White Oak & Red Oak

[Tim Plantz]

This might sound "cheap" of me but I've accumulated a variety of red and white 4/4 oak boards and wanted to use them on the same chest of drawers project. Any chance that with a tung oil and poly I could make the two species look close the same??

Tim "the miser" Plantz

[glenn bradley]

You would be the first in my experience. Now, if you want to dye the wood to the point that it is nearly painted . . . Not to mention the difference in the wood's structure itself. White oak does not look like red oak.


It would be pretty tough to mistake the large open pores of red for the more numerous, smaller and closed pores in white. Could you find someone with one or the other and trade so you both would have one type?

[Eric Mims]

I got about 700 board feet of mixed oak and have done alot of projects around my house with it. On the few where I mixed red and white, I ended up having to stain the piece.. either using a solid color stain (red, which looked great) or as on a current project, a deep ebony.. if a woodworker saw it and paid really close attention to the face grain pattern, they could tell.. but no one is gonna do that.

I tried a walnut stain once as well as a colored oil stain (kind of a burgundy) and the natural color of the different types of oak showed through too much..

[Richard M. Wolfe]

I've not done any projects mixing white oak and red oak, but my concern would be that although you might be able to make an acceptable match to start with how will the two woods look together in a few years as they age? You're not talking about having to acquire hundreds of board feet....I would use all same species and reasonably matched to start.

[Al Wasser]

Why make them look the same, which I sorta doubt you can do? Instead perhaps make the top and drawer fronts out of one and the carcass out of the other. I built an end table several yrs ago out of cherry, red oak, and poplar. Works fine. Yes, it's different.

[Jacob Reverb]

I'm with Al...if you try to make them both look like the same species, it probably ain't gonna work, and it's gonna look funky for that reason.

Instead, if you gotta mix woods, find some way to keep them separate and vive le difference!

[Tim Plantz]

You make a good point Richard, I hadn't thought of that. I guess I'll stick to one or the other. Thanks