| Scots Pine produces a fine grained timber often referred to as
Redwood. The other conifers mentioned above produce the softwood known as
whitewood. Redwood is a denser timber than whitewood, with a closer grain,
that has very few defects. A typical Redwood is Southern yellow Pine. Resin
can cause gumming of saws and other tools used for cutting.
A typical use of Southern Yellow Pine Softwood Decking.
Sothern Yellow Pine - sometimes known as Pitch Pine - is
manufactured from Pine species including long leaved Pine. It has good nail
holding properties, and as it dries so the nail holding properties increase.
One drawback of this particular timber is the fact that the resin can repel
other treatments, and is particularly resinous around some knots. This
quality softwood is used for decking timber extensively in the USA. It is
straight, wide grained and easy to work.
The Yew tree produces a very hard wood, but as a conifer, it is classed
as softwood. It is not used for decking. Some softwoods can be more dense
than hardwoods!
To complicate things even further, Balsa wood which most
will know to be a very soft and light wood, is in fact a hardwood - coming
from a broadleaf (flowering) tree. Conifers don't flower in the real sense!
Redwood is invariably more expensive than whitewood a/ because of market
demands and b/ because a Pine tree has a slower growth rate than a Fir or
Spruce.
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