The relationship between roughness evaluated by human touch and several roughness parameters derived arithmetically from profiles of wood specimens is discussed. The arithmetical mean deviation of the profiles (R-a75) of wood specimen of ten species.(seven hardwoods and three softwoods) whose surfaces were processed by sawing, milling, planing, or grinding by coated abrasive of different grit, changed roughly in accordance with the tactile roughness, especially when R-a75 was measured at a larger cutoff value lambda(c). The frequency power spectra of the profiles bad characteristic differences among the wood species and machining processes, especially in the wavelength range under 0.25 mm. On the other hand, there were some cases where a couple of specimens of different tactile roughnesses did not show any significant differences either in R-a75 or in frequency spectra. It was suggested that these differences in the tactile roughnesses could be characterized by the skewness and the kurtosis of the amplitude distribution of the profile.