Wood Terms - A Lumber Glossary from A - Z

A slot milled in the shape of an upside down “T” to hold special bolts for clamps or jigs.

The property of an adhesive that enables it to form a bond of measurable strength immediately after adhesive and adherent are brought into contact under low pressure.

A cloth permeated with a sticky substance to wipe up the dust from sanding when finishing a project.

The combination of blocks and ropes used in cable logging.

The end portion of a birds-mouth joint which extends beyond the plate when there is a roof overhang.

In cable logging, the anchorage at the outer end of the skyline away from the landing. This is also known as a tailholt.

A piece of wood that has been cut so that it is wider on one edge compared to the other.

The new wood in a tree that lies between the bark and the heartwood. Sapwood is usually lighter in color and becomes heartwood as the tree ages.

A name given to loggers from any Southeastern state.

A type of forest, in terms of species mixture, size, stocking, and harvest age, considered best for a particular site in order to economically produce fiber in the qualities desires on a perpetual basis.

The tendency for a blade to splinter the last part of a piece of wood during crosscutting.

• Golden-brown color to darker chocolate-brown
• Generally straight to wavy grained
• Hard-medium density
• Medium bending strength
• High crushing strength
• Low stiffness and resistance to shock loads
• Pre-boring is necessary for nailing
• Extensively used for ship and boat building, decking, rails, and hatches; furniture, cabinet making, flooring, and garden furniture.

The time from which the machine goes into operation until it is no longer used in any operation. Normally, the unit for technical life length is productive time, expressed in hours.

Dense fiberboard that has been specially treated to increase its durability, strength, density, and moisture resistance.

A pattern. Often a template is made of hardboard and used with a pilot bit to route a shape in a board.

A jig mounted to the bottom of a router that is used to keep the router on the profile of a template when routing with a non-pilot beating bit.

In an adhesively bonded joint, a uni-axial force tending to cause extension of the assembly, or the counteracting force within the assembly the resists extension.

Reaction wood that forms on the upper side of a leaning hardwood tree.

A line used to restrain a balloon in flight; such as the line from a logging balloon to the butt rigging.

The size of the cells in wood, described as ranging from coarse to fine; often confused with grain.

A material that will repeatedly soften when heated and harden when cooled.

A power-fed rotary planer that trims the surface of a board to a certain thickness.

Cuttings made in immature stands in order to stimulate the growth of trees that remain and to increase the total yield of useful material from the stand.

A unit of measurement equal to 1,000 feet of wood having a thickness of one inch.

An arc welding process that sues a non-consumable tungsten electrode to produce the weld. The weld area is protected from atmospheric contamination by a shielding gas, usually an inert gas such as argon, and a filler metal is normally used, though some welds, known as autogenously welds, do not require it.

A method of high-lead cable yarding in which the haul-back line supports the butt rigging and makes it possible to lift the butt rigging and its load over obstacles.

A blade that can be tilted in respect to a vertical position.

A cab on a machine that is hinged on one side and can be tilted back and lowered for transport.

A general term applied to a forest and its products. Sawed lumber more then 4x4 inches in breadth and thickness.

An economic appraisal of the monetary value of a timber stand.

A load-carrying structure of timbers ranging in size from 4x4 and up.

Timber products cut from roundwood and byproducts of wood-manufacturing plants. Roundwood products include logs, bolts, and other round sections cut from gowning stock trees, cull trees, salvable dead trees, tree on non-forest land, noncommercial species, sapling-size trees, and limbwood. Byproducts from primary manufacturing plants include slabs, edging, trimming, mis-cuts, sawdust, shavings, veneer cores and clippings, and screenings of pulpmills that are used as pulp chips or other products.

• Plant Byproducts – Wood products, such as pulpwood chips, obtained incidental to the production of other manufactured products.
• Plant Residues – Wood material from manufacturing plants not utilized as a product.

The net board-foot volume of live sawtimber trees removed annually for forest products, including roundwood products and logging residues, and other removals, such as growing stock trees removed by cultural operations, timber stand improvement work, land clearing, and changes in land use.

The intermediate thinning of a forest stand, prior to it reaching mature rotation age, generally for the purpose of improving growing conditions or controlling stand composition.

Timber still on the stump.

• Volume of Growing Stock – The volume of sound wood in the bole of sawtimber and poletimber from a stump to a 4-inch minimum top diameter outside bark or to the point where the central stem breaks into limbs.
• Volume of Sawtimber – The net volume of the saw log portion of live sawtimber in board feet.

The point of the saw blade tooth that digs in and cuts the work piece.

Technical Life Length.

An indentation designed into the bottom of a cabinet to provide room to allow the user to stand closer to the countertop.

Clamps which can be attached to a base or table to hold work.

A pair of curved arms that pivot like scissors so that a pull on the ring connecting the shorter segments will cause the points on the long segments to bite into the logs. The tongs are activated by the pull on the loading line. Loading tongs without sharp points powered by air or hydraulic cylinders that close on a log.

A joinery method where one board is cut with a protruding “groove” and an identical piece is cut with a matching groove along its edge.

The read side of a saw blade tooth facing away from the direction of the cut.

The angle that measures the amount of space, or clearance between the tooth back and the work piece.

The front side of a saw blade tooth facing toward the direction of the cut.

The shape and geometry of a tooth.

The distance between one tooth tip and the next.

The angle formed by the tooth face and a line perpendicular to the back of the blade.

The side to side bending of teeth. Tooth Set if used to widen the cut and prevent pinching of the blade.

To cut off the unmerchantable top of a tree.

To cut limbs from downed tree tops so that no limbs are more than a specified length along the tree stem.

Attached to the posts and the top rail to support the top rail and balusters. It is also known as the top cap.

