Plain-sawn vs. Quarter-sawn Extended Version

There are two ways that boards are commonly taken out of trees like this one, plain-sawn and quarter-sawn. I’ve got examples of each one here. Here’s a plain-sawn board and you can see the big cathedral are flamed patterned in the face. Here’s a quarter-sawn board. The face looks quite a bit different. It’s got a very straight grain to it. Additionally it’s got this flex and now let’s have a look at a log and see how this actually works out.

For plain-sawn, my first cut here is going to be right here through the center of the tree. Now, if I were continuing my plain-sawn process all I would have to do is keep cutting and cutting all the way up through the edge of this log.

Now, if I ask you to figure out a way to make these cuts. I little bit of thought I bet you could do it. We could take this log, lay it out in a sawmill and very easily cut a slab, cut a slab and it will be pretty easy to make these cuts and get these boards. That’s plain-sawn.

Quarter-sawn is a little bit different. In a quarter-sawn cut we’re going come this way and literally start with a quarter here that we’ve taken off to look. Then, another cut. Now, here things get a little tricky and then go this way.

So now if we do the same exercise and I ask you to think of getting this quarter-sawn board out of the board I bet you’re going to think, “Well that’s kind of a little bit harder to do. I got a quarter at first then I’ve got to cut it, turn it, cut it, and turn it.” So as a result, quarter-sawn material is more expensive than plain-sawn materials. So a good question would be, why would be bother messing with it. So let’s start with our boards again.

This plain-sawn board actually when we look at the end grain of it really tells us the story. Here in the end grain, we’re looking at the annual rings of this board. The annual rings in this case are kind of a round shape, they’re pointed down.

In a piece of wood, the wood has the tendency to cup in a direction opposite the annual rings. So this board, with its rings pointed down, whatever tendency to cup up. This board would have come out of the log something like this. So if I take my marker and I draw in our annual rings for you to see, remember that we’ve got kind of a bull’s eye like this of annual rings going through the tree. So this board, with its rings pointed down were somewhere like this in the tree.

A quarter-sawn material, let’s start again by looking at the end grain. The end grain on this one, we can tell its quarter-sawn because the annual rings are about 90 degrees to the face instead of rounded. So I might ask you in which way is this board got to cup that but I’m actually putting a trick question there. This board is not going to cup because the annual rings are perpendicular to the face like that.

Now the way this one came out of the log would have been out here some place where the annual rings are coming through like this. So this board is cut out here. Now, why would we do that? Well the annual rings are going to help make this board more stable.
So quarter-sawn material is much less prone to cupping and also less prone to expansion and contraction. The other thing that a lot of wood workers like about is it that the grain on this piece is very straight. Remember on our plain-sawn piece, it had some big flame patterns to it, some big cathedral in it. The other thing we’ve got it this because it’s a piece of oak, are these flex here in the wood. So if we got some more finished on here especially a little bit of gloss to it, those flex will become real three dimension. It really pop out on the wood, they’re really cool looking. A lot of wood workers really like that.

Now it’s important to understand that not every species of wood has the big flex like the oaks do, red oak and white oak, they’re very dramatic. Cherry, you’re not really going to see much going on there. So, as far as woods commonly quarter-sawn goes, it’s commonly the oaks, the red oak and the white oak. Outside of that you may or may not be able to find this specie that you’re looking for quarter-sawn outside of the oaks.

So those are the two conversion processes, plain-sawn less expensive but a less able table piece material. Quarter-sawn, more expensive to produce but more stable. We can take it one step further with quarter-sawn and define quarter-sawn in a rift-sawn. In a quarter sawn materials, the annual rings hit the face grain at 90 degrees. If we come a little bit further out here on the circle, our rift-sawn material is going to hit with the annual rings of about 30 to 60 degrees. So if I highlight one of our annual rings here, our annual rings the way they’re hitting the face would make this rift-sawn piece as a quarter-sawn piece. That will give you a good understanding of how logs get converted into planks.