Your central Ohio source for beautiful, quartersawn hardwood lumber!
Quartersawing is a lumber sawing technique that produces finished lumber with a number of distinct advantages over plain-sawing. Most hardwood lumber mills cut wood using plain-sawing today due to the increased yield.
When you quartersaw lumber, the saw cuts across the growth rings rather than tangentially as with plain sawing. This process greatly improves the integrity of the lumber.
While quartersawing necessarily sacrifices some board footage yield, the resulting lumber is more stable, less prone to shrinking and warping, and for a number of species, produces a decorative effect through the resulting grain pattern usually presenting as rays or flecks in the final lumber.
Craftsmen in the American Arts and Crafts movement used quartersawn oak extensively for cabinets, built-in furniture, and moldings in homes throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Since then, quartersawn hardwood has remained a valuable material for a small but ever increasing share of wood workers, craftsmen and designers.
Quartersawing lumber is both functional in terms of the integrity and stability it adds, but also decorative because of the distinct grain pattern that results when certain species are quartersawn. Woodworkers and flooring manufacturers especially seek out quartersawn white oak for its distinctive medullary rays. The two pictures below show white oak lumber—the first is quartersawn, while the second is plain sawn.
Timber Works specializes in quartersawn oak and quartersawn black walnut. We offer very competitive prices and complete flexibility when choosing widths, thicknesses and lengths. For more information, check out our lumber section or give us a call.