open main page here with limited thumbnails
open main page here with ALL thumbnails
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for their help in adding to this site.
Robin Weekley, an avid and enthusiastic member of the IWCS (see below) has been invaluable in helping me track down pictures on the web of obscure woods and she has also given me advice on the technical (botanical) naming of woods.
Jim Glynn, who has contributed numerous planks to the site, and who also suggested the scientifically dubious, but highly entertaining, concept that the color streaks in certain woods (e.g. white limba) are the result of bug poop. Jim also gave me a really wonderful huge slab of spalted maple and you can see both it and a bowl I turned from part of it, on the "maple, spalted" page.
Chris Arvidson, who has contributed several planks to the site and also very generously gave me a really wonderful, large, osage orange bowl blank.
Dale Romine, who has contributed numerous small flooring samples.
Neal Kuwabara who has taken the time to alert me to some needed cleanup on the site
Miles Hember who contributed judas tree pics and interesting correspondance on several woods
Brian Lewis who showed me how to open new pages without closing the current page, and thus, I believe, added significantly to the usefulness of the site because you can now bring up multiple pictures so as to compare woods.
Paul van Rijckevorsel who contributed many species summaries and whose comments in them have been very helpful to me in distinguishing some species and common names.
Peter Kjær Poulsen who provided me with an electronic copy of an out-of-print Danish book that has botanical and common names for 1001 woods
Bill Mudry who has been of enormous help in increasing my understanding of taxonomy
John Saxon who has contributed wood samples and helpful information
Wade Whitbeck who has generously contributed numerous veneer samples to the site.
other contributors, both named and unnamed, who have sent wood samples to add to the value of the site. Each of these folks are named (or at least referred to, if they prefer that their names not be used) on the pages containing their contributions.
Non-commercial web sites that have information about wood
Agriculture Dept's Forest Serivce
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The United States Government is a huge repository of information on just about every topic you can imagine, and wood is certainly no exception. The United States Department of Agriculture has as one of its subagencies the Forest Service, the home page for which is: USDA's Forest Service This site contains a wealth of information on trees and wood (and more), and is well worth a visit.
For those of you that are in a hurry and don't want to take a leisurely poke around the Forest Service site, here are a couple of direct links that you might find interesting:
There is a wood-related page at: USDA / FS wood page
and a massive amount of very specific, detailed wood information starting at: USDA / FS wood tech sheets
North Carolina State University
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The North Carolina State University has online a fabulous set of color images of 354 species of wood, and each species is represented by three exceptionally detailed pics: tangential (flat cut), radial (quartersawn), and cross section (end grain).
These images are from the original edition of the book "The American Woods: exhibited by actual specimens and with copious explanatory text" by Romeyn B. Hough, published in 1888 and 1928. That book is now in print in a new edition with entirely DIFFERENT pictures of the same outstanding quality. It is now called "The Wood Book" and it is readily available online for $80 --- expensive but MORE than worth the money if you love wood. The NCSU images from the original edition can be seen at: the Wood Book
There is both a common name index and a botanical name index available.
International Wood Collector's society
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The IWCS is an organization of people who collect wood samples and information about wood. They are very active and have a very knowledgeable membership. Some of the members are woodcrafters and others are more interested in the scientific/botanical characterists of trees and wood. Their home page is: IWCS home page
Woodworker's Website Association
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The Woodworker's Website Association is a hobby group of folks who enjoy wood. Their home page is: WWA home page
If you have information about other non-commercial web sites that spread information about wood, I'd be happy to include them here. You can reach me at the email address shown on the main page of this site.