At 11:06 PM 3/27/06, D F Lively wrote: >Carefull selection is required here and probably only premium clear >grade is all that should be used.
Definitely. However, if you are willing to put up with the waste and extra work, you can get a significant amount of premium wood from selected pieces of non-premium stock. >The grain is the way is because it is >slab cut so only the board cut from the center of the log will have >grain oriented correctly. To undstand how 1/4 sawn is cut look at the >end of a log and envision the center of wide direction of the board >being cut passes thru the center of the log. You can see that this will >lower the yield of the log greatly , adding to the cost. For the few "boards" in a KR, this is very much true. For a large portion of the wood in a KR, however, we need "square strips". If you cut a flat sawn board into strips, and turn them 90 degrees, viola! you now have quarter sawn strips. For a rough example, please see the following illustration: http://home.mebtel.net/~rbutterfield/KR/quarter-sawn-from-plain.gif Straight is still very much necessary, any knots must be cut out and discarded, and you must carefully choose the boards you are going to use to get close grain. You want at least 10 rings per inch looking at the end of the board; more is better. I have seen old-growth fir with over 100 rings showing at the end of the board (4"). >If you go into your average "Big Box" lumber souce and ask for 1/4 >sawn you will >most likely be met with a "Dumb Stare", I thought that was a patented feature of those stores? ;-) Regards, RonB
