Can you tell just from looing if a maple neck is quartersawn?

[SolarMan]

Originally Posted by Teacher

The diagram above is slightly misleading. To those not familiar with the terms, it makes it look like the term refers to the way the boards are cut. It doesn't. In the "plain sawn" diagram, most of the board feet would be considered flat sawn, but some would be considered rift sawn, and the ones in the center would be considered quarter sawn. It's all about grain orientation on the broad side of the board:

closer to 0 degrees = flatsawn (see right-hand neck heel above)

closer to 45 degrees = rift sawn

closer to 90 degrees = quarrtersawn (see left nneck heel in photo above)

Your username suits you.

I was going to ask (after looking at the pictures) if a flat sawn board could resemble a quarter sawn board if you took if from the right spot. The answer is yes - and it would actually be considered quartersawn. (If I'm a good student I got that right!)

I do have a question:

I was looking at some very expensive neck blanks and they had a disclaimer on the quartersawn - "grain within 20% of vertical"

Is that the standard?

[SolarMan]

Just want to confirm with the experts:

When I told my guitarist friends that my $80 SX Strat has a quartersawn neck - I was correct?
















And they should not have laughed their asses off at me???

[HaMMerHeD]

Still could be flatsawn. It's hard to tell for sure with finished pieces. If it was sawn flat, and that neck blank happened to come from a center-ish part of the lumber, it is still flat sawn even though it looks like quartersawn.

It may be close to vertical and very straight grained, but it could still be flat sawn.


Again, being flat, quarter, or rift sawn has to do with the way the LOG was processed, not with the way the resulting flitch was divided.

[HaMMerHeD]

Take this cheap little drawing, for example:



(Please excuse the crudity, I didn't have time to paint it and it's not to scale.)

The circles represent the log and the growth lines.

If the log was cut along the horizontal lines, it's a flat or plain sawn log. All of the flitches and boards to come from it will be flatsawn, regardless of anything else.

Now, the growth rings in the flitches closer (the blue lines) to the middle look quartersawn, and any lumber cut from them will look quartersawn too. But they aren't.

When lumber merchants describe grain "close to quarter" or "close to vertical" or "close to rift", they are likely describing lumber from a flatsawn log which came from somewhere close-ish to the middle.

[pilotjones]

Originally Posted by SolarMan

Just want to confirm with the experts:

When I told my guitarist friends that my $80 SX Strat has a quartersawn neck - I was correct?

And they should not have laughed their asses off at me???

Going by the terminology as normally used in the wood marketplace, including guitar sales: yes, that is quarter sawn. The annual growth rings are nearly perpendicular to the fretboard.

Going by the "true" sawyer's terminology: impossible to tell. That could be the center board (also referred to in a previous post as the "pith cut") from a plain sawn log; could be any board from a true rift sawn log; or could be any of the better boards from a quarter sawn log.



There is a problem with the way we commonly use sawyer's terms for wood end products. Once the log is cut, you loose the historical evidence of how it was cut. For example, yet another possibility (although unlikely) is that that neck started as a 12/4 plain sawn plank, and would have been sold as flatsawn -- and then a 1" wide slice was take from its center, which then shows a "quarter sawn" grain orientation, and would be sold with that name.

Because of this, one could make an argument that the use of the bastardized sawing terms in the marketplace is actually legitimate, since their use is describing what you're buying, and it doesn't matter how that cut piece of wood came to be. Of course, what would be more accurate and less misleading would be to call boards as "parallel grain," perpendicular grain," and maybe something like "intermediate angle grain." But that is not what is commonly done.

[Blue Blood]

Perhaps how the wood is cut doesn't matter. The most stable necks I've ever owned were almost always one piece flat sawn. Maybe quarter is stronger, don't know, but it's been my experience that it is not always more stable.

[Teacher]

I should amend what I wrote before: yes, the terminnology did indeed originate with sawyers, but even lumberyards and woodworking schools and publications use the terminology in regards to grain orientation. This is because the orientation, not the sawing pattern, determines stability, appearance, etc. In other words, this usage is practical for us; sawing pattern is not.

[SolarMan]

That was truly a thorough discussion. It is nice to finally and fully understand.


Oddly enough, my #1 and #2 bass have perfectly flat sawn necks.

[HaMMerHeD]

^ My #1 bass has a flat-sawn 1-piece wenge neck. When I built it, a LOT of people told me it'd be weak and unstable, and I should rip it into ribbons and glue it back together, etc.

In the 1.5 years I've had it, I've had to adjust the truss rod once, just a couple of weeks ago.

[Teacher]

Wood's completely unpredictable. I'm about to do my first build, and the neck will definitely be quarter-sawn and laminated. However, just because a neck isn't doesn't mean it WILL move. There are plenty of flat-sawn necks that have remained stable for years.

[Blue Blood]

Like I've said I've had more trouble multi-lam necks than single pieces, quarter or flat. Plus I greatly prefer the tone of a one piece, it's much more open. I do use graphite bars and think this definitely helps keep the neck stable.

[HaMMerHeD]

^ Define "much more open".

[iamlowsound]

Quarter sawn oak is beautiful and I have considered doing a neck out of it at some point.

lowsound