Lumber is wood in any of its stages from felling to readiness for use as structural material for construction, or wood pulp for paper production. Lumber is supplied either rough or finished. Besides pulpwood, rough lumber is the raw material for furniture-making and other items requiring additional cutting and shaping. It is available in many species, usually hardwoods. Finished lumber is supplied in standard sizes, mostly for the construction industry, primarily softwood from coniferous species including pine, fir and spruce , cedar, and hemlock, but also some hardwood, for high-grade... flooring. In the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth Countries such as Australia and New Zealand, timber is a term used for sawn wood products, such as floor boards, whereas generally in the United States and Canada, it refers to felled trees, later milled into boards referred to as lumber. "Timber" is also used there to describe sawn lumber not less than 5 inches in its smallest dimension. An example of the latter is the often partially finished lumber used in timber-frame construction.
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