32 WOOD AND FOREST. 



THE GRAIN OF WOOD. 



The term "grain" is used in a variety of meanings which is likely 

 to cause confusion. This confusion may be avoided, at least in part, 

 by distinguishing between grain and texture, using the word grain 

 to refer to the arrangement or direction of the wood elements, and the 

 word texture to refer to their size or quality, so far as these affect the 

 structural character of the wood. Hence such qualifying adjectives 

 as coarse and fine, even and uneven, straight and cross, including 

 spiral, twisted, wavy, curly, mottled, bird's-eye, gnarly, etc., may all 

 be applied to grain to give it definite meaning, while to texture the 

 proper modifying adjectives are coarse and fine, even and uneven. 



Usually the word grain means the pattern or "figure" formed by 

 the distinction between the spring wood and the summer wood. If 

 the annual rings are wide, the wood is, in common usage, called 

 "coarse grained," if narrow, "fine grained," so that of two trees of 

 the same species, one may be coarse grained and the other fine 

 grained, depending solely on the accident of fast or slow growth. 



The terms coarse grain and fine grain are also frequently used to 

 distinguish such ring-porous woods as have large prominent pores, 

 like chestnut and ash, from those having small or no pores, as cherry 

 and lignum vitae. A better expression in this case would be coarse 

 and fine textured. When such coarse textured woods are stained, the 

 large pores in the spring wood absorb more stain than the smaller 

 elements in the summer wood, and hence the former part appears 

 darker. In the "fine grained" (or better, fine textured,) woods the 

 pores are absent or are small and scattered, and the wood is hard, so 

 that they are capable of taking a high polish. This indicates the 

 meaning of the words coarse and fine in the mind of the cabinet- 

 maker, the reference being primarily to texture. 



If the elements of which a wood are composed are of approxi- 

 mately uniform size, it would be said to have a uniform texture, as 

 in white pine, while uniform grain would mean, that the elements, 

 tho of varying sizes, were evenly distributed, as in the diffuse-porous 

 woods. 



The term "grain" also refers to the regularity of the wood struc- 

 ture. An ideal tree would be composed of a succession of regular 

 cones, but few trees are truly circular in cross-section and even in 

 those that are circular, the pith is rarely in the center, showing that 



