What can it be about Pine which makes it so popular?
Pine furniture is just about the most popular woods for furniture found because of its Light colouring, beautiful smell and because of the relative ease that its wood is commercially produced. As soon as you are able to lower the amount that a material costs the earlier something becomes well-liked by numerous woodworkers. In the past the general term of Fir was used for pine trees but there are a selection of varieties Pinus Ducampopinus the foxtail or Pinyon group, Pinus which is the Pinus or hard pine group and Pinus Strobus the white or soft pine group.
Pine wood furniture has often had a bad rap as inferior to hardwood furniture but you’ll find wonderful pieces from the medieval period that are still looking as good as they were in the past. Perhaps it’s more due to what use or abuse you are likely to be putting that furniture to. I’ve got a 100 year old set of French drawers that I use each day that are still going strong.
Not only is pine excellent as furniture its Pine Nuts are also used as a supplemental source of food in numerous countries with all the pine needles making a vitamin C rich cup of tea when steeped in water. Pine furniture is quite a light material which means that in this very transient society that we live in it makes it much simpler to move around.
To round up pine is a versatile wood that finds use in numerous applications window frames, panelling, floors and roofing, as well as the resin of some species is a source of turpentine and used for a flux in the soldering industry. The vast majority of uses of pine are inside due to the fact that pine doesn’t have natural resistance to pests and rot once it is felled so works at its optimum when kept dry indoors.