Quartered and "Rift Sawn" Wood for Planes

[J_SAMa]

Finally about to get started on building my wooden plane, which I've been "planning" to for the last few months (hammer).
Firstly, help me get the jargon right. I always thought "rift sawn" refers to stuff for table legs where the growth rings run corner to corner. How come some use it to refer to the "prime cuts" of quartered stock, where growth rings run perfectly perpendicular to the face?

Now with that in mind, did the planemakers of old use exclusively "rift sawn" stock with the growth rings running perfectly perpendicular, or did they use less perfect stock with the growth rings running at say 60 deg? All 4 wooden planes I own have their growth rings running pretty much perfectly perpendicular but I don't think this is a big enough sample to make a judgment from.
Should I pursue the incredibly expensive and hard-to-find "rift sawn" stock, or just settle with less perfect stock? I know the latter would probably be good enough as a user stock but do I really get less problems with perfect stock?

Sam

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23/09/2014:
Well turns out my local lumberyard do have some stock perfectly quartersawn. 70 by 160 mm, I took exactly 1 meter of it

Lots of ray flecks


Endgrain


One face is perfectly flat with no twist at all (the other was convex), shows how much care the lumberyard took to machine it only after it had been perfectly seasoned.


Of course quartersawn beech wouldn't dry to have a twist anyway but it's a good indicator I should deal with this lumberyard again. It cost me a fortune, but totally worth it. I expect at least 5 different kinds of planes out of it (including a fore plane, a strike block and a smoother) and a couple other things to use in the shop.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

The 'best' wooden planes of old were made from straight-grained stock, usually cleft (split) from the log to ensure that they were genuinely 'quartered'. The sole of the plane was aligned closer to the bark side of the billets. The cleft and trimmed billets for bench planes, being quite thick, were left to season for a long time - ten years, sometimes.

Planes of lower quality (and price) were made from stock that wasn't precisely quartered. They surface from time to time (some of the planes in the Benjamin Seaton chest, for example). Home-made planes were sometimes made of whatever was to hand, and may show any orientation of grain, wild grain, even knots.

The term 'rift sawn' seems to mean different things in different parts of the world, but I take it to mean sawn through-and-through, with parallel cuts through the log, taking off the crown first (the outer 'crown-cut') boards, then yielding near-quartered and quartered stock at the centre of the log, and working out to the crown cuts on the other side. I suspect most timber is converted that way nowadays, but finding the quartered boards may be luck, or they may be sorted out by the merchant for sale at a premium. (Edit to add - but see Mike's (woodbrains) comment below.)

One modern approach to plane-making that might avoid the trouble of locating quartered stock, and the long drying time for real stability of thicker blanks, is to take advantage of the quality of modern glues and laminate the blank from thinner stock. Careful selection would allow the growth rings to be aligned in opposite directions through the finished blank to improve it's stability. Thinner stock is also usually a good bit cheaper!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

It could be laminated from different timbers, too. A perfect hard one for the sole and the top, and something not so good (expensive) in the middle.

 

[jimi43]

Also a lot of exotic woods are available today quite easily and certainly easier than in the days when the traditional woodie was made.

The use of exotic wood not only aids in choice for stability but it also makes for harder wearing tools and some very fine figuring.

I only have to sit and look at the very fine toothing plane that Stewie made from Australian and Pacific hardwoods to see a prime example of this manufacturing methods. And those woods are fairly easily available in the West.

Jimi

 

[woodbrains]

Hello,

Rift sawn has the grain at 45 deg to the surface, quarter sawn, perpendicular and crown sawn parallel to the surface. All with a degree of leeway of a bout 10 degrees either way, of course. Plain sawn logs (through and through) will yield boards which exhibit all of these, depending where the board is taken. We should stick to this convention, as calling flat sawn board rift or rift boards quartered, is just confusing. The logs have been SAWN and not riven, after all. We could choose to rive a log any way we choose, but sawn logs have a naming convention.

I could be wrong, but I understand that we call rift sawn boards after the riven timber used by chair makers, wheel wrights, coopers etc, where they would have riven timber with as much 45 deg grain as possible, as this was better for what they made. Sayers just followed with the naming when the boards they sawed exhibited the same grain orientation.

Mike.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Thanks for that clarification, Mike.

After thirty odd (very odd, some of them) years fiddling with bit of wood, I really should have been less confused about some of the terms applied by sawyers and merchants; but I suspect I'm not the only one!

