Wood floors add warmth and beauty to a home.
Plainsawn and quartersawn are terms that are applied to solid wood materials, based on the method used to produce then from raw logs. While composite or engineered floor coverings may strive to duplicate the appearance of these entirely natural products, only 100-percent solid wood flooring materials can legitimately call themselves by either name. Does this Spark an idea?
Deciding Go From Raw Log to Sawn Lumber
When logs come to the mill, there are numerous methods for creating dimensional lumber products from them. There are two basic strategies a miller may apply; get the largest quantity of usable material from a raw log as rapidly as possible, or get the most valuable product from the logs. In part, this decision will be informed by the quality of the raw log at hand.
Plainsawing
Plainsawing a log is the fastest, simplest method of cutting dimensional lumber. The log is secured to the mill carriage and successive slabs are taken off one side of the log. At a predetermined points, the log will be rotated by 90 degrees to avoid sawing slabs that would cut through the heartwood of the log. This process is speedy, wastes very little material and produces lumber with obvious grain patterns.
Quartersawing
To quartersaw a log, the log is sectioned into four wedges before any dimensional lumber is cut from it. The quarters are mounted on the mill carriage, and lumber is cut from the quarters so that slabs will be perpendicular to the tree's annual growth rings. Quartersawn lumber has little obvious grain pattern, but can show 'ray flecks,' distinctive marks where branches originate inside the main trunk. Ray fleck patterns are characteristic of quartersawn oak and highly prized by woodworkers.
Plainsawn Vs. Quartersawn Flooring
Because plainsawn lumber has obvious grain in three dimensions --- width, length and thickness of the board --- it can be less dimensionally stable when exposed to moisture or differential drying. This can cause boards to warp along their length or create a cupping effect of board faces if backs and fronts dry at differing rates. Quartersawn floors are much less susceptible to these defects because they have little obvious grain. Because quartersawing takes considerably more labor and wastes more of the raw log, quartersawn floors are more expensive than plainsawn floors.
Kiln Drying
Most of the potential defects of plainsawing can be eliminated if flooring is dried under controlled conditions. Kiln-dried plainsawn floors can cost more than their undried counterparts, put will certainly cost less than quartersawn products. As long as the plainsawn flooring is carefully stored and acclimatized before application, it can perform as well as a quartersawn product.
Tags: obvious grain, dimensional lumber, from logs, from quarters, little obvious, little obvious grain