Wood Identification and Attribution

The diversity of wood is a continuing appeal as a design feature in construction. For form, durability, and function, there are few products available that provide the flexibility of lumber and wood products. Modern polymers, plastics, and even concrete and steel offer relative strengths and weaknesses architects, designers, and builders must weigh to maximize the utility of each design element.

After looking around a bit, I ran into a fantastic site by Eric Meier called The Wood Database. I think it’s great. There is a good mix of scanned images of various species and their relative strengths and weaknesses. I refer to this site often these days. I was looking for a database for some time combining each of these aspects of woodworking and design.

He’s got periodic updates via articles and recent additions to the database. This Wood Database has proved to be quite helpful to me to gain a greater understanding of the variations between species in the lumber market. Here are some samples of his work on Lignum Vitae, Purpleheart, and Spanish Cedar. Lots of differently named lumber products are actually quite similar, and may be effectively identical products, depending on the site specs and demands to be made of the building materials.

Mr. Meier provides information about strength, shrinkage of tested materials, source of origin, scientific name, etc. etc. etc. I can’t say enough about the value of this resource if you wish to gain a good fundamental understanding of these diverse building materials. I can spend hours on this site. This won't interest everyone, but The Wood Database does a very good job concentrating a tremendous amount of information.