Wood has a unique quality in that it has visual and tactile appeal to almost everyone and freshly worked wood often smells good too. It may evoke childhood memories of playing in woodland, climbing trees, building simple shelters or making wooden play things. Everyone, even in this age of metals and plastics, understands where it comes from and believes, rightly or wrongly, that they could make something with it if they had to. This is because it is easy to work with simple tools and for this reason wood has been used in building and making a wide variety of products for a very long time.

Wood as a natural resource has several uses and qualities that are not easy to replicate, some of them are visual and tactile qualities, insulating properties, thermal stability, resistance to chemicals, acoustic absorption and resistance to fire, to mention a few.