Quartered and Rift Sawn Wood Veneer

     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.

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.

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.

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