If you are building a musical
instrument, quarter sawn lumber is what you are looking for. When
quarter sawing a wood veneer, the log is first cut into quarter sections as
seen in the photo and then a slice is taken from each side of the
remaining wedge shaped portion of the log alternately. While every
leaf of wood veneer taken from the log is not exactly perpendicular
to the growth rings of the tree as in rift sawn, it is considered a
close enough representation. By cutting the log this way, the result
of this wood veneer is a very tight, vertical grain pattern. As a
result, the qualities of this cut of veneer wood with it's tight
grain is improved strength and stability. This means that there is
much less warping due to expansion and contraction with climate
change as well as reduced checking and splitting. This makes quarter
sawn lumber very popular in the use of most string instruments where
any wood movement would be very detrimental.
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| Quartered White Oak |
The most common species of wood that
lends itself to quarter sawing is white oak. When white oak is
quarter sawn, the wood veneer will often display a pattern of
medullary rays known as fleck. These rays can be seen as subtle wavy
patterns displayed across the straight grain. This pattern of rays
has made quarter sawn veneers very desirable for many years. While
white oak is probably the most common wood that is quarter sawn, it
is not the only species that is cut in this fashion. Some other
woods that are commonly quarter sawn are red oak, maple, cherry and
sapeli.
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| Rift Sawn |
Rift cutting a log is taking quarter
cutting to the extreme. In producing true rift sawn wood veneers,
each slice of veneer is cut almost exactly perpendicular to the
growth rings of the tree. While this produces an even tighter and
straighter grain pattern than quarter sawn, it is also much more
wasteful. In order to maintain the perpendicular cut, only small
sections of the log can be cut straight out from the center of the
log leaving small wedges between each section. These wedges are
essentially unusable adding greatly to the waste factor of the log.
For this reason, as well as how labor intensive it is to produce
rift sawn veneer, this cut of wood veneer is much more expensive and
rarely used.You may notice however, that in quarter cutting, the
first few slices of veneer that come off the cut would actually be
rift sawn and may be set aside and collected as rift cut leaves.
Therefore, when someone purchases rift cut wood veneer sheets, there
is a chance that what they are getting is a by product of the quarter
cut that was being produced but the effect is the same.
Post presented by
getgoodwood.com
