Oak expands and contracts across the grain with moisture change. Everyone involved with hardwood floors must take all precautions possible to avoid storing, delivery, installing, or maintaining floors in the presence of moisture or dampness. Now let's go back to vessels-this time looking at the cut end of pieces of oak flooring. White Oak Preferred for Whiskey Barrels Look at the vessels on the cut ends of the board. Red oak appears to have a band of tiny holes running across the end of the board.
White oak has no tiny holes.
As a white oak tree matures the vessels in the inner portion of the tree fill up with a deposit called tyloses. Hence, the difference in appearance of cut ends, and stiffness, and hardness, and sanding, and stain appearance. The tree remains dormant from November through February. The combination of one springwood and one summerwood is called an annual ring-one years growth. Read the rings, as we all know, and learn the age of a tree while the width of the rings tells of drought, fires, rains, etc.