Steve, you are taking the sawyers point of view. That in the strict sense is true. It's either quarter sawn... Or it isn't!
But again, for us luthiers, it doesn't matter if the vertical grain section came from a flat sawn section or even an accidental section of a huge log that just so happened to yield a vertical section or a by the book quarter sawn section.
All we want is vertical grain.... runout is another story.
There was an interesting conversation about this I believe on the OLF years ago when an actual sawyer was offering QS brace wood and no matter how hard we tried to convince him that if it's flat sawn all we have to do is 'flip it' he could not seem to grasp that a flat sawn piece can never be 'quarter sawn.' I mean technically he's right but we don't care
