European Hardwoods

OAK: This noble wood is very widespread in France, which produces large quantities of excellent quality. It is the most suitable wood for parquet construction. It is also excellent as a building material, but also as furniture wood. It has a warm color, which, over time, develops until it becomes dark brown. It can be treated with any type of finish (even if the perfect wood/heartwood is difficult to impregnate).

CHESTNUT: It has characteristics almost similar to oak. It is less widespread in terms of exploitation. It has the same uses (except for door frames). It has high tannin levels, which makes it resistant to wood-eating insects, but at the same time difficult to impregnate with wood impregnants. Be careful when sawing and sanding, which sometimes cause unwanted colors.

BEECH: It is a dense and solid wood, very sensitive to water vapor. It is produced in large quantities in France and is intended for furniture, parquet construction and packaging (packaging). It is a light-colored wood (the range of shades ranges from white to gray-pink), the shades of which evolve slightly. It is the ideal wood for painting. It accepts any type of finish, which always gives a very beautiful appearance since beech is a smooth wood with mixed pores.

EUROPEAN WALNUT: The advantages, beauty and price of this noble wood make it intended mainly for the manufacture of furniture. It gives extremely beautiful finishes.

OLIVE: It is very resistant to drilling. The veins of the olive tree are very characteristic and remarkable.

Caution: It is the only European hardwood oily wood for which solvent-based polyurethane finishes are recommended.

“FRUIT TREES”: They are mentioned for informational purposes as they are mainly intended for furniture and marquetry: wild cherry, pear, apple, etc.

Tropical Hardwoods (or exotic)

MERANTI (or Lauan-meranti): Pink-orange wood with remarkable dimensional stability. It is used for exterior wood cladding: shutters, windows, doors, gates-entrances. It accepts transparent protectors and varnishes.

TEAK: It presents remarkable stability and excellent resistance to bad weather, thanks to the natural presence of oil.

WENGE, DOUSSIE, IROKO, ANGELIQUE, MERBAU: They are highly colored woods, the shades of which are a selection factor in themselves. The general characteristics are good, especially for WENGE, from which excellent parquet is made. Polyurethane finishes should be preferred (they are woods on which adhesion can be difficult).

WOODS FOR MARQUETTE AND FURNITURE: The following are mentioned for information: mahogany (cacao), rosewood, ebony, lemon tree, etc.

Conifers (or Resiniferous)

THE RED SPRUCE, also commonly called the RED SITKA SPRUCE: They are very light, soft woods. The Sitka spruce (pink) stands out from the common one which is pure white. They are not particularly resinous woods. We find them in the Jura mountain range, the Northern Alps, the Massif Central (south-central France), the Vosges mountains (Alsace-Lorraine and the Ardennes (French-Belgian border). Spruce has remarkable resistance to compression: it is an excellent wood suitable for wooden frames, for ship masts or for railings on stairs. It is the wood of choice for making pulp.

Special uses: making stringed instruments (wood suitable for resonance), boxes, wooden cases, handrails, Christmas trees. Painting them does not give uniform results. They accept any type of finish.

Caution: They are very sensitive to cyanosis and are difficult to impregnate deeply.

FIR: Light wood, very tender and less fragile than pine to strong blows. The This wood is particularly preferred for the construction of wooden frames for houses. It has a white color. It is quite difficult to handle (uncomfortable with impregnation and very sensitive to insects and cyanosis). It is widely used in the manufacture of furniture and interior woodwork, in the manufacture of musical instruments, wooden tools, railings for stairs and in the manufacture of barrels. We find it mainly in eastern France as well as in the Pyrenees.

WOOD Larch: It is the main resinous variety of trees of the European continent. It is non-existent in North America as well as in the southern hemisphere. Wood Larch is particularly widespread in all mountainous areas. It has a brown-pink to brown-red hue. The perfect wood, the heartwood, is resistant to insects, but the sensitive sapwood is available sliced ​​as commercial lumber. Larch is susceptible to fungi. It has very good technical characteristics: it is used rounded (poles, stakes, etc.), in construction (scaffolding, wooden frames, carpentry, cases, etc.), in milling (wrapping material – kraft, cardboard), in the manufacture of mass-produced furniture or assembled furniture. It is not recommended for use for parquet (low degree of hardness).

NOTE: the designation “red spruce of the north” is a commercial name (technically unusable), which specifies the ways of cutting larch imported from Scandinavia or Russia.

LARICIO PINE (or Corsican pine): Rustic variety of fast growth. It is resistant, widely used in reforestation. It has the same uses as Scots pine and pitch pine. For exterior use, it is better to prefer mountain woods, which are slow-growing and denser than lowland woods.

MARITIME PINE: Found throughout the Mediterranean region. It is very dense, very often very resinous and has a yellow-orange to brown-red hue. The sapwood is particularly sensitive to cyanosis. It can have any use, depending on its classification (number and size of knots).

PITCH PINE: Name of the cutting method that comes from the exploitation of many varieties that are collectively characterized by the name “longleaf yellow pine” (Longleaf in the USA). It is regularly imported into France and has been planted in southern France. Its perfect wood (heart) has a reddish-brown hue and is very resinous. It is a hard and fairly solid wood. It has great natural longevity and resistance to bad weather and humid atmosphere. It is widely used in heavy construction or residential buildings, in furniture, in plywood, in the chemical industry and the food industry, as well as in milling (cardboard).