What Wood – Pine – inexpensive and popular media

What Wood – Pine – Pine has a poor reputation. It is thought by many to be cheap and to rot easily, and to an extent this is true. I would rarely choose pine for an exterior joinery project. With labour being such a large part of cost in custom work, it means that savings gained are generally not significant enough to out weigh not just the loss in durability, but also the relatively poor dimensional stability of pine in with changes in humidity, and thus changes in moisture content. 

Pine is readily available. Not just timber merchants, but any builders merchants, will carry a variety of profiles and dimensioned PSE (planed square edge). Do be sure to get redwood pine if possible. Many places will just stock whitewood pine, which is inferior in quality, being even less stable and durable than redwood pine. 

What Wood – Pine – well suited

That said, there are places where pine is very well suited. For interior work where it is going to be painted, then the cheap and easily machined timber is a good alternative to hardwoods for profiles and trims.  Pine cuts easily and paints well. It is a little tricky to cut and chisel by hand, as it’s softness ironically makes cutting joints etc. harder.  But trims on a walls and ceilings, it’s great. 

I also use it for finishing the edges of birch ply where I don’t wish to see the board edge.  It glues well to form an edging that is not only similar in colour and appearance, but it also takes a stain in a similar way to birch ply, so if you want to darken the whole piece then it does not stand out as being a different material. 

It is, of course, also the go to structural timber. We don’t tend to build stud walls as much in boats, but anywhere you need battens, studding, framework and the like, pine is ideal. Cheap, easy to cut and easy to screw or nail, you can build what you need quickly and once it is covered up it really doesn’t matter that it isn’t a fancy hardwood. Additionally, a treated pine can be used where extra durability is required. 

Pros

• Cheap
• Easy to cut, screw and drill
• Paints and stains well
• Widely available

Cons

• Not durable
• Poor dimensional stability
• Soft, marks easily
• Not well suited to cutting accurate joints