Pine for Chair Seats

[Jason Lester]

I'm simultaneously making Curtis Buchanan's Democratic Chair and Christopher Schwarz's Curved Back Stick Chair. This is my first time carving a seat. I bought what I thought was white pine, but after carving the stick chair seat today, I'm thinking it is yellow pine instead. There's a dramatic difference between the early and late wood and it's much harder to carve than the videos I've watched. Is there an easy way to identify the two from each other?

[Luke Dupont]

Yellow pine has a huge contrast between the light and dark (early / late?) wood; the light wood is very light in color and soft, and the dark color is a really contrasting, really dark brownish-orangish color and super hard in contrast to the light wood. It's a bit tough to work, especially if you are carving, I imagine, because of the inconsistency in hardness.

It sounds like you have yellow pine, yes.

That said, yellow pine is great as a cheap softwood substitute for applications where you want more mass and a little more hardness than regular pine. That's why it's so popular for workbenches.

[Jason Lester]

Here's a pic of the democratic chair seat, I'm pretty sure it is yellow instead of white.

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The stick chair wasn't too bad, just a lot of tear out. I had to use the scraper and sander after the scorp to get it smoothed out decently. I haven't been able to get a travisher yet.

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The other one is a more complex carve, so I'm not looking forward to it!

[Luke Dupont]

Here's a pic of the democratic chair seat, I'm pretty sure it is yellow instead of white.

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The stick chair wasn't too bad, just a lot of tear out. I had to use the scraper and sander after the scorp to get it smoothed out decently. I haven't been able to get a travisher yet.

474081

The other one is a more complex carve, so I'm not looking forward to it!


Yep, that looks like yellow pine. Used it all the time as I grew up in the deep South where they're literally everywhere.

At first I hated the stuff, but I got to liking it after a while. It grows on you as you learn to work with it and get better at woodworking and tuning up your tools in general.

It's ideal for things like workbenches and rustic or outdoor furniture, or as a substitute for heavy and semihardish wood where you don't want to use a much more expensive hardwood.

[Tom Bender]

There are many kinds of Pine and each can be had in a variety of conditions. What you want is slow growth with early and late wood about the same hardness. I have used some nice Sugar Pine. Something like Aspen or Poplar might be better for seats. With it's less distinct grain you can probably get away with glued up blanks.
What you don't want is construction lumber.

[Andrew Seemann]

It could possibly be Red Pine, Jack Pine, or some of the other species that grow intermixed with White Pine and sometimes get sold with or as White Pine. Some of those are fairly hard. Jack is technically a yellow pine, and kind of a bugger to work with. Jack Pine tends to be knotty, although the lumber does resemble your seats pretty close.

[John C Cox]

Southern Yellow Pine is good stuff, with a density and strength properties that exceeds many hardwoods. It's used in furniture all the time.

I would not hesitate to use it for a chair seat, as SYP is considerably less fussy about taking dents and boo-boos than white pine or spruce. Think car keys, buttons and rivets on clothes, and even silverware. You gotta baby the soft stuff or it will end up full of boo-boos beat into it, where yellow pine trundles happily along.

White pine tends to be softer and less dense, sort of in the range of Spruce. More like what most people are accustomed to with construction lumber.

The easiest way to give yourself a better than average guess is to look at the stampings on the dimensional lumber it came out of... SPF is Spruce, Pine or Fir - generally the soft stuff we're accustomed to. SYP is southern yellow pine. DF or Doug Fir is Douglas Fir... Good stuff, but also quite hard and dense... WF is white fir, softer and splitty, more like spruce. Hem is Hemlock, and so forth.

The trick with hand tool working soft woods is that Sharp trumps all else. They don't work well with half dull edges that will go on and on in Cherry or Walnut. Those edges tend to mush the wood and leave stringy, rough cuts. Strop often, don't neglect sharpening. Quick touch up's go a long way.