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We bought some 1x6 Douglas Fir tongue and groove paneling recently to use as the ceiling of a timber frame house we're building. When we dug into it we were dismayed to find that most of it had significant problems - tearout, pits, and a lot of roller burn (a LOT!- 60-70% of sticks had it). Not something we could use as-is.

The grade we ostensibly bought was "Clear, D and Better". My understanding of that grade is that it's the lowest of the clear grades, and can have occasional knots and other issues. That's fine, but what we got was I think must worse than that. I've made a gallery of some of the things we saw as we went through:

https://i.sstatic.net/qXjPz.jpg

I've not bought this grade of wood before, it's pretty spendy stuff - $2.35/lf. This was a significant expense, many thousands of dollars in total, plus a not insignificant shipping cost. Did we get some bad product or are my expectations too high?

isherwood
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Rob Campbell
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1 Answers1

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I work in a mill and I have talked to the graders to better understand how the wood is graded.

First is clear this is the toughest grade as any knots are usually small and tight. But then you chose D grade this is the bottom of the barrel grade but visual defects, boards with some edge defects from bark “wain” (not sure on spelling) are common in D so it is not unusual. All grades can have a certain amount that falls outside the stamped grade system in each grade.

Grade inspectors spot check our graders weekly and they randomly pull full units of finished wood and inspect every board if the grade falls outside the inspection we loose our stamps (a big deal).

In our plant a person completes a quick grade and what end to trim and a optical scanner provides a double checks the grade, finally the lumber is sorted by size and grade. Then is stacked the person running the stacker pulls out anything that may have snuck by.

So when purchasing specific grades although it is much more expensive go with higher grades this is the reason why.

I believe you got what you purchased in the D grade if I wanted something I wanted to use as is I would be getting B grade or better.

Ed Beal
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