple varieties are softer than oak.

Oak is soft or hardwood. It is also good for moldings and trim and can be used in cabinetry. Contact us for our complete inventory and pricing. Oak is usually a deciduous loses its leaves in winter angiosperm flowering plant with fruit and its usually deciduous nature is what makes it classified as hardwood. The oak s flowers are wind pollinated and its fruit is the acorn.

Western sheoak along with most species contained in the casuarinaceae family feature aggregate rays that can be extremely wide perhaps the widest of any hardwood family in the world. White oak quercus alba bur oak quercus macrocarpa post oak quercus stellata swamp white. Soft maple is typically reserved for carvings knobs handles veneers and solid guitar bodies. These are just select featured inventory items.

The guide to american hardwood species. Additionally having exclusively solitary pores rather than a mixture of solitary and radial multiples further serves to differentiate sheoaks from other hardwood species. Soft maple boxelder acer negundo red maple acer rubrum silver maple acer. National hardwood and lumber association.

This guide features 20 of the most abundant and most often used hardwood species. Oak because it can chip or splinter is less desirable for molding trim or carvings but many still use oak this way. The hardest commercially available hardwood is hickory and it is five times harder than aspen one of the soft hardwoods. And while this example lists just some of the most popular hardwood species there are hundreds of varieties representing the north american hardwood population.

Hardwood from deciduous species such as oak normally shows annual growth rings but these may be absent in some tropical hardwoods. As a resource american hardwoods are abundant renewing and sustainable and an excellent choice for eco effective design and building. Meranti shorea spp merbau ipil intsia bijuga mopane colophospermum mopane oak quercus white oak. This happens to be generally true but there are exceptions such as in the cases of wood from yew trees a softwood that is relatively hard and wood from balsa trees a.

Other soft hardwoods.