Select hardwood?

[Kentuckywindage]

What exactly is Select Hardwood? My kentucky rifle has a select hardwood stock and im just curious to what type of wood that is.

 

[leslie]

My guess is its someone's "selection"from a pile of pallet making hardwood.I have found some very good chunks of various types of hardwood in used junk pallets from back east.Good hardwood is a little hard to come by,don't ask about price, out here where hemlock and fir are king.

 

[tom hargrove]

select hd-wood is a grade that is used to determin the quility of the wood, this means that it can have small pin nots 1/16or less but no structural defects like long check marks, that is a crack running length wise of the peice from kiln drying.also cannot contain any rot -decay or pith - stain or discoloration is admitted in small amounts can =1/8 the total agergateof the peice. the species can be anything from sycamore to maple, depends on the company ,but most limit it to sycamore or maple some ash or birch &beech-

 

What make and who made it? I would ask the factory, or maker if a custom rifle, what kind of tree Selecticus Hardwoodicus is in americanese. Select hardwood could be anything. :hmm:

 

[Norskie]

Beech

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

In the world of muzzleloaders, select hardwood usually means birch or beech, depending on where the gun was made and what was available. Many Spanish and some Italian guns use these woods. While these woods are chosen for cost reasons, they do make serviceable stocks. Many years ago, a friend built a Spanish rifle from a kit, and striped the stock by hand. The beechwood was nearly impossible to tell from maple.

 

[Kentuckywindage]

Its made by traditions. I hardly doubt its Birch. I had a rifle made out of birch and it would crack just looking at it lol. It was really soft to. But this stock is hard and i tried making a line on the stock with my thumb nail and it hardly left a mark. Good quality wood with nice grain. I was just curious to what hardwood was. But thanks for all the responses. I'll email traditions and ask.

 

[djnye]

white birch is somewhat soft, but dried yellow birch is hard like a rock.

take care, daniel

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

If it is that hard, it's probably beechwood. Beech was the wood of choice for military gunstocks in a number of countries. It may not be the prettiest of woods, but is strong enough for about any use you would put a gun to.

 

[MikeFromON]

Any wood species, soft or hard, can be graded as select. You can have select oak or select pine or select aspen or select whatever-you-got. Generally, select describes any piece of wood that is free of any serious defects, including knots, checks, grain runouts, decay, discolouration or fibre inconsistencies. Usually the piece of wood is at least four feet long, because finding little chunks that are perfect is not a big deal, but finding a really beautiful piece that is long enough to make something cool is really quite special.

 

[Birddog6]

In gunstocks, "Select" means whatever they decided to use....... It is a term they use to make something sound special & normally means absolutely nothing orther than enhance the acvertisment. :hmm:

 

[Zonie]

As "Select Hardwood" is the term used in the ad's, it was probably put there by a advertising type of person.

This is the guy who gets paid for thinking things like:

"Hmmmm, the wood. I have to say something about the wood. It's hard to think about wood. Hard Wood! Boy, that was easy. Now, what kind of Hard Wood?
"Common Hard Wood" That doesn't sound good. "REAL Hard Wood!", now that sounds pretty good and lets the buyer know it's not some of that plastic stuff...hmmmm....

Hay, Donna, would you put some different music on the background system and this time would you please select something that I like for a change?...hmmm...."SELECT"!!! That's it!!

"SELECT HARD WOOD!!"

I think I missed my calling. :grin:
zonie

 

[Wehrmacht]

Mike,

I've stayed out of this so far since it's been many years since I've worked in hardwood lumber grades and I can't remember the sequence in grading rules.But.... you can't mix pine in with hardwoods in the accepted grading schemes.Pine stands on it's own in grading,and if I remember correctly there is no "select" grade for pine and other conifers. I think it runs "B and Better,#1,#2 etc as opposed to Shop Grade,Select,etc for hardwoods.Maybe I'm wrong,though!

 

[MikeFromON]

I've seen all types of wood graded as "select and better", #1, #2 etc. but I live in an area where there is a huge amount of softwood and substantially less hardwood, so perhaps they are using hardwood terms to sell their pine and spruce. There could be regional variations in the usage of these terms, or maybe it was different years ago when you were in the business and people have gotten sloppy with their diction now.

 

[Wehrmacht]

Mike,

I'm sure that you are correct about local nomenclature being applied to different wood qualities. You see the same thing with local names for plants. What I know as elderberry,for example,you possibly know by another name! (I use elderberry as an example simply because it is the most geographically wide spread plant east of the Mississippi, growing all the way from south Florida to the Canadian Tundra). The forest products industry has standardized grading rules and nomenclature for different grades,but it's a safe bet that different areas of the country know the same quality by different names :winking:.

And it's sure to get more complicated now that we are importing wood from Europe and Russia! Used to be just the USA and Canada (with a little bit of tropical hardwoods in the mix) but no longer! World trade and the fact that Russia has 42% of all the world's conifer forests is making more of an impact! Wonder if there is any good gunstock material around Moscow :hmm:.

 

[tom hargrove]

the national hardwood lumber assocation has an established set of rules that is the standard for all buying and selling of hard wood lumber and cypress , it does not cover didacoues trees that is a tree that does not shead it leafs in the fall.

 

[Stophel]

Birch, when left "white" is about the same color as maple is. It is almost utterly devoid of any color variation in the wood. The grain is as coarse as most walnut. When it is stained (if it is stained well, which it rarely is) it can look somewhat like incredibly plain, light colored walnut.

Beech can have a tad more yellowish color in the wood, but it is usually stained with a horrible looking pigment stain. Beech is MUCH tighter grained than birch, and the two woods look nothing alike. Beech will have rays in it. Hard flecks that radiate out from the center of the tree. It can be quite gaudy (though usually not nearly as much as Sycamore can be!). European red beech is often used on European guns, and if the wood is left clean, it has a bit of a pinkish color to it (by the way, if left in the sun, like in a window, it will turn VERY yellow), but otherwise is essentially indistinguishable from American beech. When stained, you'll never be able to tell the difference. Beech is always VERY hard, and also hard to work, as it is rather splintery. Birch can be varying degrees of hardness, but I haven't seen any that was really "soft" yet.

If you have rays in the wood, it is beech. If not, more than likely it is birch. "select hardwood" means absolutely nothing. It is used to make the wood sound like it is as good as walnut! :winking:

 

[tom hargrove]

clearly you know nothing about lumber :shake: :rotf:

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

I thought trees that don't shed their leaves are called evergreens and trees that do shed their leaves are termed deciduous trees?

 

[Stophel]

By the way, both birch and beech take VERY well to Aqua Fortis stain, and will usually make a very red color...more red than you get with maple.