A LIST OF THE LEADING FURNITURE WOODS
In appendix D, page [255], will be found a brief account of leading furniture woods. Most of these woods are used today, and many of them will be found in your stock. Ours is an age which takes great delight in colorful and beautifully figured woods. An astonishing variety of new species has come into comparatively recent use as the result of exploration in Africa, Australia, and the more remote and difficult areas of Central and South America. Salespersons are strongly urged, through this and other sources, to become familiar with the leading furniture woods in order to possess the background necessary to arouse appreciation of the beauty, distinction, and rarity of the woods used in furniture manufacture and to convey an adequate sense of the time, skill, and expense necessary to make these lovely woods available in strong and enduring form for the modern home.
Courtesy the Veneer Association.
Figure 16.—Veneer slicer: Note the finished slices in the middle foreground and the tremendous length of the log—the full length of the slicer (16 feet). Working with amazing speed, this slicer frequently requires the attendance of three operators at the same time.
MAKING THE MOST OF WOOD STRUCTURE AND ITS APPEAL TO THE EYE
As is well known, trees grow in diameter by the addition of new layers of wood, one of which forms just under the bark each year during the life of the tree. If growth is rapid, these layers, which are known as annual rings, will be relatively thick; if slow, they will be thin. In warm climates the growth of many trees is almost continuous, the fiber relatively uniform, and the annual rings very slightly marked. In cold climates growth is rapid in spring and summer, but almost ceases in winter, and the annual rings are sharply marked. The wood produced first in each year is frequently different from that produced later in the year, so that a distinction is drawn between the early springwood and the later summerwood. In such cases a cross section of the tree trunk will show a number of concentric annual rings whose number is equal to the age of the region of trunk cut. In certain kinds of trees, for instance, species of pines and leaf-shedding oaks, after the wood has attained a certain age, it darkens in color, so that when a crosscut of a 100-year-old part of the trunk is taken, the darker older central wood contrasts as heartwood with the surrounding pale sapwood.
All hardwoods contain a multitude of long continuous water-conducting tubes termed wood vessels; in cross section they are often visible to the naked eye as pores. In woods like oak and ash these pores are easily visible in cross section as minute holes, and in longitudinal section as fine grooves, which are often accentuated by furniture makers through treatment with a dark filler. In woods like maple and gum the pores are too small to be seen without a microscope.
Oak, chestnut, ash, and elm are conspicuous members of the ring-porous group of hardwoods, so called because one or more rows of large pores are formed at the beginning of each annual ring. Walnut and mahogany are diffuse-porous because the pores, though plainly visible, are more nearly uniform in size throughout the annual rings.
In addition to the annual rings and pores, traversing the wood at right angles to the fibers are thin stringlike structures that run from the outside of the wood radially inward toward the pith. In some woods these rays are too minute to play a part in the visible figure of the wood, while in others, notably the oak, they are conspicuous, and in quarter-sawed boards produce the effect known as silver grain or flake. These are the medullary rays. For more detailed information about wood structure, consult any reliable encyclopedia.