ABSTRACT
Wood as a building material falls in two major classes – natural and man-made. Wood has many advantages due to which it is preferred over many other building materials. Some examples are plywood, fibreboards, chipboards, compressed wood, impregnated wood, etc. The terms timber and wood are often used synonymously, but they have distinct meanings in the building industry. Wood is a hard and fibrous substance which forms a major part of the trunk and branches of a tree. A tree can be divided into three portions, crown composed of branches and leaves, trunk, and roots. Seasoning of timber is the process of reducing the moisture content of timber in order to prevent the timber from possible fermentation. Defects affect the quality, reduce the quantity of useful wood and favour its decay. Wood is essentially an organic substance, made up of a skeleton of cellulose impregnated with lignin. The organic substances are susceptible to attack by both bacteria and fungi.
