Sourcing the Perfect Skirting

Natural lustre is characteristic of some species and more prominent on radial surfaces. Odour and taste are due to volatile substances contained in wood. Although difficult to describe, they are helpful distinguishing characteristics in some cases. The term texture describes the degree of uniformity of appearance of a wood surface, usually transverse. Grain is often used synonymously with texture, as in coarse, fine, or even texture or grain, and also to denote direction of wood elements, whether straight, spiral, or wavy, for example. Grain sometimes is used in place of figure, as in silver grain in oak. The term figure applies to natural designs or patterns of wood surfaces.

Density and specific gravity

Density is the weight or mass of a unit volume of wood, and specific gravity the ratio of the density of wood to that of water. In the metric system of measurement, density and specific gravity are numerically identical; for example, the average density of the wood of Douglas fir is 0.45 gram per cc, and its specific gravity 0.45, because 1 cc of water weighs 1 gram. The density of a sample of wood can be appraised visually by observing the width (thickness) of growth rings and the proportion of latewood. In general, latewood, because of its thicker cell walls and smaller cell cavities, is denser than earlywood, and with increasing ring width its proportion decreases in softwoods and increases in ring-porous hardwoods. Therefore, wider rings indicate lower density in softwoods and higher density in ring-porous hardwoods. In diffuse-porous hardwoods latewood is not clearly distinct, and ring width is not an indication of density.