White oak
Olive-tan and closed-pored, the oak that keeps water out.
lbf on the Janka scale
Inside the range we like for boards
Hard maple is 100 lbf harder than white oak, and sits inside the board range too.
Color
Light to medium brown with an olive cast; the paler sapwood not sharply divided from it
Where it came from
- Dried
- Kiln dried before anything is cut from it.
More about white oak at The Wood Database · Wood data: The Wood Database (Eric Meier)
White oak looks like its red cousin at a glance and behaves nothing like it. Its big pores are plugged from the inside with tyloses — a growth the tree makes that seals each vessel shut. That one difference is why barrels hold whiskey and boats hold water. We use it for furniture and signs, where a wood that keeps water out earns its place.
Harder than walnut, harder than ash, and durable enough that fence posts of it outlast the fence. Quartersawn, the medullary rays break the surface as long pale flecks, the figure people know from Mission furniture.
How it ages
The olive cast warms toward honey over the years and the ray fleck, if the piece has any, gets more obvious as the ground around it darkens. It takes oil evenly and does not blotch.
Knife feel
We do not make boards from it. It would take a knife well, and the sealed pores would shed a wet wipe, but our white oak goes into furniture and signs.
The bench is empty.
White oak comes to the bench kiln dried and ready. See what came off the bench, or ask us to build something in white oak.