 

[Corneel]

Riven wood is dead quartered. That's the easiest cleaving path throug the wood. In oak it is very visible, the riven boards have extreme ray fleck figure. After being rived, the board is tapered. It will often have been hewed and planed in a less quartered position. But one face pretty always remains absolutely quartered. So I am not sure if the word rift comes from riven. But I'm not English, so I shouldn't have too many opinions about English words. 8)

 

[Trafalgar]

Rift Sawing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rift_sawing

 

[JohnPW]

Rift Sawing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rift_sawing

Which is "wrong", even says so itself!

This is from a UK book:

Through and through will give about one piece which is truly quarter sawn.

 

[Trafalgar]

The illustrations in your article only show quarter sawn lumber.

QSawn grain orientation is not always perfectly straight. Rift sawn lumber is. I've seen it being done, I've seen the result, and if being done correctly necessarily produces the characteristic triangular pieces of waste per the Wikipedia article.

Through-and-through will actually produce two pieces (on each side of the pith) that are perfectly rift sawn - grain running absolutely perpendicular to the board's end.

I'm not typically a huge fan of EHow but they got this right:

http://www.ehow.com/info_12170400_rift- ... n-oak.html

This is also a good depiction of what's going on:

http://www.advantagelumber.com/sawn-lumber/

You can easily visualize the characteristic triangular waste produce by rift sawing. You can also see the two pieces of rift sawn (NOT quartersawn) lumber produced by sawing through-and-through (aka 'plain sawn'). Compare the illustration on the far left with the one on the far right. Look at dead center of the log on the left and let your eyes track to the log on the right. Voila'

Rift sawing produces four wide stable pieces of lumber where quartersawing does not. See the diagrams. The other boards produced by rift sawing tend to be wider as well though the overall board footage yield is less.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

I think I agree with CStanford on rift sawn in this context.

You cannot rive wood just as you choose. If you want to rive a large log along the grain, it must be split in half, or close to it, or the split will run off into the thinner part. Splitting smaller pieces of wood with a froe, the split can be steered somewhat, but not so with a large log and wedges.

So riven wood is usually split radially. Which, tthough wasteful for flat boards, maximises the amount of wood which is effectively quarter sawn. And presumably maximises the amount good for planemaking.

Just looking at my woodies, all the side beads are quartersawn. Not all the hollows and rounds are, and the larger planes are more or less random.

 

[JohnPW]

This subject has come up before:
topic74847.html

Like so many things in woodworking, terminology is often not fully universal, and is down to where you come from etc. etc. Also many things to do with timber (or lumber!) are termed differently in the US (and different parts of the US) and in the UK.

Certainly the terminology quartered, rift and crown to refer to boards from centre, middle and outside boards of a through-and-through cut log are in general usage, and are understood in those terms among the timber yards and veneer suppliers in the UK that I use. There are also plenty of results taking that view that come up in a Google search for the term.

Personally I don't care what it is called so long as the people I need to understand know what I mean — and they do. Timber is almost always cut through and through these days, to reduce wastage and for efficiency, and the terms 'quartered' has come to mean the middle board, rather than a method of sawing. If you ask for a quarter-sawn board you will generally get the middle board of a through and through cut log.

It seems there's 2 ways to use these terms. One is to describe the method of sawing and the other is to describe the grain angle. So "quarter sawn" as in how it's sawn can give grain that's up to 45 degrees, but "quarter sawn" to mean the grain angle (90 degrees) can come from through and through.

 

[J_SAMa]

http://www.preverco.com/en/blog/what-do ... rsawn-mean
It says:
"Riftsawn wood has every board cut along a radius of the original log, so each board has a perpendicular grain, with the growth rings oriented at right angles to the surface of the board. At these angles, the medullary rays are not apparent and there is not fleck visible in the boards."
????? Are visible medullary rays maximized when the growth rings are perpendicular?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Yes. Medullary rays show on the radius.

 

[J_SAMa]

Yes. Medullary rays show on the radius.

Exactly, then how come the website I quoted above says the opposite?

 

[Trafalgar]

This subject has come up before:
topic74847.html

Like so many things in woodworking, terminology is often not fully universal, and is down to where you come from etc. etc. Also many things to do with timber (or lumber!) are termed differently in the US (and different parts of the US) and in the UK.

Certainly the terminology quartered, rift and crown to refer to boards from centre, middle and outside boards of a through-and-through cut log are in general usage, and are understood in those terms among the timber yards and veneer suppliers in the UK that I use. There are also plenty of results taking that view that come up in a Google search for the term.

Personally I don't care what it is called so long as the people I need to understand know what I mean — and they do. Timber is almost always cut through and through these days, to reduce wastage and for efficiency, and the terms 'quartered' has come to mean the middle board, rather than a method of sawing. If you ask for a quarter-sawn board you will generally get the middle board of a through and through cut log.

