How to use the wood comparer and finder
By Lucas Anderson · Published · Data: Wood Handbook 2010
The TimberLedger comparer sets up to three woods side by side on eight measures from the Wood Handbook, and its finder lists every wood within the hardness, density and shrinkage limits you set. This guide walks through both with real examples, and explains how the bars and ranks are scaled.
Opening the comparer
The comparer lives at /compare/ and is linked from the top of the home page and from every species page. A species page opens it with that wood already filled in, so “compare this wood with…” is one click. The page is in two parts. The upper part sets up to three woods against each other; the lower part, the finder, filters all 155 woods by the limits you type.
Comparing three woods
Type a name into each box and pick it from the suggestions; the list holds all 155 woods by their common name. The third box is optional. Press Compare and the page draws eight measures, each as a group of bars, one bar per wood, in the same order and colour as the key at the top.
The default example is white oak, sugar maple and black walnut. The summary line above the bars reads: “Sugar maple is the hardest here at 1,450 lbf, 44% harder than black walnut. Black walnut moves least across the face (7.8% tangential shrinkage) and also has the T/R ratio closest to 1 (1.42).” Below that, the numbers behind the bars are these:
| Measure | White oak | Sugar maple | Black walnut |
|---|---|---|---|
| Janka hardness | 1,360 lbf | 1,450 lbf | 1,010 lbf |
| Density | 0.60 | 0.56 | 0.51 |
| Bending strength | 15,200 psi | 15,800 psi | 14,600 psi |
| Stiffness | 1.78 M psi | 1.83 M psi | 1.68 M psi |
| Shrinkage across the face | 10.5% | 9.9% | 7.8% |
| Shrinkage through the thickness | 5.6% | 4.8% | 5.5% |
| T/R ratio | 1.88 | 2.06 | 1.42 |
| Volumetric shrinkage | 16.3% | 14.7% | 12.8% |
Read across a row to see which wood leads on that measure. Sugar maple is the hardest and stiffest of the three, but it also shrinks 9.9% across the face against 7.8% for walnut, and its T/R ratio of 2.06 is the highest. White oak sits between the two on hardness and shrinks the most in volume, 16.3%.
How to read the bars and ranks
Every bar starts at zero and is drawn against the highest value among all 155 woods for that measure, not against the three you picked. A short bar therefore means low compared with the whole list. The thin dark mark on each track is the median of all 155; for tangential shrinkage, for example, that mark sits at 7.8%. A bar that stops before the mark is below the typical wood.
Next to each value is a rank, counted from whichever end is nearer. Sugar maple’s hardness reads “41st hardest of 155,” while a soft wood such as eastern white pine reads “8th softest of 155” rather than “144th hardest.” For the shrinkage measures and the T/R ratio, lower values mean less movement, so the words switch to “highest” and “lowest.”
After each comparison the address bar changes to something like /compare/?w=white-oak,sugar-maple,black-walnut. Copy it to share or bookmark the same three woods.
Finding woods by property
The finder answers the reverse question: which woods meet my limits? Fill in any of the boxes: a Janka range, a density range, a maximum face (tangential) shrinkage, a maximum T/R ratio. Leave a box empty for no limit, and untick a group to drop it. The table updates as you type and can be sorted by hardness, density, shrinkage, ratio or name.
The default limits are a Janka hardness from 1,000 to 2,000 lbf and face shrinkage of 8.0% or less. With those limits, 21 of the 155 woods pass, from purpleheart at 1,860 lbf down to teak at 1,000 lbf. Two more examples, worked from the same data:
- U.S. softwoods only, Janka from 600 lbf: 10 woods, led by longleaf pine, western larch and Virginia pine.
- U.S. hardwoods only, Janka from 1,000 lbf and a T/R ratio of 1.5 or less: six woods (mockernut hickory, shagbark hickory, sweet birch, yellow birch, southern magnolia and black walnut).
Each row in the results has a Compare button that drops the wood into the first empty box of the comparison above and jumps back up to it. That makes a quick routine: narrow the list with the finder, then compare the two or three that interest you.
What the tool does not do
It compares published laboratory averages; it does not recommend a wood for a job or account for grade, knots, finish or price. The numbers are for small, clear specimens, and for imported woods they come from world literature, as the handbook notes. If JavaScript is switched off, the page still shows the default comparison and the default finder results as plain tables. For the meaning of each figure, see how to read a Janka number and radial vs tangential shrinkage.
Sources and method
USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory. Wood Handbook: Wood as an Engineering Material (2010, FPL-GTR-190), Tables 4-3 and 4-4 (shrinkage) and 5-3b and 5-5b (strength and hardness). Public domain. Medians, counts, ranks, correlations and percentages are calculated by TimberLedger from those tables across the 155 woods on this site. Data as of: Wood Handbook 2010 edition (published test averages of small clear specimens). How we use the data.