What wood should you use for what project?
When visiting a timber shop, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the wide range of timbers, and can be hard to find a straight answer on what to use them for. Fear no longer – we’ve got you covered!
Choosing timber for structure or strength
If your main concerns are wood being strong enough or lasting in a specific place, there are definitely better and worse timbers for your purposes. For structural or engineered purposes, sadly reclaimed timber doesn’t yet have a rating system to approve it for those uses, and you’ll need to look for new timber that is certified for your specific use. For non-structural uses, reclaimed timber is a beautiful and affordable alternative to new timber.
For outdoor uses, you’ll want to use a timber that is less likely to rot or erode. Our Aussie hardwoods are all pretty hardy, but there are definitely some more outdoor-surviving species like turpentine (Syncarpia glomulifera) or ironbark (the name for a group of particularly dense eucalypt species). For joinery or external detailing, cedar is a common choice, such as Western Red cedar (Thuja plicata).
Choosing timber to match existing fabric
Reclaimed timber is a great choice when matching existing wooden joinery or other parts, or replacing with like material (such as when replacing a deck that is rotting out). Matching existing floorboards, trim, or other details is not only nicer to do with a recycled material, but often a closer match can be found for materials that aren’t available in the same dimensions or quality from new material.
Choosing timber for aesthetics
When you’re making choices based purely on aesthetics, the world is your oyster! Reclaimed timber comes in a range of colours, patterns, and grain-details. You might want to choose some wood like Alpine ash (E. delegatensis) or Mountain ash (E. regnans) if long, straight and even grain is what you’re going for, or Spotted gum (Corymbia maculata) if you’re looking for a hardwood timber with a curlier or wavier grain.
If you’re looking for more decorative timbers, there’s a world of options there too: the wide variety of Australian lacewoods are beautiful for any feature piece, and the range of international rare and exotic timbers we have in store are perfect for details or to be highlighted in your designs.
Choosing timber to come into contact with food
Timber is the perfect material for benchtops, cutting boards, serving platters and more, but there are definitely better and worse options! For food-safe purposes that will get a lot of wear or action, like a chopping board or bench, we recommend using dense hardwoods like Australian Eucalyptus species, so they last a long time. For utensils or other smaller items, you can use hardwoods or softwoods, but want to make sure you have a few coats of a nice food-safe finish.
Are there woods I shouldn’t use?
There’s not a lot of timbers we wouldn’t recommend you use, but there are some timbers that can cause irritation when cut or worked, or that produce sawdust that can cause particularly bad eye and skin reactions. Your local timber shop will know which species they stock might be an issue, and can let you know before you make a purchase decision.
Illustrations by Liz, © Among The Trees