It seems there's 2 ways to use these terms. One is to describe the method of sawing and the other is to describe the grain angle. So "quarter sawn" as in how it's sawn can give grain that's up to 45 degrees, but "quarter sawn" to mean the grain angle (90 degrees) can come from through and through.

Riftsawn is a very specific term in the U.S. and the stock so sawn is half again as expensive as quartersawn of the same species. One will quickly learn, over here at least, that the terms are not interchangeable when handed an invoice for an order of riftsawn stock.

It's a labor and machine intensive way to saw lumber and it produces a lot of waste. The straight grain is gorgeous. I much prefer riftsawn oak over quartersawn. The ray flecks/flakes can become jarring if not matched across a piece or a tabletop for instance.

 

[bugbear]

Riftsawn is a very specific term in the U.S.

That may be, but the US is not the whole world (despite what some residents appear to think), and this is a UK site.

BugBear

 

[bugbear]

The use of exotic wood not only aids in choice for stability but it also makes for harder wearing tools and some very fine figuring.

Need to think carefully - it you composite different woods you open up the possibiity of differential expansion and contraction under humidity changes, leading to warping, analogous to a bimetallic strip.

BugBear

 

[woodbrains]

Hello,

What we should bear on mind is there is a difference between intent and result. The intent in quarter sawing is to increase the yield of boards with perpendicular grain, to emphasise the medullary rays on the surface. But trees are more or less cylindrical, so there will be a certain amount of waste and a certain amount of boards that do not comply to the intention. So is a board that is produced by a quarter sawing process, that exhibits grain that is 45 deg to,the surface actually quarter sawn? No it is not, just the same as a through and through board near the centre of the tree, will have near perpendicular grain, is not plain sawn. The description of what the timber is, is not related to how it was cut, (the intention) but what characteristics it exhibits. In other words, if straight grain is evident on all four faces, the board must have grain that is more or less 45 deg to the face, and is rift sawn, even if it was produced by quarter sawing the log, or sawing through and through, or whatever. Just the same as plain sawn logs will have quarter sawn boards towards the centre. These are typically set aside and sold as quarter sawn, even though they were produced by plain sawing.

It is irrelevant which country in the world we inhabit, only boards which have near perpendicular grain are quarter sawn, boards with straight grain on all faces must have nominally 45 deg grain (rift sawn) and all boards with arched grain will have grain parallel,to the face (flat sawn). We just look at what the board is, not how it was produced, for the nomenclature.

Mike.

 

[Trafalgar]

Hello,

What we should bear on mind is there is a difference between intent and result. The intent in quarter sawing is to increase the yield of boards with perpendicular grain, to emphasise the medullary rays on the surface. But trees are more or less cylindrical, so there will be a certain amount of waste and a certain amount of boards that do not comply to the intention. So is a board that is produced by a quarter sawing process, that exhibits grain that is 45 deg to,the surface actually quarter sawn? No it is not, just the same as a through and through board near the centre of the tree, will have near perpendicular grain, is not plain sawn. The description of what the timber is, is not related to how it was cut, (the intention) but what characteristics it exhibits. In other words, if straight grain is evident on all four faces, the board must have grain that is more or less 45 deg to the face, and is rift sawn, even if it was produced by quarter sawing the log, or sawing through and through, or whatever. Just the same as plain sawn logs will have quarter sawn boards towards the centre. These are typically set aside and sold as quarter sawn, even though they were produced by plain sawing.

It is irrelevant which country in the world we inhabit, only boards which have near perpendicular grain are quarter sawn, boards with straight grain on all faces must have nominally 45 deg grain (rift sawn) and all boards with arched grain will have grain parallel,to the face (flat sawn). We just look at what the board is, not how it was produced, for the nomenclature.

Mike.

Just to be clear -- riftsawing an entire log is not accidental. To truly rift saw a log requires an entirely different sequence of cuts and procedures at the mill. It's not done for $hits and giggles. There is no way that the two methods, rift vs. quarter sawing, can be confused at the mill. It's a metaphysical impossibility.

Some specialty mills will group the four big boards (see the diagram I posted earlier) from one riftsawn log and offer it as tabletop material and for other large applications. If it's from a really big log the conference table jockeys usually gobble it up, but always as a matched set of four boards from one log for color match. The four board bit is the key; it's the only method of sawing that will produce four nicely sized boards (again, relative to the size of the log) that are stable and whose grain and color are easily matched.