1. Final Project - Materials - Wood Flashcards
What material is it?
Strong, durable, lightweight and easy to work with
Wood
Wood: 2 main categories?
- Softwood (conifers: pine, fir, hemlock, spruce)
- Hardwood (hardwood: cherry, maple, oak)
What type of wood is mostly used for: flooring, panelling, furniture and interior trim?
Hardwood
What main property determines the use of wood as a construction material? Why?
Is wood more subject to horizontal or vertical shearing?
- The grain
- A piece of wood is more resistant to tensile and compressive forces when these are oriented parallel to its grain.
- Tensile forces perpendicular to the grain cause the wood to split
- The shear resistance of a piece of wood is greater when it acts perpendicular to its grain rather than parallel. The wood is therefore more subject to horizontal shearing than to vertical shearing.
Why reduce the water content of wood? How to do?
- By drying it in the air or in a dryer under specific conditions of heat, air circulation and humidity.
- To increase the general resistance of the wood, its stability and its resistance to fungi, rotting and insects.
- Wood resists rotting when its water content is less than 20%.
What should be taken into account when cutting and constructing assemblies of wood of any size? (2)
Below a water content of 30%, wood expands when it absorbs water and contracts when it loses it.
It is therefore necessary to take into account these possible shrinkages and swellings.
Name the 3 types of preservatives.
- Water-soluble preservative: gives clean, odorless and easy-to-paint wood. However, exposure to chromium and arsenic can pose a health hazard.
- Oil preservatives: May stain wood, but treated wood can be painted. Very toxic, so not used in building construction.
- Creosote treatment: gives the wood a colored and oily surface and a persistent odor (especially used for installations in aquatic environments)
Which wood preservative treatment is the most effective? Protects what?
The most effective is the pressure treatment, especially when the wood touches the ground.
Wood: what is the nominal dimension?
Refers to the dimensions of a piece of lumber before drying and surface planing.
(The dimensions after planing correspond to the actual dimensions of a piece of construction wood)
Name the 4 main types of wood panels.
- Plywood
- Particle board
- Oriented strand board (OSB)
- Chipboard
Wood : advantages as a building material
- Readily available as a building material
- Lower cost than concrete, masonry, and steel structures
- Stronger in compression than tension
- Heavy Timber resists fire better than unprotected steel
- For improved tension and compression apply load parallel to the grain • For improved shear strength, apply load perpendicular to the grain
Two primary calssifications of softwood lumber
yard lumber: structural purposes and rough framing; further classfied as boards, dimension, and timber
factory and shop lumber: used for making door frames, windows, and finish items
Define board, dimension, and timber when referring to softwood yard lumber
board - less and 2” thick; 2” or more wide
dimension - 2”-5” thick; 4” to 12” or more wide
timber - 5” or more thick; 5” or more wide
Wood that will be seen in finish applications (e.g.: flooring, interior trim, furniture, hardwoods, casework) are sawn from a log in what way?
quartersawn to produce lumber that have annual rings running nearly perpendicular to the face of the piece
Plain-sawn
Quartersawn
Rift-sawn
Plain-sawn grain : growth rings leave irregular shapes *used for rough
Quartersawn: growth rings run parallel to board edges *used for finishing
Rift-sawn: Growth rings run parallel to board edges but more variability
When a tree is cut, the water slowly begins to evaporate in the following order:
- Free Water: water held in the cavities of the cells. Reduces water content to 26% - 32% moisture
- Bound Water: water held in within the cellulose of the cell walls, wood starts to shrink at this point and the strength and stiffness of the wood begins to increase.
Seasoning
• Water content in a piece of wood can vary between 30% - 300% of the oven-dry
weight of the wood. This unseasoned wood is called greenwood.
• Seasoned lumber is stronger and stiffer than unseasoned, more dimensionally
stable, andlighter in weight.
What type of sawing is used mostly in building construction?
• Most lumber intended for use in building framing is plainsawed,
which produces the maximum yield of lumber from a log.
• Some pieces have the rings running perpendicular to the faces
of the piece, some have rings on various diagonals, and some
have rings running parallel to the faces.
• Varying grain orientation cause pieces to distorted differently
during seasoning, or drying, vary differently in their appearance,
and erode at different rates when used as flooring, siding, etc.
Grading
- Each piece of lumber is graded for appearance or structural strength and stiffness at the mill.
- Appearance grading is done visually by trained inspectors. Structural grading is done either visually or by machine.
• •
Lumber is sold by species and grade…. Higher grade = more $$$
Grade stamps are applied to each piece of lumber.
Grade Stamp

to be considered dry lumber, moisture content in wood cannot exceed ____%
19%
to be grademarked kiln dry, moisture content in wood cannot exceed ___%
15%
wood shrinks mostly in which direction relative to its grain?
perpendicular to its grain
pressure treated wood
preservative is forced deep into wood cells
- protects from fungi, moisture, and insects









