Timber
- Timber is sawn or milled wood used for engineering purposes like building, furniture, and Railway track wooden sleeper construction.
- Timber possesses a number of valuable properties such as low heat conductivity, small bulk density, relatively high strength, resistance to bending, etc.
- But it also has some drawbacks such as susceptibility to decay and inflammability, fluctuations in properties due to changes in moisture content, variations in strength in length and across fibers, etc.
- These drawbacks of timber can greatly be reduced by the application of some of the modern wood processing techniques.
CLASSIFICATION OF TREE
For engineering purposes, the trees are classified according to their mode of growth.
There are two types of Trees
1)Exogenous Tree
2) Endogenous Tree
Endogenous Tree
- These trees grow inwards.
- Timber from these trees has very limited engineering applications.
- They are of two types (1)Conifers (Softwood) (2)Deciduous(Hard Wood).
- Examples of endogenous trees are bamboo, cane, palm, etc.
Exogenous Tree
- These trees grow outwards, increasing in bulk with the formation of rings every year.
- These annual rings are used for predicting the age of the tree.
- These trees are mostly used for engineering works..