It seems I live in a little black hole when it comes to hardwoods. No white oak and no hard maple, only thing I can find around here is red oak, poplar, and aspen (is that a hardwood). However, my little local ma and pa store called one of their suppliers and they said they had something called wheat oak for $3.15 a board foot. That's finished, not rough cut. They said it of the red oak family but is light in color like wheat. Kind of like white oak, but maybe not as light. Anyone ever hear of such a critter. It supposed to be something that grows up north where the polar bears roam like the northern United States. I'm down in the deep south of Alabama which is why it so hard to find white oak and hard maple etc.
$3.15 a board foot for real oak doesn't sound bad for me for finished, but this seems like a strange thing since I never heard of it before, but who knows, maybe if it has a pretty grain etc, I can work with it
Aspen is a really nice clean white color, but it so soft and has no grain, seems useless, pointless point to the post, but thought I would mention it. I was able to indent it with my fingernail.
Aspen is not a hardwood, it's a poplar (think pine).
You may want to look around for a sawmill or local sawyer (check out: http://www.woodmizer.com/us/ResourceCenter/FindaCustomSawyer.aspx), you may find better deals and better selections. I've made a connection with a local mill and while I have to dimension the wood, I love the fact that I get wood at a fraction the price the local fine lumber outlet here in town sells stuff for. I am at the mercy of the mill for selection, but right now I have maple, mesquite, cherry, pecan, and some sycamore waiting for me to build my projects with.
Wheat Oak… While I haven't heard of anything in the red oak family specifically called wheat oak, there are over 50 types of oak trees in North America alone (and many more outside NA). It wouldn't surprise me if there was some subspecies of red oak called wheat oak. Either that or just some label attached to it by the distributor due to the color.
Good luck in your lumber search, but I do think your best option may be a mill or sawer in your area.
Aspen is classified as a hardwood not a softwood, if it has leaves it is a hardwood. Aspen is soft not hard in texture. Wheat oak is a red oak just a lighter color than normal red oak. $3.15 is probably an ok price it depends on what is available in your area.
Get the scientific name of the "wheat oak", then you can easily find out exactly what oak that is. This is exactly why scientific names exist. I have heard that same oak species be called 10 different common names.
Just so you know, a hardwood has seeds with a covering, softwoods have no seed covering. Besides the composition of the cellulose, hemi-cellulose, and lignin of the wood, the presence or absence of a seed covering is the only way to distinguish a hard wood or softwood. It has nothing to do with how hard or soft the wood is or if
the tree has leaves.
I looked in my book called Knowing Your Trees and did a few Google searches and found no mention of Wheat Oak other than when used as the color of a prefinished flooring.
Just make sure you are not getting Pin Oak AKA "Swamp Oak." It stinks so bad when you mill it, one woodworker described it like "Lightning hitting the outhouse." It is also full of knots and the figure is usually irregular.
I have bought plenty of northern red oak, but I have never heard it called wheat oak.
Don't buy anything without a good inspection of the product.
I can remember when the dictionary defined hardwood as wood from a broad leafed tree, and some hardwood
furniture frames were made from cottonwood, which is definitely a broad leafed tree, and once dried is very
hard, but as one oldtimer said, if you build a stairway out of wet cottonwood, you have a very erratic
escalator.
I like red oak a lot for stuff, (Quercus rubra) but nothing I worry about shrinking or swelling too much! I use it on boxes for tools and such and it looks good (to me). I would just use that. You may be able to find Red Maple (Acer rubrum, Ive heard it called Swamp Maple before) and that is pretty great too. I use it a lot for tool handles and such.
EDIT: Aspen and Poplar, I belive, are in the same genus and are pretty similar in characteristics.
well when you said deep south alabama,I was about to hook you up with some lumber sources, but when I figured out you were in north alabama, well my sources won't deliver up there. Wrong side of the state, however you might try acadian hardwoods. They may deliver to your area, and they have a nice variety.
I am a Forester. I am a Dendrologist (a tree expert), and have taught tree ID for many years. There is no such thing as "wheat oak". It might be an oak, but sounds like a marketing ploy. There are red oaks and there are white oaks. No "wheat oak".
I appreciate all the informative posts so far. Most of them support what they said and what I already knew, but there was some good new info as well. My main reason for wanting something like white oak or maple was for these projects I wanted to finish in a light color since I'm using white Formica for the table tops, but my tablesaw outfeed table would look awesome and match up real good finished with ebony trim. I think I'll order a little from these folks to test the waters so to speak since I am having supplier problems and see what kind of quality they deliver. This wheat oak may be the same thing our local Lowe's is selling, I wouldn't be surprised. In which case it definately cheaper thru this venue, and I like helping to keep my ma and pa store in business. They also have other woods which may be useful for my future furniture making plans.
I also saw all the flooring pics and mentions from google as firefighter said, and the color looked pretty, but maybe a little darker than i wanted. I've never heard of or seen the scarlet oak someone mentioned, and red maple? your kidding right? it may be a beautiful wood but red maple is a tiny tree, might make a nice staff.
Speaking of weird woods, I have a great big cherry laural that is invading my porch, and i'm going to cut it down. Not big enough for a furniture project, but i might can think of something to make out of it. If nothing else I plan to use it to just chew into sawdust learning how to operate a lathe, but was wondering if anyone ever had any experience with it.
Oh, and as someone else mentioned, I said I'm in the deep south of Alabama, not in south Alabama, I'm actually only about 30 miles to the Tennessee Border.
I dunno about Alabama but I just dropped a two and a half food diameter Red Maple the other day. Ive seem em bigger than that too. Ill have to take a picture of the bits I have around, but they are pretty big.
1000' 4/4 6' Selects Wheat Red Oak 15/16" $1.57 bft
This a line copied from the place I get hardwood. They have been in business for 106 years in Michigan. They consider wheat oak a red oak.
If you are looking for a light colored hardwood try ash. It has great grain, works well with both hand and power tools, and it has a very good weight to strength ratio.
Wheat oak is a classification for a color sort of red oak. It is not the very pink red oak, just a more blonde uniform color that resembles ripe grain. Major cabinet and millwork companies look for consistent color patterns when running truckload quantities of product to assure what end customers see in samples matches up to the actual item they are getting.
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