What is the difference between blue spruce and Douglas fir?
Douglas Fir is a large coniferous tree with a pyramidal shaped crown. Blue Spruce trees are ideally suited for use in shelterbelts, privacy screens, or as accent trees. Please note: our Blue Spruce are grown from seed and the needles vary in color from green to blue.
Is Blue Spruce good for lumber?
Spruce lumber suitability depends on specific job requirements. Its lightweight properties and even texture makes spruce wood suitable for light construction and framing work. Its strength makes it quite suitable for low-stress situations. Cutting of Norway Spruce is common for use as lumber in dimensional framing.
What is the difference between spruce and Douglas fir?
To tell spruce and fir trees apart, it helps to know that spruce needles are sharply pointed, square and easy to roll between your fingers. Fir needles, on the other hand, are softer, flat and cannot be rolled between your fingers. Fir branches lack these projections, and thus have smooth bark.
Which is harder spruce or fir?
The higher the Janka rating, the harder, and often more durable, the wood. Spruce, pine and fir are all considered softwoods, but they vary in their hardness. Black spruce (Picea mariana) has a Janka rating of 520, making it a much harder option. Pines also come in many varieties, each with different Janka ratings.
Is Douglas fir better than pine?
Pine has broad grain lines that wander, making it far weaker than fir. The soft wood between the grain lines shrinks and expands, making the wood cup or twist. For stability and strength, fir is much less prone to warping or twisting, and much stronger than pine.
Is spruce good for framing?
Framing. Besides Doug-fir, spruce pine fur is also a great material for house framing. This is because it is relatively strong and therefore robust enough to hold the house and the roof together. Besides, SPF has excellent nail holding properties and so, easily usable.
What is stronger pine or Douglas fir?
How much stronger is Douglas fir than Sitka spruce?
Douglas Fir is aprox 20% stronger than Sitka Spruce… Gary. The most important consideration when buying boat timber is quality. You can get Doug. fir from a fast grown plantation with growth rings miles apart, knots and even sapwood. Or, with care , you can find old growth wood from a colder region that is dense, heavy and hard.
Where can I find Doug Fir?
West of the Rockies, doug fir should be readily available, but in the east, it is not easy to find framing lumber in this species. I am in upstate NY, and only one of my lumber suppliers has doug fir, and what they have is appearance grade.
Is a 20′ span too big for a spruce tree?
Spruce, while nicer to work with, is significantly weaker. A 20′ span is pretty big. Have you considered TJI’s? Scott. Scott -I was waiting for that question.