Magnolia lumber is used in furniture, doors and millwork, and pallets.

Q. We have a problem with painted pieces of solid wood in cabinets that we send out. They are smooth when we ship them, but a month or so after they are installed in a house, the grain pattern of the wood shows through the painted finish.

Q. What is the correct moisture for teak used for cabinets?

Q. Where does hardwood lumber come from? How can I lower lumber prices?

Q. We made a table out of an 8 inch wide piece of lumber and I can guarantee that the top was flat when we shipped it, but now the customer has said that the individual pieces are cupped. Indeed, when I inspected it, he is correct. We were careful to make sure that all the pieces had the grain running the same direction (heart side down) to give a nice look. We did screw the top to the metal frame but the screws pulled out. What advice can you give?

Q. We are a medium-sized shop and find ourselves with a little bit of extra KD lumber that we want to keep safely without a change in moisture. How can we do this?

Q: We tried to glue some jatoba (Brazilian cherry) and it was a complete failure. The joints had almost no strength. We also had lots of trouble with machining, with lots of burn marks. Any suggestions?

Q: Where can I locate a very complete listing of most of the exotic woods of the world, which specifically lists specific gravities, densities and weight-per-board-foot. I'm currently building up a few samples using wenge, padouk, zebrawood, purpleheart and bubinga. That is our marketing niche using the highest quality exotics at affordable prices.

Q: We've been having a finishing problem. We're seeing differences that aren't acceptable in the way that yellow birch and white birch finish; that is, they don't look the same after finishing. Can you shed some light on this?

Although different species, they are in the same genus and can be used interchangeably.