Wood Cabinetry

Craftsmen have been making beautiful, functional cabinetry from wood for hundreds of years.  While the building techniques and technology have improved over time, the hardwoods themselves have stood the test of time.  Today, more than ever, hardwoods remain an excellent choice particularly if you want to make environmentally responsible choices.

Misconceptions about the wood industry abound and unfortunately there is a lot of inaccurate information in circulation.  However, the simple bottom line is this: hardwood (and wood generally) is a naturally occurring, abundant, renewable resource.  It really is THE sustainable building material.  If you are interested, the following is an excellent resource about hardwoods - American Hardwood Information Center.  The key aspects that make hardwoods an excellent environmental choice include:

• Trees reproduce naturally and prolifically
• More trees are planted than are harvested each year
• Excellent forest management practices and regulations have resulted in nearly twice as many trees in hardwood forests now as compared to 50 years ago
• Forests are net producers of oxygen using carbon dioxide in the photosynthesis process and young growing trees use more CO2 than mature trees.
• Using woods from Canada and the United States reduces the additional environmental impacts from transporting woods like bamboo, teak and mahogany that are grown in South America or Asia.

Hardwood Components

Today, hardwoods are generally used only for constructing doors and drawer fronts in cabinets.  However, this is really the visible portion of your cabinets and is what gives a cabinet its overall impression and "wow factor".

The table below outlines most of the commonly used hardwoods in making doors and drawer fronts for cabinets with oak and maple constituting probably at least 90% of the volume of hardwood used in Canada.

Species	General Description	Cost	Natural Color and Grain
Red Oak	The sapwood of red oak is white to light brown and the heartwood is a pinkish reddish brown.  The wood is similar in general appearance to white oak, but with a slightly less pronounced figure due to the smaller rays.  The wood is mostly straight-grained, with a coarse texture.  Red oak is the most abundant wood from the oak family.	$
White Oak	The sapwood is light-colored and the heartwood is light to dark brown. White oak is mostly straight-grained with a medium to coarse texture, with longer rays than red oak. White oak therefore has more figure.	$
Clear Alder	Red alder, a relative of birch, is almost white when freshly cut but quickly changes on exposure to air, becoming light brown with a yellow or reddish tinge. Heartwood is formed only in trees of advanced age and there is no visible boundary between sap and heartwood. The wood is fairly straight-grained with a uniform texture.	$$
Knotty Alder	Similar to rustic hickory, knotty alder is less selected and allows for more, larger knots and wider variations in the grain and color of the wood.	$$
Beech	The sapwood is white with a red tinge, while the heartwood is light to dark reddish brown.  The wood is generally straight-grained with a close uniform texture.	$$
Clear Hickory	The hickories are an important group within the Eastern hardwood forests. Botanically they are split into two groups; the true hickories, and the pecan hickories (fruit bearing).  The wood is virtually the same for both and is usually sold together.  Hickory is the hardest, heaviest and strongest American wood.  The sapwood of hickory is white, tinged with inconspicuous fine brown lines while the heartwood is pale to reddish brown.  Both are coarse-textured and the grain is fine, usually straight but can be wavy or irregular.	$$
Rustic Hickory	Rustic hickory gets its name from that "rustic" look of the knots and darker hardwoods that are included.  It is essentially less selected than the clear hickory so as to include wider variations of colors and knots in the wood.	$$
Birch	Birch has a white to yellowish sapwood and light reddish brown heartwood.  The wood is generally straight-grained with a fine uniform texture.  Generally characterized by a plain and often curly or wavy pattern.	$$$
Maple	The sapwood is creamy white with a slight reddish brown tinge and the heartwood varies from light to dark reddish brown. The amount of darker brown heartwood can vary significantly according to growing region. Both sapwood and heartwood can contain pith fleck. The wood has a close fine, uniform texture and is generally straight-grained, but it can also occur as "curly," "fiddleback," and "birds-eye" figure.	$$$
Bird's Eye Maple	Birdseye maple, an extremely rare wood, has a distinctive pattern of small spots resembling birdeyes, hence the name. Birdseye maple is not a species of maple, but rather a phenomenon that occurs in some trees for reasons that are still not understood.	$$$$$
Black Walnut	The sapwood of walnut is creamy white, while the heartwood is light brown to dark chocolate brown, occasionally with a purplish cast and darker streaks.  The wood develops a rich patina that grows more lustrous with age.  Walnut is usually supplied steamed, to darken sapwood.  The wood is generally straight-grained, but sometimes with wavy or curly grain that produces an attractive and decorative figure.  This species produces a greater variety of figure types than any other.	$$$$$
Cherry	The heartwood of cherry varies from rich red to reddish brown and will darken with age and on exposure to light. In contrast, the sapwood is creamy white. The wood has a fine uniform, straight grain, satiny, smooth texture, and may naturally contain brown pith flecks and small gum pockets.	$$$$$
Quarter Sawn White Oak	Quarter sawn is a method of cutting the wood that results in a different pattern than plain or flat sawn.  First, the log is cut into quarters. Then, the quarter is flipped ninety degress back and forth to saw off a plane of wood. This process does not produce any more waste than plain sawing, but it does require some extra time to flip the quarters back and forth. This milling process produces a specialty wood cut called Rift and Quarter Sawn.  The benefits to this cut of wood are straighter grain that is up to 50% more stable than plain sawn, and a superior looking product featuring less variation, longer lengths, and medullary rays.	$$$$$

