What Is The Difference Between Hardwood And Softwood Lumber

What is hardwood lumber.

What is the difference between hardwood and softwood lumber. Hardwood is timber from broad leaved usually deciduous trees that is a tree that looses its leaves each year and belongs to the botanical group angiosperms not all hardwoods are hard though most british species are. Lumber generally falls into one of two categories. For instance yew wood is classified as a softwood but is considerably tougher than certain hardwoods. Both softwood and hardwood have separate grading scales.

So what s the difference between these two types. This type of lumber is tough and is not easily. Lumber grades are a standardized way to judge the quality of a wood or piece of lumber. Each of these woods come from a different type of tree.

Their slow growth is what makes hardwood a more expensive option. As mentioned above the first and most obvious difference between the two is that hardwoods generally have more rigid and hard makeup unlike the softwoods which are softer and more flexible. I am often asked what s the difference between hardwood and softwood and will hardwood last longer. That is hardwood isn t necessarily denser than softwood.

The high rate of growth contributes to the abundant supply with most of the processed timber coming from softwoods. There is a difference between the dimensions used to refer to the lumber called the nominal dimensions and the actual dimensions. As a provider of lumber near you oswald wholesale lumber has the answer. With a clearer understanding of the differences between hardwood and softwood we can move onto the specifics of lumber grading.

Hardwood timber comes from deciduous trees like beech blackwood oak hickory mahogany maple teak and walnut. But the difference between these two types of wood isn t in their name. Wood is often classified into two categories including hardwood and softwood. Below are the top differences between softwood and hardwood lumber.

Softwood lumber tends to be lighter and has a lower density than hardwood owing from the fact that these trees that exhibit a higher rate of growth than hardwood trees. The first part of that question is fairly straight forward to answer. Hardwood lumber comes from hickory oak mahogany maple and walnut trees. This happens to be generally true but there are exceptions such as in the cases of wood from yew trees a softwood that is relatively hard and wood from balsa trees a.

Hardwood is hard and softwood is soft. However this is not always the case. This is by far the most common misconception people have about wood when they browse the aisles of the local lumber yard or big box building products store. These are trees that lose their leaves and grow more slowly.