Hardwood and Softwood timber uses.

[LeeOulton]

Hi all,

 

Im in that situation once again, Final question in an assignment asks to describe why hard and softwood timbers are used for different purposes.

 

Spent the last 2 hours on google but found nothing good.

 

Any ideas folks?

 

 

regards

 

Lee

[firewoodman]

structure, texture, strength, flexibility, colour, properties, durability, workability.

 

good city library should have a few books, but that is where most of the info is unfortunatly.

 

would put some book names on here, but moving house and all packed away

[slack ma girdle]

because all timbers hard or soft have different charateristics, and therefore different uses. You will have to pad this out a bit for your assignemt. Cut and paste is always usfull for this.

[tommer9]

You should think about the different structural qualities of timbers- what sort of lateral strength they have, what sort of grain they have (long or short grained ) how they respond to crush loading, what rot resistance the timber posses etc.

 

It isnt an exact science by any means. Oak varies wildly from q.robur which can be used for pretty much ANY application, to q.cerris which is good for sweet f.a. Some softwoods will last for years without any treatment (thuja plicata, larix kaemferi) whereas others will rot as soon as anything (picea sitchensis).

 

Really you need to get some books on timber usage which gives you this sort of info. A good book which has lots of timbers in it and their properties is WoodCentral's Book Reviews: Wood Identification and Use by Terry Porter, which could give you plenty to work on.

 

Other considerations should be cost and availability....obviosly there is a lot more softwood out there for harvest than oak, which is reflected in modern building techniques, alot of which is price driven...

 

Good luck.

[LeeOulton]

Thanks guys,

 

Some good info there...

 

 

 

regards

 

Lee :-)

[Andy Collins]

See if you can find "The Foresters Companion" by N.D.G James, it has a section devoted to timber uses.