Pine
Also called: scots pine, yellow pine, pitch pine, white pine, red pine, parana pine
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Pine is the trade name for a large family of softwoods, covering dozens of separate species that vary enormously in weight, strength and looks. Some pines are prized for interior joinery precisely because they are soft and easy to work; others are picked for structural framing because they are strong for their weight.
Telling one pine from another
American yellow pine has a soft, even grain, and can be recognised by short, dark, hair-like streaks running along the grain, visible on a planed face. Pitch pine is known instead by its straight grain, a scarcity of large loose knots, and a high resin content; that resin made it hard to work, and woodworkers kept their tools coated in oil or grease to manage it. Southern yellow pine is a standard example of a wood with markedly uneven grain, meaning the density of its growth rings contrasts strongly from one ring to the next. The European timber trade sorted its own softwoods into red deal and white deal, general terms for pine boards graded by which northern forest they came from. Yellow pine was rated weaker than red deal, but unlike white deal it did not tend to warp.
Named varieties
Of the roughly ten trade varieties of hard pine, only about five were regarded as commercially important, and of those Georgia pine was the most widely used. Two Southern pines were often confused with each other: loblolly pine is regularly mistaken for long-leaf pine, but ranks below it in hardness, weight, grain fineness, ring width, strength and durability. Shortleaf and long-leaf pine, prized for high strength and stiffness, were among the most popular structural timbers in the country. Red pine, by contrast, rated only moderate on every measure: weight, strength, stiffness, softness, and resistance to sudden shock. Some pines carried a strong regional identity. What Canadians called Norway pine was the same wood known as yellow pine in Nova Scotia, and it yielded deals of varying quality depending on the district. Almost all western white pine became lumber for building work, matches, boxes, patterns and millwork items such as window sashes and door framing. Virginia pine served general lumber, railway crossties, mine timbering and pulpwood. One further pine, its identity not given in the record, closely resembled the Baltic timbers known as Memel or Dantzig pine in appearance, though it proved easier to work; another, also unnamed, was introduced into Britain as an article of commerce early in the nineteenth century and went on to replace Baltic timber for the same purposes.
Choosing and using pine
Top-grade pine cost more than any other softwood used in joinery. Yellow pine alone supplied material for a huge range of furniture, and, like mahogany, it was mainly kept for interior fittings rather than exposed to the weather. For interior trim generally, builders had a choice among cypress, chestnut, fir, North Carolina pine, long-leaf yellow pine, whitewood, or white pine; the softer pines, such as white pine, were also the standard choice for exterior trim lumber. Modern white pine, grown in third- or fourth-growth forest, is weaker and less clear than the original virgin-growth timber, and because it is structurally weaker it needs larger beam cross-sections than beams cut from other species.