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OAK, RED

a note about oaks There is universal agreement that all oaks belong to the genus Quercus of the family Fagaceae but beyond that there are differing reports on the breakdown. The most common seems to be this: Leucobalanus, the white oaks, are further subdivided into the chestnut oaks and the rest of the white oaks. Erythrobalanus, the red oaks, are further subdivided into the live oaks and the rest of the red oaks. (some reports consider the live oaks to be a third category, with red and white) Depending on the authority, there are somewhere between 250 and 900 different subdivisions in the oak family. For woodworkers, what matters is this: the oaks that grow in America are sold only as red or white, not live or chestnut, so I have made no other distinction. Botanists care about the distinction but woodworkers apparently have no reason to. Another oak commonly sold in America is English brown oak; this is a form of European oak (Quercus petrae) and I have broken it out separately. There are some other woods that use the name oak (some of which I have also broken out separately), but which are not actually oaks. None of these are of the genus Quercus. These include sheoak, fishtail oak, Australian oak, Tasmanian oak, New Guinea oak and various varieties of "silky oak".

a note about red oak from my experience: there may be more porous woods than red oak but I am not aware of them. The vessels in red oak are so large that it is common, in my experience with plain cut boards, to have glue come oozing out of the pores several inches away from where the glue was applied. That is, if you take two plain cut red oak planks and press them against each other with a big blob of glue stopping three inches away from the end, it would not be surprizing to see glue oozing out of the pores at the end. At one inch away it would be surprizing NOT to see glue oozing out of the pores. This messed up the finish on one of my first oak projects because I couldn't get rid of enough of the unexpected glue at a butt end and the subsequent polyurethane cover did not go on at all evenly, leaving a blotchy look to one area.

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my samples --- colors are accurate throughout


red oak planks in a lumber yard showing a range of color and grain variety. The first pic covers an area about 5 feet by 5 feet and the second an area of about 2 feet by 2 feet. Both enlargements are present.


planks photographed at a lumber yard


plain sawn plank and end grain


end grain closeup of the piece directly above


plain sawn plank and end grain


two more plainsawn red oak boards. color is very accurate


two planks of spalted oak cut from the pieces give to me by John Saxon. The one on the bottom shows up MUCH more clearly in the enlargement.


end grain of the two pices


end grain closeups of each


plank shot at a lumber yard --- grain is more accurately shown in the enlargements


flat cut veneer. The wood is slightly lighter and slightly more red than shown here.


flat cut veneer


flat cut veneer and closeup of the same piece


A quartersawn board and a piece of quartersawn thick (1/12th inch) veneer. Color is very accurate on both --- the rays on the board show up much better on the 2nd enlargement. Although the veneer is a full quartersawn cut, the ray flakes are clear but less pronounced than is sometimes the case. See for example, the two veneer pieces directly below which have very pronounced rays.


two pieces of quartersawn veneer with excellent flaky ray figure. The colors, which as you can see differ substantially, are accurate on both.


quartersawn flaky red oak veneer


rift cut flaky red oak veneer


rift cut thick veneer (1/12th inch) clearly showing rays but of course they are only partial since it is rift cut. The color is very accurate, showing how hard it can sometimes be to tell red oak from white oak by color alone (that is, this piece could easily pass for white oak unless you can look at the pores up close).


flat cut curly veneer --- the curl is weak but it is somewhat stronger than what shows up in these pics.


flat cut curly red oak veneer sheet and closeup


rift cut curly veneer --- depending on the viewing angle, the curl shows up better than it does in these head-on pics.

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NOTE: There are various views directly below of 3 spalted red oak planks. All three of these were contributed to the site by John Saxon of The Cedar Store from whom I regularlly buy excellent quality aromatic red cedar. My profuse thanks to John for this contribution.


both sides of a pair of spalted planks


closeups of both sides of the planks above


both sides of a spalted plank


closeup of one side of the plank directly above

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web pics


a weathered plank


planks --- almost all are flat cut


quartersawn planks


planks that were listed, with the kind of blatant stupidity that is widespread on the internet, as quartersawn when they are obviously flat cut. Also, these have obviously been moistened for the pics.


rift cut planks


curly planks


quartersawn curly planks


very nice curly plank that was moistened for the pic


figured plank


flat cut veneer


figured veneer


curly veneer


curly veneer sheets that show up much better in the enlargements; the top two are flat cut and the bottom one is quartersawn


rift cut veneer showing almost no ray pattern at all


rift cut veneer with some ray pattern


quartersawn veneer


veneer, all from the same vendor --- none of this was listed as curly oak, although some of it obviously is


veneer sheet closeups with both levels of enlargement --- the first sheet is clearly curly oak, but was not listed as such


believeable figure, unlikely color. the first pic is a little too light and the second is ridiculously red.


quartersawn, showing rays in the first three, not in the next two. I have no confidence in the color of any of these.


quartersawn veneer with nice ray patterns; the color of the 2nd one is too washed out to be believable


burl veneer


a web pic included just to show how unreal some web pictures get. It's as though someone said "Wull, it's called RED oak, so I reckon we oughta make the picture RED, huh Vern?" Aside from the bogus color, the pic looks to be of a really nice piece of oak with some interesting and unusual (for oak) curl in it that you can see better if you enlarge.


quilted flat cut veneer --- see comments with sample directly below


"figured" veneer. obviously the same kind of figure as the "quilted" veneer directly above, which is just another example of how terms are used loosely, incorrectly, inconsistently, and somewhat arbitrarily on the Internet. I think "figured" is a more correct term in this case than "quilted". For a real quilted look, see "maple, quilted" or the quilted section of the sapele page.


fiddleback red oak, or so says the vendor. Since the curl doesn't really run reliably all the way across the piece, this is technically just curly, not fiddleback. It IS an unusually tight curl for oak, however.


fiddleback red oak where the curl DOES run all the way across the wood


listed as pomelle veneer; I'm dubious about the color


spalted plank and closeup


spalted plank

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red oak bowls


small stool made from red oak