Carlos Reira

Any prunus species is going to have nice wood with a fine texture, that's almond, plum, cherry, apricot, peach, etc. I've seen ornamental plum trees 60' tall and over 2' diameter. Obviously, a 12 year old tree with a 10" trunk is going to be wide grained. I have more experience with Japanese cherry varieties, Yoshino and Kwanzan, and that wood is very nice even with wide growth rings. With any of them, you're going to get ray flecking on perfectly quartered surfaces, exactly like maple and holly. That can be distracting in a scale model. You don't get that as much with pear and apple.

Also, If you don't have a way to rip cut boards into strips of consistent width, you could try slicing veneer. I believe all the Italian makers give you veneer strips for planking, or used to, mahogany and other terrible open grain woods that they got from the furniture trade for dirt cheap. You could use painter's masking tape to prevent wandering and splitting and with a very sharp hobby blade using many passes with a straight edge cut the strips slightly oversize, gang them and block sand their edges straight. Constantine's formerly of NY, now in FL, has 1/16" veneer and may have old stock of 1/32" veneer. They have the usual species: cherry, walnut, maple, oak. Birch, especially yellow or sweet birch, is excellent, very fine grained and harder than the usual paper birch (popsicle stick wood, still a great wood though). I've seen it come up on eBay in thicker dimensions. Tulip poplar is usually available in thicker veneer for use as counter veneering. Sweet gum is good but can be squirrely, not laying flat. It's common to find it underneath the walnut facing of old factory made furniture or as a stained substitute for walnut. Holly is usually available in various thicknesses for marquetry work but very expensive. Aspen is just as white, but much softer. Steamed Swiss pear (actually Service tree) is common in veneer form, and sometimes dyed black to imitate ebony, but the problem is that most veneer is sliced to 1/40" or 1/42" which is too light for most scale planking.

Hello, any fans of Alaskan cedar aka Alaska cedar, Nootka cedar, Yellow cypress, Yellow cedar etc. might like Leyland cypress, especially the branch wood. While very fast growing compared to Alaskan cedar, one of its parents, the wood is nearly identical in appearance, color, hardness, carvability, bendability etc. It's not as stiff, but that's not really important for static models. Numerous tiny knots tend to be located on one side of the branch or trunk and could add some scale interest. The branches vary from 1/2" to 3" diameter at the base. Any of the cypress family yield would yield interesting branch wood for modeling purposes, because unlike spruce and pine, the nodes are spread out and more randomly placed. So Bald cypress, Eastern red-cedar, Atlantic white-cedar, Hinoki cypress, etc. all have similar characteristics, and are commonly planted as ornamentals. Leyland Cypress is much harder and more hardwood like owing to its parents, the Monterey cypress and the Yellow cypress, and is the only true cypress found in the Eastern states and pretty much everywhere. All Leylands are clones I believe, so the wood should be very consistent. Of course you need some way to saw it and thickness, say a small bandsaw and drum sander set up. Some species yield consistently curved branches and some straight, with twigs that can be used for spars with just some hand work with a block plane. The tiny knots, small cracks etc make them dead ringers for the real thing, depending of course on scale and period.