Know Your Wood: A Guide to Identifying and Refinishing 15 Common Furniture Woods

Ever sanded back a vintage cabinet and thought, What is this wood?

This 150+ page PDF is built for furniture refinishers who are tired of textbook guesses and want real answers from real projects. It’s packed with visual examples, refinishing tips, and workshop insights that show how 15 of the most common furniture woods look, feel, and behave.

Inside, you’ll learn:

🪵 Why wood identification is so tricky (and why colour alone is never enough)

🔎 How to recognise grain types, end grain clues, and wood figure patterns

🧰 The exact tools I use to identify wood in my refinishing workshop

🎨 How each wood type responds to sanding, stain, paint, and bleach

📆 Where and when different woods were commonly used in furniture

🛠️ What to expect when refinishing oak, walnut, maple, cherry, ash, pine, teak, mahogany, birch, beech, cedar, elm, poplar, wenge, and sapele

Each species includes refinishing advice pulled from real workshop experience—not recycled internet tips. If you’ve ever struggled with tannin bleed, blotchy stain, or mystery grain patterns, this guide will help you stop guessing and start identifying.

Perfect for:

✔ Furniture flippers

✔ DIY refinishing beginners

✔ Vintage lovers and antique restorers

✔ Anyone who wants to feel more confident choosing finishes

No fluff. Just the most useful wood ID and refinishing guide I wish I’d had when I started.