Natural / clear finish cherry and walnut have an ageless beauty about them.
oak
walnut
cherry
maple
ash
other (please post it!)
Contributor
Natural / clear finish cherry and walnut have an ageless beauty about them.
Member
OSB? It is pretty versitile.
LOL
Actually Red Oak for me. I know it is common and that can be a good thing, but to me it has more to do with how it is designed and finished.
You can take the greatest looking wood in the world and have a poor design or poor finish on it and it will look like junk.
If you take oak and give it a good design and finish it well and lay out the grain for assembly, you will end up with something sharp.
I kinda stay away from Walnut and Maple because no matter how you finish it, it always kinda looks the same. Oak has a lot of character to it.
It is also a lot easier to keep a good supply on hand rather than so many different species taking up space.
I think it also pays to spend a lot of time with a particular wood so you "get to know it" and feel it work and finish.
Member
Western Big Leaf Maple with lots of figure and live edges; Old Growth CVG Douglas Fir; Alaskan Yellow Cedar; Western Red Cedar. I primarily work with local native woods, and these four are my favorites.
Member
African blackwood. I currently have around 60 species of wood in my shop, so it's hard to make a choice, but ABW has such great qualities.
Member
FREE wood is my favourite!
but most woods are nice,
they all have their purpose
In Memoriam
I have many favorite woods, most of them native to my area...Eastern Red Cedar, Ash, Red Oak, White Oak, Mesquite, Bois d' Arc, Red Elm...
Right now my favorite is Black Walnut because a friend gave me some logs that I had milled into 4/4 lumber. I have amost 700 bf of Walnut air drying at the present. It cost me $215 in sawyer fees and probably another $50 in gasoline plus my own labor. That works out to about 0.38 cents per bf. It was a good enough deal that I decided to build a solar kiln to speed the drying.
Cody
Logmaster LM-1 sawmill, 30 hp Kioti tractor w/ FEL, Stihl 290 chainsaw, 300 bf cap. Solar Kiln
Contributor
Oak for me. Love the look and the color of it. Also appreciate that it's markedly less expensive than most hardwoods.
Maple after that. Then Cherry.
PHM
Member
Favorite furniture wood is Quartersawn White Oak.
Favorite wood to work Black walnut
Favorite turning wood Quilted, Tiger, Birdseye, Maple.
Favorite exotic wood African Blackwood
Contributor
I have not used any of the exotics, unless African Mahogany is considered an 'exotic'. My favorite for grain is red gum or sometimes called sweetgum. Once finished it looks incredible. It can be a pain to work though. It can be a bit unstable so can warp just from a dirty look or a single four letter word. Here is a picture of it.
I also like the standards, cherry, walnut, alder (bit soft though), maple (for the right project), but cannot stand red oak. At my cabinet shop I would do everything I could to dissuade customers from using red oak. I have on my list to make some things out of white oak then fume them with ammonia.
Contributor
I love working with Mahogany. It is so nice to work with, few surprises and just machines/cuts like a dream.
"The element of competition has never worried me, because from the start, I suppose I realized wood contains so much inspiration and beauty and rhythm that if used properly it would result in an individual and unique object." - James Krenov
What you do speaks so loud, I cannot hear what you say. -R. W. Emerson
Contributor
Favorite to work with is peruvian walnut. Light, extremely consitent grain pattern, easy on the back, easy on the tools, and readily available.
However, I think QSWO with just the right amount of ray flake and matched correctly on a project is hard to beat.
Member
I voted maple, before it really clicked that you said "all around". I guess I had figured electric guitar tops on the brain when I read that. But really... do we have to have favorites? I feel about different varieties of wood kinda the same way I do about my kids. They are all beautiful and unique strengths and weaknesses and different ones shine for different reasons. I know, I know, that's overly sentimental and sappy (pun intended)! But it's true.
Contributor
I haven't seen peruvian walnut in person. What is the difference between that and what you can get among domestic walnut sources?
Have to admit some fondness for purple heart -- it is an obnoxious wood to work, but it was the first exotic wood I ever got and once I realized that my wife didn't want anything made in purple, has since ended up trimming out a lot of my shop furniture.
Matt
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