Legend - $ are the lowest priced hardwoods; $$$$$ are the highest price hardwoods

Engineered Woods and Finishes

There are a few key engineered woods that are used commonly in cabinet products.  Those most frequently used by Camrose Custom Cabinets include the following:

• Particleboard core panels
• Plywood core panels
• Medium density fibreboard
• Melamine finishes
• Veneered finishes

Particleboard Core Panels

Particleboard is an engineered wood product manufactured from wood particles, such as wood chips, sawmill shavings, or even saw dust, and a synthetic resin or other suitable binder, which is pressed and extruded.  Particleboard is a type of fiberboard, a composite material, but it is made up of larger pieces of wood than medium density fibreboard and hardboard.  More recently, graded density particleboard has also evolved. It contains particles that gradually become smaller as they get closer to the surface giving the panel a smoother finished surface.

In its most common form made from inexpensive non-water resistant resins, particleboard is susceptible to water damage and as such, it is commonly covered in a melamine finish.  This provides good water resistance in the context of normal household useage.  As well, it is usually edgebanded with PVC or woodtapes and glue giving these edges a reasonable seal from the elements such as water.

Plywood Core Panels

Plywood is made from thin sheets of wood that are glued together each with its grain at right angles to adjacent layers for greater strength.  The plies are bonded under heat and pressure with strong adhesives.  A common reason for using plywood instead of plain wood is its resistance to cracking, shrinkage, twisting/warping, and its general high degree of strength.  In addition, plywood can be manufactured in sheets far wider than the trees from which it was made.

In cabinet construction, plywood is now used very infrequently for a variety of reasons.  Some customers specify the use of plywood thinking it is somehow a superior material as compared to particleboard.  However, experts consistently indicate this is not the case as particleboard has similar or even superior attributes in terms of strength, warping, water resistance (when comparable adhesives are used in the manufacturing process) but is more economical.

Medium Density Fibreboard

Medium density fiberboard (MDF) is an engineered wood product formed by breaking down softwood into wood fibers and combining it with wax and a resin binder and forming panels by applying high temperature and pressure.  It is much more dense than particle board or plywood.  Unless specially made from water resistant resins, it is similar to particle board and subject to water damage unless properly sealed with melamines, laminates or other similar water resistance material.  Due to its much higher density without superior building properties, it is not a common cabinet building material.  Camrose Custom Cabinets does commonly use it in the construction of countertops due to its superior strength and smooth finish make it an excellent material for laminate countertops.

Melamine Panels

Melamine is actually a short form name for melamine resins which are essentially a thermoset plastic material.  The melamine resin is combined with a decorative paper and laminated on to the surface of particle board to produce a very durable finished material that is relatively resistant to scratches, water and general wear and tear that kitchen cabinets are subject to.  Because of the process where the melamine resin is used with a decorative paper, this means that melamine panels can be produced in an extremely wide variety of colors, grains, patterns and so on.  For kitchen cabinet boxes, the typical colors used are white or a light maple color with light wood grain.  However, they could be produced in literally hundreds of colors, grains and patterns althought these materials are generally all special ordered and produced resulting in much longer manufacturing lead times.  Wood panel suppliers typically stock only a handful of the most commonly requested melamine panels leaving the rest for custom production based on demand.

Melamine is most often applied to particle board panels for the construction of cabinet boxes.  These panels can be melamine both sides or melamine one side with a wood veneer on the other side depending on the finishing required for that cabinet box.

Veneered Panels

While doors and drawer fronts of cabinets may be made of solid hardwood material, the larger panels used in the production of the cabinet boxes are not.  These are made from wood veneers applied to a core panel material like particle board or plywood.  Wood veneer is simply very thin slices of wood glued together to form larger sheets. 

Veneering wood to larger sheets of panel material offers a number of benefits but most importantly it results in a dramatically higher usage of the wood resource.  Veneers are typically less than a millimeter thick so the usable amount of the wood increases probably over 100 fold compared to cutting the tree only into large solid stock material.  This makes the product much more affordable and reduces the amount of the resource used.