Species
BIRCH
Description
Birch North-Eastern United States and Lake States (Betula Alleghaniensis)
Birch Birch Birch, that’s all you do is birch all day.
Fact is, the Birch family has way too many kids (you’d think they’d learn). Silver, River, Alaska Paper, Downy, Sweet, Gray. It grows everywhere, we just happen to get ours from the Northeast U.S. of A. (Oh, and let’s not forget Baltic- later).
The birch we’re talking about is Yellow Birch, Betula Alleghaniensis. Great stuff: hard, fine even grain, little difference between annual growth rings so the look is pretty uniform. The sapwood is almost white and the heartwood is light red-brown.
We offer it as Natural (unselected with sap and heartwood mixed, quite attractive), selected white (sapwood) or “red birch”, which is the selected heartwood of Yellow Birch.
Occasionally, Yellow Birch will have a curl to the grain similar to Cherry, and plenty of birch furniture has been made that resembles cherry. Fortunately, Birch accepts stain well so it’s possible to be creative with this species.
Principle uses are for plywood (worldwide), interior trim, cabinets and furniture. Birch is used extensively in sheet-good (plywood) applications, both for internal plies and for face veneers.
Sizes
In lumber, we offer 4/4 and 8/4 White, Natural, and Red birch lumber, surfaced and rough. Our birch plywood selection is quite extensive, in those same colors. Which leads us to…
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“Baltic Birch”
There isn’t a species called Baltic Birch: it’s a catch-all term that refers to plywood made in Finland, Russia and other Baltic states. Like anything else, there’s good quality and bad quality: ours is good, we’re pretty picky (know your supplier). Our Russian Birch is made entirely of birch plies, no softwoods mixed in. Those hardwood plies mean they can be sliced thinner and retain their strength, so you get more plies than other birch plywood. Which equals stiffer, stronger, and more durable panels.
