Can’t tell hard wood from soft wood? You will understand after reading this article!

1. Cork has no pipe hole, while hardwood has pipe hole, so hardwood is generally high in density and hardness.
But hardwood is not necessarily hard, and cork is not necessarily soft. The real hardness of hardwood and softwood varies greatly, with most varieties overlapping each other, and sometimes hardwood is softer than most softwood.
For example, balsa is a kind of hardwood that is softer than most softwood, and yew is a kind of softwood that is harder than most hardwood.
2. Cork and hardwood are not divided into hardness but tree species. Distinguishing principle between hardwood and softwood: softwood comes from coniferous forest and hardwood comes from broad-leaved forest.
3. Cork grows in the frigid zone and sub-frigid zone with dry and cold climate. Hardwood grows in temperate zone, subtropical zone and tropical zone, with humid and warm climate.
5. It takes several to ten years for cork to be finished. Most of the cork is fast-growing wood, so there is a saying that “three years to be finished, five years to be finished”. Hardwood can take several decades to a hundred years to be finished. For example, North American black walnut can take 30 to 50 years to be finished. Some valuable wood, such as rosewood, can take hundreds of years to be finished.
6. Hardwood can be divided into two types, one is miscellaneous wood, such as elm, oak, teak, walnut, beech, catalpa, cypress, camphor, lattice, nanmu, poplar, paulownia, manchurian ash, and the other is mahogany, such as rosewood, rosewood, acid twig, and chicken wing. Corks mainly include: Korean pine, white pine, camphor pine, fish scale spruce, yellow cypress, etc.
7. Hardwood is generally used to make exposed products such as furniture, wooden floors or utensils. Cork is generally used for making bottle stoppers, insulation layer of refrigeration equipment, life buoys, soundproof panels, etc.