okay I want to give you a quick overview of different types of woods categories
they sit in to you and some of the properties of wood this is kind of a fun
project we do on a laser engraver help you kind of learn the different kinds of
woods I'll talk about more of that in a different video so basically there's
really kind of three different categories of woods
the first is hardwoods the second is soft woods and then manufactured woods a
lot of people designate hardwoods from deciduous trees and deciduous trees or
trees that lose their leaves in the wintertime soft woods are usually
evergreens but of course are exceptions to every rule this is one way of
designating the woods but there's a few different other ways of talking about
grain grain densities and stuff so I'm only going to go over just a few of the
woods let me go over the manufactured woods first first one we have is MDF
which is medium density fiberboard really efficient to use you can buy a
four by eight sheet of that use every inch of it but it's basically just
sawdust glued together the machine as well but it creates a lot of dust and
that dust is pretty toxic so that's kind of downside of MDF another manufactured
wood is plywood plywood really strong easy to work with
you could buy four by eight sheets of it and use every inch of it and strong
because the grain goes this way and then this way in the next layer so it's all
cross-grained you can see the different layers there a third is oriented strand
board OSB and also a lot of strong properties of OSB so those are just some
of the manufactured lumbers and then as we look at natural woods to kind of
split between two categories hardwoods and softwoods on the softwood side this
is a framing timber so this is fir when the most common soft woods it's fir and
almost all homes are framed floor joists wall stud draw Douglas fir like this
this is some really pretty nice tight grain this is the heart of the tree here
and then this is the sap wood on the outside our next soft wood is pine pine
really inexpensive you know pretty grain works well it does have a lot of pitch
in it which is a downside and also a lot of knots so you got to be careful of the
knots and the pitch build up on your saw blades
cedar is another softwood cedar is really good for fencing and decks there's a
high acid count and cedar so bugs don't like to eat it so it's good good good
landscaping lumber and then the fourth one is redwood redwood as well as a good
landscaping lumber
bugs really don't like it very much so it's good for decks and fences the key
to good redwood is you really needs a lot of heartwood so if you're buying
cheap wood or inexpensive with it will mostly be sap wood and will deteriorate
quickly all of these are pretty soft Fir is by far the hardest of the soft
woods here okay and on the hardwood side an order
of cost poplar as it's green tint to it poplar machines well is nice to work
with but a lot of people don't like the color of it so it's usually considered a
paint grade wood oak by far the most common wood we have in our area and
actually all over the world oak is really hard it isn't actually food
quality for cutting boards because the grain is kind of open from oak we go to
a maple maple really pretty grain really dense really hard I really like maple a
lot and then from maple your the next one is a cherry wood show you a
beautiful grain I don't see how pretty it is they're getting a little more
costly maturing machines really well works really well kind of everybody's
favorite but it's expensive black walnut black walnuts also almost
everybody's favorite I love it machines well nice density it looks
beautiful has that really dark rich grain and usually tight grain
right but also pretty expensive so those are you know some of the common
hardwoods around here I'll just throw in two more that are kind of in the exotics
category from overseas one is purple heart and really purple heart is used
more for decorative striping and stuff you don't really you know make big
projects out of Purple Heart I just kind of like to inlay that purple
in there really very dense really pretty grain one problem with Purple Heart is
you know if you put this up against a maple like on a glue lamp and you see in
the two together all our purple dust gets into that maple grain and it so you
gotta be conscientious of that another common one is Paduke with an exotic
hardwood I think that's how you spell it and it has this really pretty orange
color pretty nice to machine nice and hard it's good to work with as well okay
so that's just a quick overview of hardwoods you know there are hundreds if
not thousands of different kinds of woods around the world in which would
you choose really depends on what project you're doing