Wood-working for Beginners: A Manual for Amateurs

by Charles G. Wheeler

Collection of Specimens of Wood.—Waste pieces of all the common woods can easily be obtained at the wood working shops. Have some system about the size and shape of the specimens. Some kinds you may be able to get only in pieces of such shape as you can find among the odds and ends of the shops, and many rare foreign and tropical woods you can obtain only in quite small pieces, but even these will show the character of the wood and add value to the collection. Waste scraps of veneers of rare woods can be glued on blocks of pine.

The specimens will be most valuable if you can get them out so as to show a longitudinal section along the medullary rays (or through the heart), a longitudinal section at right angles to the medullary rays (or tangential to the annual rings), and a cross section (Fig. 693). It will be an advantage also to show not only the heartwood but the sapwood and bark. If you cannot get such large pieces of even the common woods, a collection of small flat blocks will be well worth making.

Fig. 693.

The specimens will show to best advantage if polished (one half of each side can be polished) or finished with a dull lustre, and they will be good objects on which to practise finishing (see Finishing in [Part V].).

All the information you can pick up about the strength, durability, toughness, elasticity, and uses of the various woods will be sure to come in play sooner or later. The gradations of hardness, density, weight, toughness, elasticity, etc., are almost endless.

Notice, therefore, the weight, colour, hardness, density, and characteristic odour of the specimens; the proportion of heart to sapwood, and the colour of each; the size and condition of the pith; the character of the grain, whether coarse or fine, close or open and porous; the number, arrangement, size, and colour of the medullary rays (when visible); the width and character of the annual rings (when visible), whether wide or narrow, with many or few ducts or resin canals. You will find many things to notice in some woods. Use a magnifying-glass if you can.

Notice also about the bark. Hunt up all the woody stems you can, compare the bark of the different specimens, noting its colour, taste, odour, surface, thickness, and the different ways it cracks and is cast off; and notice how easily you can learn to tell the common trees by the bark alone. Sections of small stems or branches will often show the character of the wood well.

Note what you can about the character and habits of the trees themselves; the height, diameter, age, and the shape and peculiarities of the leaves. In this connection, a collection of leaves will also be interesting to make. You can soon learn to tell the common trees by their leaves.

Notice how, in some trees, as the pines, spruces, firs, the stem grows right straight up to the top, forming a spire-shaped tree. This is called an excurrent trunk (Lat., excurrere, to run out). Notice how, in other trees, like the elm, oak, etc., the stem branches again and again until it is lost in the branches. This is called a deliquescent stem (Lat., deliquescere, to melt away).