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Also, I like the idea of using wood grown closer to home, or at least on the same continent. I can’t say I’ve never used exotics, but I always have pangs of environmental guilt. Just when I had resigned myself to the charming but usual local-wood suspects, I spent a year living and making furniture in northern California. There, I discovered five fantastic local woods: alder, bay laurel, madrone, tanoak, and claro walnut. Of these five, alder is the easiest to find in lumberyards across the country because it is the only one grown as a commercial timber product.

Both pieces are made from Honduras mahogany. HONDURAS Popular substitute, but still pricey When Cuban mahogany was no longer commercially viable, Honduras mahogany took its place. So unless you’re more than a century old, this is probably the wood you know as mahogany. Fortunately, it isn’t far behind Cuban mahogany as a furniture wood. It’s just as stable, works easily, and carves well. The most notable difference is that its pores are more open, so getting a glossy finish requires filling the grain.

Christian Becksvoort Behind the Numbers The best way to identify a wood’s hardness, workability, and proclivity to warping and checking, without using subjective terms such as fair, good, hard, or soft, is with numbers. That’s why we give the specific gravity and percent shrinkage for each species listed. us. A wood’s specific gravity speaks to how hard, dense, and heavy it is. The higher a wood’s specific gravity, the tougher and stronger it is, basically. These numbers also mean that cherry and walnut are easier to work—by hand or machine—than white oak.