How to check original teak wood?

Teak is one of the most beautiful, rich woods available in home furnishings, giving your trendy, fashionable home a special appearance. Teak is well-known for its durability and excellent weather resistance, making it an excellent choice for outdoor furniture. Teak has a unique grain and colour. So let’s see how to check original teak wood.

How to identify teak wood?

Teak is a South-East Asian hardwood that has long been regarded as one of the most lasting timbers in the world. Because of its excellent waterproofing and dry decay resistance, the Dutch used it to build their ships. Perhaps it is for this reason that teak furniture is more expensive than other woods, but if you take proper care, teak outdoor furniture can last a lifetime, whilst other woods only last a few years.

How to identify teak furniture?

• Real teak flooring contains visible ink lines and oil spots, but imitation teak flooring has no ink lines or distributed light. Teak wood has an ink line and an oil stain.

• The colour changes depending on the species. Excellent quality teak (also known as Burma teak or rosewood) has a golden-brown colour, which fades as the quality declines. Teak can be yellowish-white in appearance.

• With oil, the grain of real teak is shiny. The fake teak is drab and lifeless.

• Teak flooring is both lighter and heavier than rosewood and hemlock. The fake teak is quite weighty, giving the impression that it is high-quality wood.

• Teak flooring has a particular fragrance that you might detect when cutting it. The scent is quite pleasant. Fake teak has either no scent or a strong odour.

• Teak sawdust has a lot of oil and is quite soft. The fake teak sawdust is hard and breaking. This will help you with how to find teak wood.

• When water is dropped from two locations on real and fake teak flooring, the water is swiftly absorbed by the fake teak. Real teak absorbs water very slowly, nearly never.

• When you submerge real and fake teak in water for 24 hours, real teak does not alter, whereas false teak bends and twists.

I think you understood how to check original teak wood.

I want to make a study table for my sister, so I hired a carpenter to do that. He asked me to buy teak wood for the task because it is very durable and resistant to water, diseases, pests, and rot. So, I bought it from the market and gave it to the carpenter. He told me that the shopkeeper sold fake teak wood to me. I asked him how to identify teak wood that is original. He told me that teak is very easy to identify if you know what to look for.

If it is high-quality teak wood, then water droplets will sit on its surface and not immediately soak in.

: Real teak wood is very heavy. This type of wood has a hard surface that won’t crack or break.

Real teak wood has a natural oil content which makes it resistant to pests, bacteria, and water. This oil has a unique smell, almost like leather. The higher the quality of wood, the more oil it will have. This means you will pick up on the scent easily, especially right out of the box.

The colour of the teak wood will vary from one species to another, but the highest quality of teak wood will have a golden-brown colour.

Last but not the least, the real teak wood has a long, straight grain. The low-quality teak wood will feature larger knots.

After learning this, I went to the shop again and got the real one. I hope now you know how to find teak wood.

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I hope now you have a complete understanding of how to identify teak wood.

Hello there! I recently went out to purchase wooden furniture for my house. My wife and I were looking for a specific kind of wood, which is teak wood. It is highly durable and preferred for wooden furniture. However, I wanted to learn how to identify teak wood furniture so that no one fools us into buying fake teak wood. I found two methods that I will share in this answer. Here it goes.

How to Check Teak Wood?

Finding a genuine teak wood can be confusing to the naked eye. However, some techniques will help you to identify the original teak. Here’s how.

• Ask for Staining:

  When you visit a shop to look for teak wood, ask the salesperson whether the wood has been stained. This is done to hide the real colour of the wood. In such a case, you will need to figure out the nature in various ways if there are marks present on the wood. Moreover, you should raise questions regarding the age of the wood as the older wood gets darker in colour.

• Rate of Absorption:

  The next parameter you can check to learn how to identify original teak wood is that of water retention. A real teak wood will have a slow rate of water absorption. Whereas a fake one will quickly absorb water. Another way to assess is by immersing the wood in water for a day. The real one won’t show a significant amount of difference. On the other hand, the fake wood will swell up.

So, these are my two proven methods to identify teak wood. I hope this helps you learn how to find original teak wood.