In wood, figure refers to the appearance of wood, as seen on a longitudinal surface (side-grain).
In wood, figure refers to the appearance of wood, as seen on a longitudinal surface (side-grain). A figured wood is not plain.
The figure of a particular piece of wood is, in part, due to its grain and, in part, due to the cut, or to innate properties of the wood.
A few of the tropical hardwoods, like the rosewoods, may have a unique figure. Types of figure include:
Amati is the last name of a family of Italian violin makers who lived at Cremona from about 1538 to 1740. Their importance is considered equal to those of the Bergonzi, Guarneri, and Stradivari families. Today, violins created by Nicolò Amati are valued at around $600,000. Because of their age and rarity, Amati instruments are mostly kept in museum or private collections and are seldom played in public.
Joinery is a part of woodworking that involves joining pieces of wood, engineered lumber, or synthetic substitutes, to produce more complex items. Some woodworking joints employ mechanical fasteners, bindings, or adhesives, while others use only wood elements.
Wood carving is a form of woodworking by means of a cutting tool (knife) in one hand or a chisel by two hands or with one hand on a chisel and one hand on a mallet, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine, or in the sculptural ornamentation of a wooden object. The phrase may also refer to the finished product, from individual sculptures to hand-worked mouldings composing part of a tracery.
In gemology, chatoyancy, also called chatoyance or the cat's eye effect, is an optical reflectance effect seen in certain gemstones, woods, and carbon fiber. Coined from the French œil de chat, meaning 'cat's eye'. The chatoyant effect is typically characterized by one or more well-defined bands of reflected light, reminiscent of a cat's eye, which appear to glide across the material's surface as the chatoyant object or observer shifts position.
A hand plane is a tool for shaping wood using muscle power to force the cutting blade over the wood surface. Some rotary power planers are motorized power tools used for the same types of larger tasks, but are unsuitable for fine-scale planing, where a miniature hand plane is used.
Clapboard, also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of those terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping.
Wood shingles are thin, tapered pieces of wood primarily used to cover roofs and walls of buildings to protect them from the weather. Historically shingles, also known as shakes, were split from straight grained, knot free bolts of wood. Today shingles are mostly made by being cut which distinguishes them from shakes, which are made by being split out of a bolt.
Wood grain is the longitudinal arrangement of wood fibers or the pattern resulting from such an arrangement. It has various derived terms refer to different aspects of the fibers or patterns. Wood grain is important in woodworking and it impacts aesthetics.
Wood finishing refers to the process of refining or protecting a wooden surface, especially in the production of furniture where typically it represents between 5 and 30% of manufacturing costs.
In woodworking, veneer refers to thin slices of wood and sometimes bark that typically are glued onto core panels to produce flat panels such as doors, tops and panels for cabinets, parquet floors and parts of furniture. They are also used in marquetry. Plywood consists of three or more layers of veneer. Normally, each is glued with its grain at right angles to adjacent layers for strength. Veneer beading is a thin layer of decorative edging placed around objects, such as jewelry boxes. Veneer is also used to replace decorative papers in wood veneer high pressure laminate.
Go equipment refers to the board, stones, and bowls for the stones required to play the game of Go. The quality and materials used in making Go equipment varies considerably, and the cost varies accordingly from economical to extremely expensive.
Quilt or quilted maple refers to a type of figure in maple wood. It is seen on the tangential plane (flat-sawn) and looks like a wavy "quilted" pattern, often similar to ripples on water. The highest quality quilted figure is found in the Western Big Leaf species of maple. It is a distortion of the grain pattern itself. Prized for its beauty, it is used frequently in the manufacturing of musical instruments, especially guitars.
Flame maple, also known as flamed maple, curly maple, ripple maple, fiddleback or tiger stripe, is a feature of maple in which the growth of the wood fibers is distorted in an undulating chatoyant pattern, producing wavy lines known as "flames". This effect is often mistakenly said to be part of the grain of the wood; it is more accurately called "figure", as the distortion is perpendicular to the grain direction. Prized for its beautiful appearance, it is used frequently in the manufacturing of fine furniture and musical instruments, such as violins, guitars, and bassoons.
The tiger stripes of Enceladus consist of four sub-parallel, linear depressions in the south polar region of the Saturnian moon. First observed on May 20, 2005, by the Cassini spacecraft's Imaging Science Sub-system (ISS) camera, the features are most notable in lower resolution images by their brightness contrast from the surrounding terrain. Higher resolution observations were obtained by Cassini's various instruments during a close flyby of Enceladus on July 14, 2005. These observations revealed the tiger stripes to be low ridges with a central fracture. Observations from the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) instrument showed the tiger stripes to have elevated surface temperatures, indicative of present-day cryovolcanism on Enceladus centered on the tiger stripes.
Tonewood refers to specific wood varieties used for woodwind or acoustic stringed instruments. The word implies that certain species exhibit qualities that enhance acoustic properties of the instruments, but other properties of the wood such as aesthetics and availability have always been considered in the selection of wood for musical instruments. According to Mottola's Cyclopedic Dictionary of Lutherie Terms, tonewood is:
Wood that is used to make stringed musical instruments. The term is often used to indicate wood species that are suitable for stringed musical instruments and, by exclusion, those that are not. But the list of species generally considered to be tonewoods changes constantly and has changed constantly throughout history.
Quarter sawing or quartersawing is a woodworking process that produces quarter-sawn or quarter-cut boards in the rip cutting of logs into lumber. The resulting lumber can also be called radially-sawn or simply quartered. There is widespread confusion between the terms rift sawn and quarter sawn with the terms defined both with opposite meanings and as synonyms.
This glossary of woodworking lists a number of specialized terms and concepts used in woodworking, carpentry, and related disciplines.
Rift sawing is a woodworking process that aims to produce lumber that is less vulnerable to distortion than flat-sawn lumber. Rift-sawing may be done strictly along a log's radials—perpendicular to the annular growth ring orientation or wood grain—or as part of the quarter sawing process.
Ectobius vittiventris, the amber wood cockroach or amber forest cockroach, is a species belonging to the order Blattodea and is a type of wood cockroach originally from southern Europe. It is completely harmless to humans and is not a storage pest, as it only feeds on decomposing plant material and perishes within a few days in human dwellings due to a lack of food. Its original range was south of the Alps, but is now permanently established north of the Alps and in southern Germany.
Curly birch is a variant of the plant species silver birch with a genetic defect that causes the tree to twist on the stem with curls. The annual rings are oriented incorrectly, which gives the wood a fiery appearance. The variant originally comes from Karelia in Finland and Russia. The curliness is passed on in up to 70% of all trees in the next generation. Common spring birch is also sometimes referred to as masonry birch, but one should only use that term for trees that have the real curliness.