January 24, 2012. Samuel Valero
When you are dealing with wood, do you know what the wood’s ‘figure’ is? That term is not used as often as the term ‘grain’, and the two are often confused. When you are working with the best lathe or the best engraving machines, knowing what the figure of your wood is becomes important if you are trying to make something artistic out of your wood.
The types of wood that will get you unique and interesting figures are often tropical hardwoods, which gives you an idea of the cost and types of things you will be seeing in your wood’s figure. A figure is the appearance of the wood along its side grain.
Wood that has a good ‘figure’ is not very plain, and is very difficult to manufacture artificially. Mimicking the appearance of wood’s grain is hard enough. When you start putting the wood’s figure into the equation as well, you run into problems. A typical figure of wood can include things like ‘bird’s eye’, which is rough patches that are little swirls in the wood. This is most commonly found in maple. You can also find blisters, curls, spalted figures, figures referred to as ‘ghost’, flame-like images, dimples and burls. There is also the famous fiddle back figure.
Fiddle back has an interesting visual effect because it will not reflect the light completely equally between each of your eyes, giving the wood a little bit of a shimmer that will mostly go away if you cover one eye. It is often used in violins and violas and other stringed instruments because it is a very interesting look and has a long tradition in instrument making. When you are working with wood to make artistic items, finding the wood’s figure and making sure it looks the way you want it to is crucial to making your a{}rtistic wood piece look right.
Updated January 24, 2012. Published June 30, 2011. Samuel Valero
