Boards from the log

Main types of cutting the boards from a log

In february this year my brother and I cut down one large oak . In diameter it measures 76 cm /almost 30"/ and in length 200 cm/79"/. Now is time to cut it into boards. We are planning to cut it into 5,5cm /2" 3/16 / thick boards.  I don't know how much do you know about cutting the log into the boards so I will explain you a little bit in the pictures below.

                                                                                                         1.Plain cut or flat cut

Most of the lumber you buy in lumberyards will be cut this way which means you will pay less for them than for the quarter sawn boards. For the lumber industry this is the easiest and fastest way to cut the log . If you take a look of the annual rings on plain sawn board you will notice that they are 30 degrees or less to the face of the board, this is often referred to as tangential grain, which means they'll bow during the drying process as you can see in the picture below.

2. Plain sawn boards tend to bow

This means you will have lot of waste in order to prepare the board to make your project.

When you do your projects you want to have the best quality boards you can get which means you want to have some rift sawn or quarter sawn boards like in the picture below.

                                                                        3. Quarter sawn log

Essentially what you do is find the center and divide the log into the quarters. Then you cut this quarters and the goal is to have boards which annual rings are 90 to 60 degrees to the face of the board, this is often referred to as radial grain.

If the board has radial grain it will not twist or bow as much as plain sawn board with tangential grain so you will have minimum waste during you board preparation and the board will be much stable. And this all means the boards will cost a lot more.

Here on this picture you can see the
annual rings in plain, quarter and rift sawn boards.