Let Me Grade Your Wood

Let's take this time to appreciate a major element in design that has been bestowed upon us by mother nature: wood.

With its variety of shapes, sizes, and species there is so much to know about wood it's hard to know where to begin! In this blog I'm going to discuss one of the "G"s of wood- Grade.

The grading of lumber is determined by how many defects and imperfections are in the wood. The clearer the wood, the higher the grade. Here is a breakdown of different grading:

• Clear- to have clear wood is to have wood virtually free of any defects.
• Select- is a grade lower than clear because it has some natural defects such as knots
  
• Common- has even more natural characteristics like select grade that are chosen to highlight the defects in the wood. There are two variations- Number 1 Common and Number 2 Common: No 1 Common showcasing various colors, knots and wormholes and No 2 showing the characteristics of the species of wood
• First
  First grade wood has the best appearance, natural color variations and limited character marks.
• Second
  Second grade wood is variegated in appearance with varying sound wood characteristics of species.
• Third
  Third grade wood is rustic in appearance allowing all wood characteristics of the species.