For ship building irregular grain is used for natural curved members such as knees. Texture ranges from coarse to medium to fine and to ultra fine. In ship building, coarse and medium textured woods are suitable for heavy timbering such as hull framing and deck beams. Fine textured wood is used for planking, moldings, rails ect. Fine and ultra fine texture is for carving small fittings and delicate parts.
Texture is also uniform or uneven.
An uneven textured wood has different size cell cavities giving the wood hard and soft spots. When machining or carving a piece and it suddenly breaks, it is because you hit a large cell cavity or a soft spot. Uniform texture is like cutting a soft plastic like material. Maple has a wide variety of grain from straight to the exotic like Tiger Maple, birds-eye, fiddleback and a range of twisted and curly. Straight grained Maple has very little figure.