alder- hardwood or softwood?

[woodsman]

im haveing trouble distinguishing alder timber?can anyone help.....

[Chris Gagen]

hardwood,

i understood only pine/conifer etc to be soft wood. probably wrong on that count but hey...

[slack ma girdle]

When you cut it the wood goes from white to an orangy/ red. It does not have the distinct growth rings that soft woods have. The growth rings look more like dotted lines.

[Matthew Arnold]

Alder is the "softer" of the hardwoods. Bit like Lime, Willow and Poplar. Thats why they are crap for burning. I think the exception for softwood is Cedar. That stuff is pretty damn hard. We use them to make rustic picnic benches (two 3 ft legs in the ground 2 ft and a 6 inch thick piece of cedar on top).

[Nic Johnson Contracting]

softwoods are evergreen

 

hardwoods are decidous

 

alder is a hardwood and so is balsa

[slack ma girdle]

r. Thats why they are crap for burning.

 

Piffle

[Matthew Arnold]

This is the rustic benches we make out of cedar. The legs are either Douglas Fir or Scots Pine and the tops are either Cedar of Lebanon or Western Red. It just depend what the local timberyard has. The benches cost £60 for the set n the picnic benches cost £125 as it uses bigger timber which is more expensive. The massive chunks of timber are Cedar of Lebanon. We didnt pay anything for them and they were apparently of "no use" to the district council so we had them as 100% vandal proof bbq benches. We plane them off 3 times a year. And they weigh 2.5 tonnes each.

[Blackbriarwoods]

Piffle

 

The alder we get around here burns great, more than happy to have it on the heap

[s.varty]

im haveing trouble distinguishing alder timber?can anyone help.....

 

any tree that bears a cone is a softwood (so ive always been led to believe)

[Chris Sheppard]

Piffle

 

Beat me to it

 

One year we had almost nothing but Alder to sell and everyone loved it. I did find it a bit like birch though in that it wanted selling that winter or it started to go soft