sawing wood for handles

J

JDW

Well-Known Member
I have some wood to saw for slabs or blocks, my question is, What is 1/4 sawn? and how do you go about it, as far as the direction of the cut in relation to the grain? From what I understand, wood with plain straight grain, 1/4 sawn, will have a nicer look to the grain. Is this correct?
Thanks in advance for all responses. Dale
 
Hey Dale,

Quarter sawn just describes quartering a log like a pie and sawing out the boards across the stave so that the end grain is at about 45 degrees to the grade face.

Saw mills don't actually do it any more cause it's wasteful and slows down production so much. They just have big dumb lumber inspectors (Like me!) pick out the accidental quarter and rift sawn boards from the production runs of the specie.

The actual NHLA definition of quartered lumber is...and this is the short version...surface shows the radial grain at an angle of 45 degrees or less with one face.

Which means when you look at the end of the piece the end grain will be at 45 or less degrees to the face of the board.

The benefit is that it will show more color variations than it will as a flat sawn piece. Plus it will look more consistent from side to side. And as the rings get closer to 90 degrees from the grade face there is a better chance of getting ribbon effect in the grain. Which is always cool.
 
I cut my own quartersawn wood and reject a lot of what I cut while searching for exibition grade blocks and scales. A lot of what I cut is Osage Orange, a common wood here in SE Iowa.

Knots in Osage do not slip or loosen, a real plus. And that's where a lot of the contrasting color comes from, the gnarly and knotty wood. I do admit to accidentally losing potential good contrasting pieces of wood while cutting a large piece to extract the best of the piece. It's like opening a Pandoria box to see what's inside, for me.
 
The good thing for knifemakers is that a plane sawn board that is 1.5 or 2" thick allows you to rip quarter sawn scales right off the edge. Actually buying the wood quarter sawn is expensive, and can require extra cutting, often with a bandsaw, to get to 1/4 sawn scales. I dunno about y'all, but I try to do all my cutting on my tablesaw so that there is a lot less flattening to do. The bandsaw creates a lot of flattening for me, and since I use glass and sandpaper, I stick with the tablesaw. This means I prefer cutting my quartersawn slabs off of a plane sawn plank over buying it already quartersawn.
 
Thanks to all for clearing that up. I have some Dogwood that I will try to quartersaw in the near future, and some Hedge too.
 
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