Overall, I have nothing good to say about pin oaks, except that they grow big, tall and straight. The truth is that the trunks typically contain only 8′ of clear lumber near the ground, with the remainder being full of knots from previously trimmed branches. Since the trees are usually open grown and well pruned, the always straight, always perfectly upright trunks appear to contain up to 30′-40′ of clear lumber. The lumber typically also sports bad color, bad smell (commonly referred to as “piss” oak by local tree guys), and many more knots than are outwardly apparent. The difference is night and day, with the higher growth ring count looking much more refined and not so clunky.Įven if the wood stayed together and for some reason the growth rings weren’t so wide, pin oak would still be far from a great hardwood. That same 8″ wide board, if quartersawn, will probably show about 20-25 rings, where a high quality white oak board will show 60-80 rings. It looks more like the cheapest of spiral cut plywood for sheathing the side of your house, instead of quality hardwood lumber for building fine furniture. Imagine an 8″ wide flat sawn board that may only show a couple of annual rings on the face. Whether flatsawn or quartersawn, red oak is already known for its open, in-your-face, grain, and pin oak is ten times worse. It was planted because the trees grow to a large, stately appearance quickly, and that means big, wide growth rings.īig growth rings mean a coarse textured wood, no matter how you cut it. It isn’t uncommon for a 36″ diameter log to have only started growing 45 years ago. Because the tree grows so fast, putting on up to 1″ in diameter per year, the logs get big in a hurry too. The cost is that all of the super-wide lumber will have super-wide growth rings, rings that may be up to 1/2″ or more in width. This, you may indeed have, but it comes at a cost. One of the main attractions for pin oak is the giant size and the promise of a never-ending bunk of lumber comprised of super-wide boards. You may have lumber, but you probably don’t have great lumber. So, let’s say you find a pin oak that is solid, with no ring shake, then it is all clear sailing, right? Far from it. Even if the ring shake isn’t bad enough to make the lumber actually break, it very often leaves at least one fancy break line somewhere in a board where you would rather not have it. Needless to say this is frustrating, especially if you are counting on that lumber for a project and then end up with no wood to work. Sometimes, it won’t be until the lumber has been fully processed and dried for it to start falling apart. The beauty of ring shake is that it can’t be seen from the outside of the log and it won’t always be visible even early in the milling process. The problem is that many pin oak trees suffer from ring shake, which is where the rings of the tree peel apart like an onion, making that section of lumber nearly unusable. And funny enough, pin oak often falls short of even that low requirement. Pin oak is not milled and sold commercially under the name red oak, and as far as I know, is only used for low-grade products like pallets and blocking, where the only requirement is that it be made of wood that will stay together. This pin oak is less than 20 years old and is already over 15″ in diameter.Īs I mentioned, pin oak is in the red oak family, but that is about the only relationship it has to any decent red oak lumber.
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