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Old 11-27-2018, 12:26 PM
John Arnold John Arnold is offline
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The diagram is wrong, because it shows a rift sawn log with vertical grain , but the illustration of the 'rift' board shows no ray fleck. That is impossible. Vertical grain boards (what Bruce calls quartersawn) WILL show ray fleck. Instead of just 'quartersawn', I call boards with 90 degree grain 'perfectly quartered', or simply 'vertical grain'. There is no ambiguity with these terms.
Quartersawing, being a process, produces vertical grain on the center (widest) boards, but less vertical as the cut gets further out. These narrower boards (with grain approaching 45 degrees) should be marketed as rift. In general, for a board to be labeled quartersawn, the grain must be at least 75 degrees to the face.
In times past, the term 'rift' was most commonly used with regard to oak, which due to the large aggregate rays, looks entirely different when the grain is perfectly vertical. The common term for this is 'tiger oak', which is highly variable in appearance due to the great range in size and frequency of the rays. True rift sawn oak is much more uniform in appearance.
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Because, obviously, a log flatsawn will have one board cut through the center and will be perfectly "quartered" even though the process was flatsawing, while slicing a quartered log will yield one perfectly "quartered" board and others of varying degrees of rift.
'Flatsawn' is a term for lumber that has some grain parallel with the face. A synonym is slab sawn. The term for cutting straight through a log is 'plainsawing' or 'throughsawing'. At least that part of the diagram is correct.
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