WHND

[OneWithWood]

WHND is a category in the White Oak section of the Hardwood Market Report.  It only lists 5/4 and 4/4 sizes and is considerably less money than the rest of the white oak.

I have no clue what the category is.  Would someone please enlighten me?

[beenthere]

WHND
Worm Holes No Defect

[Ron Wenrich]

WHND = worm hole no defect

You'll also see it in the soft maple markets.  That ambrosia maple is considered wormy in the trade.

I think you see more of the worm in chestnut oak than you do in white oak. 

[Tom]

........and they charge less for it?

Haven't these guys taken a marketing course?   SELL!!   SELL!!  :D

Charge for the holes.  ;D

[Ron Wenrich]

Well, the American public has it in their head that furniture, cabinets and flooring is supposed to be blemish free.  Bud knots can give you all kinds of headaches when it comes to grading.  Some guys will take it, others won't.  Same goes for mineral.

Of course, industry doesn't put out anything but blemish free, so maybe there is a market.  The WHND stuff is OK for painted stock and interior parts.

I have seen some knotty oak cabinets, which I thought looked good.  The most interesting grain patterns involve knots.  You just won't see that kind of cabinets used in one of those 2500+ sq ft mansions they build nowadays. 

[OneWithWood]

Thanks, guys.  I had the no defect part but for some reason I could not come up with the worm hole bit.  If it had been maple I might have sussed it out  :P

[metalspinner]

My friend just finished a cabin in the mountains out here.  He had us over to show off a bit. He said his kitchen cabinets were made with "wormy chestnut".  It looked an awful lot like beetley red oak to me.  I kept my mouth shut.

[WDH]

Beetley red oak?  That is a good one.  Does that mean they were beet red in color  ;).  Could be the begining of a new marketing campaign  :-\.  Beetley red oak does bring up some interesting visual imagination.  Hopefully, it does not come with bugs in situ.  Tom, is it OK to call a beetle a bug?

[Tom]

Not technically, WDH.  Bugs are generally considered to be Hemiptera  (half-winged).

it includes stink bugs and the like.

Beetles are nature's Tanks.  Fully armored like an Army Tank they are Coleoptera.  There forewings are fully hardened into coverings called Elytra.s  It's the beetles that are notorious for their attacks on plant life.

[solodan]

  You just won't see that kind of cabinets used in one of those 2500+ sq ft mansions they build nowadays. 

If oak was in right now out west, this is what people would be using.Wormy blue and red stained pine is really in out here, cause you can't just go get it at the box store, and it is grown locally. I have even seen people put pine and doug fir floors in that still had the circle marks in them. ??? I have done beams and mouldings this way too, and mouldings and siding with live edge. This was all stuff that was associated with small cabins in the mountains, but now the cabins are growing to 5, or 6, 0r 7000 sf at about $400/sf I have no idea where so many people are getting this kind of money ???. The more I jack my prices up the busier I seem to get. ;D I think that anything has a potential market.

[thecfarm]

Some people like to say,"Do you know how much that cost?"And there are some  people that think well,it has to be good it at that price.Some people make way too much money.

[Ron Wenrich]

Just because the industry doesn't have a market for it, it doesn't mean there isn't a niche market.  The biggest problem is the volume that can be bought.  Denim pine and knotty pine are 2 examples of lumber with a defect that has found a market, but there is sufficient volume.

Back when the gypsy moth went through PA, we had mountains of dead red oak.  This was at a time when red oak was very hot.  After the moth, the oaks were affected with oak borers and a bunch of other bugs. 

I was with one sawmiller who happened to own a restaurant.  He had refinished a lot of his woodwork with wormy oak.  He actually got a few buyers interested in it, but he couldn't guarantee any volume.  They were looking on the lines of a trailerload a week, minimum. 

I've seen sawmarks on beams and the like.  They used to take lumber and flail it with chains in order to give it a distressed look.  I haven't seen that for quite some time. 

[Cedarman]

When I got an e-mail titled ugly cedar, it had me wondering.  They wanted cooked, gnarly, bent, bowed.  Anything but a nice straight log.  We did our best. 

Go to the Bronx zoo to see the walkway.

There is a cedar fence near Chicago with boards that are #8 common they looked so bad.  Barked edges, holes, cracks.  Their specs.

Remember, most wealthy people have everything, except the very unusual.  They want one of a kind things.

[LT40HDD51]

Denim pine  :D :D :D I laughed when I first heard that one  ;D. Anything to sell to the yuppies. Wait for heat and humidity and close-stack er  ;)

I once sharpened some blades for a guy who was restoring an old barn. He wanted a few teeth on each side set too far out so they would make gouges up the board. I spaced them unevenly so it didnt look so "on purpose"...

[oakiemac]

A kind of follow up question: Is Ambrosia Maple just a fancy word for wormy maple? I have never heard of an Ambrosia maple tree.

[metalspinner]

Is Ambrosia Maple just a fancy word for wormy maple? I have never heard of an Ambrosia maple tree.

Yes.  However, it is caused by the Ambrosia Beetle, not a worm.

[WDH]

If you have ever walked through a pine forest that has been attacked by pine bark beetles and you hear a "chewing" sound, even though the crowns on the trees are still green, that is Ambrosia Beetles.   The ambrosia beetles are are not the ones that kill the tree, that is the bark beetles, but they are opportunists and move in after the bark beetle attack.

After they bore into the soft maple trees, they introduce a fungus that gives the hole a nice blue-green coloration in soft maple.  I guess the ambrosia beetles really like soft maple.  I don't think that they kill the maple do they? 

[Ron Wenrich]

Sure.  Look at the thread on box elder.  Of course, that's a type of maple.  I've also seen some occasional wormy board in sugar maple and Norway maple.  But, not very often.

Tulip poplar also gets some worm streak.  My understanding is that is from the Columbian beetle, and not the Ambrosia.