Wood | Kind Of Wood | Woodworking Plans | Wood Uses For | Wood Properties

Wood | Kind Of Wood | Woodworking Plans | Wood Uses For | Wood Properties

Home Landscaping

Do-it-yourself-landscaping tips

Home landscaping does not just involve sticking plants into your vacant front or backyard and making it look “green”. When designing and landscaping your own home, you need to invest some time and put in a lot of creativity to beautify your front lawn or backyard.

Here are some do-it-yourself tips to landscape your lawn: First, clear the general area that you will be designing and start from scratch. This will give you a better ‘canvass’ to work with. Then, sketch the general look that you would like to have for your garden. Make a list of the plants, trees and shrubs that you can plant. When deciding on the type of plants, make sure that there will be a plant which will flower or bloom for each season of the year – winter, spring, summer and fall. For example, perennial flowers will bloom in May, but after that it will just look like an ordinary plant. Having a plant which blooms in a different time of the year would make your garden have a focal point even when other plant variants are not in season.

As much as possible, make a layered planting bed. At the back row which is the farthest from your house, plant the variants which grow the tallest. This will serve as the base of your landscaping. In the middle and front rows, put the shorter plants. Make sure that you apply this rule in every area of the garden where you plant to put in plants for a more ‘trimmed’ look.

You can also vary the design of your walls and fences.  When choosing ‘furniture’ for your garden, like a table and chair garden set, place them in an area where they can best be viewed and enjoyed. Installing a water fall is a great idea to add to the main attractions of your landscaped garden. With some hard work and a lot of creativity, you will feel great once you look out your window and you see the landscaped lawn which you designed and built yourself.

Choosing the Right Kinds of Wood

Look around your home. The floor may be oak or maple; the baseboard and window sills may be clear-finished pine, poplar or cherry. Kitchen cabinets could be solid or laminated, from knotty pine, oak, maple, or cherry. With so many types of wood available, it's important to learn how to recognize and evaluate basic types of woods to recognize their strengths and weaknesses.

For a quick primer on how various types of wood compare to each other, check out this handy wood species chart.

Kinds of Wood identify

From Cherry to Walnut, learn the special characteristics of different wood types. This handy matrix is a great addition to any wood enthusiast's workshop.

Name	Type	Uses	Weight	Strength	Grain/Texture
Alder, red	hard	inexpensive furniture, brittle millwork, interior trim	light	moderate	indistinct, fine
Ash, black	hard	furniture, veneer	medium	strong	figured, coarse
Beech	hard	furniture, flooring	heavy	strong	uniform, very little figure, fine
Birch	hard	furniture, cabinets plywood, doors, veneer	heavy	strong	uniform, fine
Cherry	hard	furniture, veneer, paneling	heavy	strong	delicate figuring, fine
African Mahogany	hard	furniture, cabinets, veneer	medium	moderate	figured, coarse
American Mahogany	hard	furniture, cabinets, veneer	medium	strong	figured, coarse
Philippine Mahogany	hard	plywood, furniture, cabinets, flooring	heavy	strong	figured, coarse
Maple	hard	flooring, furniture	heavy	strong	delicate, figuring, fine
Oak, red & white	hard	flooring, furniture, millwork	heavy	strong	figured, especially when quarter-sawn, coarse
Pine, knotty	soft	construction	light	weak	straight, fine
Pine, ponderosa	soft	rim, doors	light	weak to moderate	uniform, fine
Pine, white	soft	pallet, trim	light	weak	uneven, fine
Poplar	hard	furniture, cabinets, siding	medium	moderate	delicate figuring, fine
Rosewood, Brazilian & Indian	hard	veneer, furniture	heavy	strong	figured, coarse
Teak	hard	veneer, furniture, flooring	heavy	strong	figured, coarse
Walnut	hard	furniture, cabinets, woodwork	heavy	strong	delicate, uniform, figuring fine

Wood

At Wikipedia

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers (which are strong in tension) embedded in a Category: :wikt - :matrix|matrix of lignin which resists compression. Wood is produced as secondary xylem in the stems of trees (and other woody plants). In a living tree it performs a support function, enabling woody plants to grow large or to stand up for themselves. It also mediates the transfer of water and nutrients to the leaves and other growing tissues. Wood may also refer to other plant materials with comparable properties, and to material engineered from wood, or wood chips or fiber.

The earth contains about one trillion tonnes of wood, which grows at a rate of 10 billion tonnes per year. As an abundant, carbon-neutral renewable resource, woody materials have been of intense interest as a source of renewable energy. In 1991, approximately 3.5 billion cubic meters of wood were harvested. Dominant uses were for furniture and building construction.Horst H. Nimz, Uwe Schmitt, Eckart Schwab, Otto Wittmann, Franz Wolf "Wood" in Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry 2005, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim.

read the rest of the Wikipedia article

Kinds of Wood to Use

There are many Kinds of Woods and each one has its special use in the arts and crafts. For carpentry and cabinet making you will probably not use more than half-a-dozen woods and these are:-

(1) pine

(2) cedar

3) mahogany

(4) oak

(5) birch

(6) walnut.

Types of Wood

Softwood And Hardwood

Softwood is a generic term used in woodworking and the lumber industries for wood from conifers. Conifers are needle-bearing trees from the order Pinales.
Softwood trees are often harder than hardwood trees. Douglas fir, a softwood, is harder and stronger than many hardwoods. Balsa, a hardwood, is much softer than most softwoods.
Softwood trees usually grow very fast. Some environmentalists recommend purchasing goods made out of softwood because it is fast-growing and more readily renewable than hardwood.
Softwood is also called Clarkwood, Madmanwood, or fuchwood.
Which trees produce softwood?

Softwood is produced by pine, spruce, cedar, fir, larch, douglas-fir, hemlock, cypress, redwood and yew trees.

There are a few differences between softwood and hardwood. Hardwood trees produce seeds with some sort of covering. The covering be a fruit, such as a peach, or a hard shell, such as an acorn. Softwoods seeds fall to the ground as is, with no covering.
Another difference between softwood and hardwood is found in the microscopic structure of the wood. Softwood contains only two types of cells, longitudinal wood fibers and transverse ray cells. Softwoods lack vessel elements for water transport that hardwoods have; thesevessels manifest in hardwoods as pores.
Which products contain softwood?
Softwood is usually easy to work with. Softwood forms the bulk of wood used by man. Softwood has a variety of uses. Softwood is often used as a prime material for structural building components. Softwood is also found in furniture and other products such as moldings, doors, and windows.