Is chestnutwood considered a hard or soft wood?

Answer 1

The question is one of definition and semantics. The question is better distinguished by asking, "is chestnut both a hardwood and a hard wood?"

The answer to the former is yes. Chestnut, based on its method of reproduction is classified as an angiosperm, that is a plant that produces seeds with some sort of covering. Most nuts and fruits fall into this category including oak, apple, hickory and others. Whereas plants that let seeds fall to the ground with no covering such as Pine trees are classified as gymnosperms.From a strategy for survival and dispersion perspective the former are perhaps more likely to be dispersed by animals while the latter are dispersed by wind.

Is it a "hard wood?" Hardness is generally accepted as being measured by one of the engineering tests to assign a hardness to the species. The Janka hardness test is the generally accepted test.

The test measures the force required to push a steel ball with a diameter of 11.28 millimeters (0.444 inches) into the wood to a depth of half the ball's diameter (the diameter was chosen to produce a circle with an area of 100 square millimeters). In Janka's original test. the results were expressed in units of pressure, but when the ASTM standardized the test (tentative issue in 1922, standard first formally adopted in1927 ), it called for results in units of force.

Some familiar species and their results follow.

* American chestnut - 540 pounds force * White oak - 1360 pounds force * Eastern hemlock - 500 pounds force. As you can see, chestnut is closer to hemlock than oak. Like balsa (another hardwood) it is closer in hardness to the softwoods than the average hardness of the hardwoods. But don't be deceived by these results. Chestnut had many attributes that made it ideal as a building material. It grew fast, had tannins making it rot resistant, and its apically dominant form meant that very long straight sections could be readily found. In addition, its light weight (density) when compared to other hardwoods meant that farmers preferred hoisting a beam of rot resistant chestnut to that of oak which might weigh two to three times as much and last half or less as long. Since chestnut was also easy to machine and work, and was readily available, it is no surprise that it was the material of choice for the farmers and builders of seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century America.

Answer 2

Wood from the chestnut tree is hard wood

Answer 3

Chestnut is a hardwood.