The horizontal member installed on the edge; attached to the top of the balusters as well as the posts.

A topographic map. This shows the elevation contours of the ground.

A short level used in deck building to set posts plumb. It is sometimes referred to as a canoe level.

The amount of force that is needed to turn an object such as a screw or bolt.

A centrifugal pump, driven by an engine, that rotates in a case filled with oil.

A screw head requiring a driver in the shape of a star.

A tree with a crown, main stem, and taproot. This does not include the lateral roots.

A quality of wood that permits the material to absorb a relatively large amount of energy, to withstand repeated shocks, and to undergo considerable deformation before breaking.

A steel mast used instead of a spar tree at the landing for cable yarding.

The principal water-conducting elements of the xylem, mostly vessel members and tracheids.

An imperforate wood cell with bordered pits.

A powered vehicle for off-the-road hauling. May be mounted on crawler tracks of wheels. A short wheelbase truck used to haul trailers.

Lifting an entire load of logs from one mode of transportation and placing the logs on another carrier.

A transit level is a means of measuring, or surveying as it is also known, the location, elevation, degree of inclination of any object such as buildings, trees, fences, relative to the placement of the transit.

The walking surface of each step in a stairway.

Wood products infused or coated with any variety of stains or chemicals designed to retard decay, deterioration, fire, or insect damage due to weather.

A woody plant that usually grows to at least 20 feet in height at maturity and commonly has a single trunk with no branches within three feet of the ground.

• All Live Trees – Growing stock, rough, and rotten trees one inch in D.B.H and larger.
• Growing-Stock Trees – Live trees of any size except rough and rotten trees.
• Poletimber Trees – Live, vigorous, and well-formed trees of commercial species at least 5.0 inches in D.B.H but smaller than sawtimber size.
• Rotten Trees – Live trees of any size that do not contain a merchantable 12-foot saw log, now or prospectively, because of rot (more than 50 percent of the cull volume of the tree is or will become rotten). Only commercial species are considered.
• Rough Trees – Live trees of any size that do not contain at least one merchantable 12-foot saw log, now or prospectively, because of roughness or poor form. Only commercial species are considered.
• Saplings – Live, vigorous, and well-formed trees of commercial species, usually 1.0 to 5.0 inches in D.B.H.
• Sawtimber Trees – Live trees of commercial species containing at least one 12-foot saw log or two noncontiguous saw logs, each at least eight feet long, and having a maximum allowable defect of 67 percent of the gross tree volume. Softwoods must be at least 9.0 inches in D.B.H. and hardwood at least 11.0 inches in D.B.H.
• Seedlings – Live trees of commercial species with diameters less than 1.0 inch that are expected to survive (not diseased and not heavily damaged by logging, browsing, or fire). Only softwood seedlings over six inches tall and hardwood seedlings over one foot tall are counted.
• Short-Log Trees – Sawtimber-sized trees of commercial species that contain at least one merchantable eight-foot to 11-foot saw log (but not a 12-foot saw long).

A parcel of land on which trees are planted, cultured, managed, and harvested as a crop. Also, privately owned, managed forest area that has been certified as a tree farm by the American Forest Institute.

The application of silvicultural practices for the perpetual use of commercial timber crops. Includes all activities from stand establishment through delivery of commercial timber (logs) to a log yard at the initial commercial product processing facility.

The entire tree, excluding the Unmerchantable top and limbs.

Felling and transporting the trimmed bole in one piece, whenever possible, for crosscutting at a landing or mill.

A device in the shape of a segment of a circle used to support the skyline from a spar tree.

A framework of thin lumber designed to support climbing plants.

The finish materials in a building, such as moldings, applied around openings or at the floor and ceiling of rooms.

Extra length allowed when bucking logs or estimating volume to account for less from end injuries or uneven cuts.

A three-drum yarder.

Is a woodworking or metal working tool used for marking and measuring a piece of wood. The square refers to the tool’s primary use of measuring the accuracy of a right angle; to try a surface is to check its straightness or correspondence to an adjoining surface.

A traveling block used in a skyline.

Also known as a tree-nail, a turned and tapered hardwood dowel used for securing timber joints.

An assembly of members, such as beams, bars, and rods combined to form a rigid framework. All members are interconnected to form triangles.

Timber Stand Improvement.

• Heartwood is a beautiful pink-yellow with stripes varying in shades of salmon pink to rose red
• Straight, but more often irregular grain
• Moderately fine texture
• Hard, heavy, compact hardwood
• Extremely hard to work with
• Used for turnery, fancy woodenware, cabinets, caskets, jewelry boxes, marquetry, and small decorative items.

A very common material on any sort of cutting tool. Saw blades, drill bits, and router bits are made of carbide.

An air pump designed to put more air into engine cylinders; pump is driven by the exhaust heat.

Logs yarded in any one top. Load of logs brought in by skidding unit during a single trip, landing to stump and return, made by a tractor or other skidding device.

The time it takes for a truck or tractor to be loaded and unloaded.

A square with a steel tongue in a wooden handle.

An area of sufficient size, adjacent to a single lane road, that serves as a temporary parking place for vehicles so that oncoming vehicles may pass.

Also called a tuck or through tenon; a mortise and tenon joint in which the tenon goes all the way through the corresponding mortise.

Warping in lumber where the ends twist in opposite directions.

“L” skid logs or tree lengths on the without an antifriction device.

A forest stand in which two height classes of considerable difference occur: the over-story and understory. Does not apply to a forest in the process of reproduction, in which the appearance of two stories is due to a seed tree or shelter-wood cut before the final cut.

A waterproof foam-like substance that forms in the pores of certain species of wood. The Tyloses help to make the wood less permeable to liquids. It is common in White Oak and makes the wood ideal for wine barrels.