Species for Alpine Homes

The Forest Products Laboratory publishes two sets of figures for every commercial species. The first is shrinkage from green to oven-dry, radial and tangential and volumetric, which describes the wood’s whole range. The second, more useful for cabinetry, is the dimensional-change coefficient for the 6 to 14 percent moisture content range — change per 1 percent change in moisture content, referenced to the dimension at 10 percent. The companion guide on altitude and moisture explains why a heated Sierra interior lives at the dry end of that range; this guide runs the five usual mountain species through it.

Ranked by the tangential coefficient, which governs a flat-sawn board’s width: black cherry 0.00248, red alder 0.00256, coast-type Douglas-fir 0.00267, black walnut 0.00274, and commercial white oak well clear of the rest at 0.00365. Ranked by the radial coefficient, which governs a quartersawn board: cherry 0.00126, alder 0.00151, Douglas-fir 0.00165, white oak 0.00180, walnut 0.00190. The order changes. Oak goes from the most active to the fourth most active simply by being cut differently, and walnut — calm flat-sawn — becomes the most active of the five when quartered, because its two coefficients are so close together.

Ranked by what the room wants is a different exercise altogether, and a legitimate one. Knotty alder is the lodge vocabulary; rift and quartersawn white oak is the mountain-modern vocabulary; reclaimed fir is the vocabulary of a cabin that wants to look as though it was always there; walnut and cherry are the warm, figured counterpoints to stone, steel and glass in a contemporary lakefront house. The craft is in reconciling the two lists — choosing the cut, the panel construction and the component widths so that the species the owner wants behaves like the species the house needs.

The Forest Products Laboratory puts white oak’s shrinkage at 5.6 percent radial and 10.5 percent tangential, green to oven-dry, and its coefficients at 0.00180 radial and 0.00365 tangential — a tangential-to-radial ratio of roughly two to one. That ratio is the entire practical argument. Over a three-point swing a 24-inch flat-sawn oak panel changes about 0.26 inch, just over a quarter; the same panel quartersawn changes about 0.13. A rift-sawn board, cut at an angle between the two, lands between those figures and shows the straight, fleck-free grain that most contemporary mountain kitchens are after.

The Architectural Woodwork Standards require the method of slicing to be specified for wood casework rather than left to the shop, which is the mechanism by which a homeowner or designer actually gets quartered oak rather than hoping for it. A specification that says white oak and nothing else is a specification for whatever the lumber yard has; a specification that says rift or quartersawn white oak is a specification for a particular movement coefficient as well as a particular look.

The look itself is why the species dominates the lakefront rebuilds on the North Shore and around Incline Village. Rift oak is straight, pale, quiet and modern; it sits comfortably against black steel, honed stone and large glazing without competing for attention. Quartered oak adds the ray fleck, a silvery figure that reads as traditional in a Craftsman context and as texture in a contemporary one. Both are available in long, clear lengths that suit the tall pantry doors and wide island faces of a great-room kitchen — the very components where the movement arithmetic matters most.

Black walnut shrinks 5.5 percent radial and 7.8 percent tangential, green to oven-dry, and carries coefficients of 0.00190 and 0.00274. Those two numbers are closer together than for any other species here — a tangential-to-radial ratio of roughly 1.4 — which means walnut distorts less in section even when flat-sawn, and that quartersawing buys it comparatively little. A 24-inch flat-sawn walnut panel changes about 0.20 inch over the three-point swing; quartersawn, about 0.14. In practice walnut is chosen flat-sawn for its figure and behaves well regardless, which is why it is so often the species for wide solid components such as a counter-height island face or a run of drawer fronts.

Black cherry shrinks 3.7 percent radial and 7.1 percent tangential — the lowest radial figure on the list — with coefficients of 0.00126 and 0.00248, the lowest of the five in both directions. Over the three-point swing a 24-inch flat-sawn cherry panel changes about 0.18 inch and a quartersawn one about 0.09, the smallest figure in the table. Cherry is dimensionally the most forgiving species a mountain kitchen can be built from.

Its design constraint is light. Cherry darkens with exposure, markedly and unevenly if some surfaces are shaded and others are not, and a lakefront great room is glazed to the view precisely so that light pours in. A cherry kitchen in that room will deepen toward red-brown over its first seasons and will show a pale ghost wherever a cutting board or a canister stood in the sun. Owners who want that patina choose cherry for it; owners who want the colour they saw on the sample door should be told what the window will do.