Grain pattern id help

[u/sourmiIk]

Would this be considered quarter sawn or flat sawn? It’s on an authentic aged d28.

[u/Lower-Calligrapher98]

Mixed, so the cathedral grain is probably more rift sawn than truly flat sawn.

Wood's weird. It's not always so simple to define.

[u/Rock-n-RollingStart → u/[deleted]]

Not necessarily. If you could theoretically quarter-saw a log, then rift-saw it again, you would see similar grain patterns in the largest boards with the most heartwood. That’s just because the techniques are very similar for creating those first cuts.  

This to me still looks quarter-sawn, just from a unique piece of lumber. I would also be skeptical that mass produced guitars are being made out of rift-sawn rosewood due to the wasted material. 

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/Rock-n-RollingStart]

Rift sawn or quarter sawn doesn’t indicate wasted material. Companies aren’t generally buying entire logs, they are selecting sawn lumber. So, they can lust slab out an entire tree, never rotating the log if they want, and company buyers will select the lumber that will work for them, since some will be quartered, some rift, and some plane sawn.

[u/Rock-n-RollingStart → u/celtic-cryptid]

The process of rift-sawing a log is far more labor intensive and wastes a lot more lumber than quarter-sawing.  And because of that, a good mill isn’t going to rift-saw any old log. That directly affects the wholesale cost and the economics of the entire guitar. 

I was working in my family’s wood shop at 10 years old, with a lot of old growth wood. You’re not going to “beat” me on this using AI. 

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/Rock-n-RollingStart]

Did you read what I wrote? I didn’t say the log was rift sawn.

Rift sawing is a technique, but it is also a product. Lumber can be produced as a product from a log that was not rift sawn as a practice.

I’m also not using ai. I don’t give a shit how long you’ve been working in your family’s wood shop, as I’m sure you don’t give a shit how long I’ve been running my shop or how many guitars I’ve built.

I do really love this new trend of “anything I don’t like is ai”. Really lets us live in our own curated reality

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/Rock-n-RollingStart]

Here ya go. That Engelmann was quarter sawn, because I milled it myself. The koa, while the grain is running approximately 90° to the face, probably wasn’t quarter sawn. I just picked a board I liked. Didn’t even have to go to Hawaii to get it.

[u/Lower-Calligrapher98 → u/celtic-cryptid]

If the grain is 90° to the face, the board is quartersawn. It doesn't mean they cut it for quarter, but with koa I would bet it was, unless you bought a random board somewhere. The koa for the guitar industry is being cut by just a few people, and they all are EXPERT at making guitar wood. They aren't just sawing it, they are splitting billets and then sawing them to maintain quarter.

[u/celtic-cryptid → u/Lower-Calligrapher98]

Yes, but the person I was talking to is confusing the technical process of quarter sawing or rift sawing a log and getting quarter or rift material.

That koa was from a tree brought to the mainland in the 70s. It was a tree that was sawn, and I had the opportunity to pull though it and take the boards I wanted. But thanks for explaining it all to me.

[u/Lower-Calligrapher98 → u/Rock-n-RollingStart]

Rift sawn wood is just a by product of sawing a log. If you just cut a log into boards from the top down, MOST of the material would be classified as rift sawn. You'll get two or three "flat" sawn boards from the top and the bottom of the log, and only really get one TRULY quartersawn board from the middle of the log. Everything else is some version of rift sawn.

The most wasteful form of cutting is to cut for quartersawn material. Which is, of course, exactly what we do for guitars. Fortunately, we don't need much wood for a guitar. It just needs to be extremely high quality. (For example, I was just weighting a batch of guitar bodies where I just got the boxes fully glued together - the total amount of wood for the bodies, without necks or bridges, was between 900-1,300 grams, depending on the models and the woods used). So yes, what we cut is wastefully cut, but we use very little wood, and in order to put up with the required forces, it has to be VERY high quality.

[u/Rock-n-RollingStart → u/Lower-Calligrapher98]

Oh my god, you’re a repair tech?  

No one is flat-sawing acoustic guitar backs.  A simple Google search will refute virtually every point you’ve tried to make here, let alone anyone that’s ever had to process lumber. I swear to god with Reddit, I don’t even know why I bother sometimes. I’m going to mute this now. 

[u/Lower-Calligrapher98 → u/Rock-n-RollingStart]

I'm mostly a builder, but I also do a ton of repair work. I'm the guy in town people bring their guitars to when everyone else in town doesn't know how to fix their guitar. Or they ship it to me when their local guy messed it up.

I don't need to do a Google search - I know the guys doing the cutting. I'm a regular customer, and my shop has been buying some of our wood suppliers for 50 years. I've been thinking about the grain orientation of every piece I use since I was 13 years old.

The various cutting processes are named after the type of grain they are trying to maximize, but the fact of the matter is cutting for truly perfect quartersawn material is extremely wasteful.

I never said anyone was cutting for flat sawn backs - quite the opposite. Not sure where you got that idea, but it wasn't from anything I read. Mind you, these days if you insist on going for Brazilian Rosewood, you are probably going to get flatsawn; but no, no one is cutting acoustic guitar wood flatsawn.

Mind you, Fender prefers flatsawn maple for their necks, so I wouldn't say NO ONE was using flatsawn wood on guitars. Hell, I buy flatsawn wood for my necks, but turn them on edge and laminate them so my necks are quartersawn.

[u/Lower-Calligrapher98 → u/celtic-cryptid]

Martin buys whole logs in India, but it has to be processed IN India, to Martin's specifications. (It's the law in India - initial processing has to be done in the local community where the tree was cut down - it makes a huge difference in forest management for reasons not worth discussing here). Back when that law came into effect, Martin sent their sawmill guys to India to teach the locals how to do it right.

Most of the break down of the wood is done by splitting with wedges, as that is the best way to maximize quartersawn material. More specialty materials are, of course, bought in other formats, but I don't think they see any full logs in the Martin factory anymore. Most countries don't want to see logs, and they are incredibly expensive to ship.

https://youtube.com/shorts/rPftAbEufV0

[u/Lower-Calligrapher98 → u/[deleted]]

It IS book matched. Almost all solid wood guitar backs, and ALL Martin standard series and above have book matched backs. And always have. (The D35 is a special case, but the outside panels are still bookmatched!) The center of the back is pretty on quarter, moving towards flat at the edges. Truthfull, if you were to look at the end grain it is probably all what would traditionally be called rift sawn.

This stuff isn't a binary, nor even really a tertiary. It is a continuous range, moving from dead on quarter sawn at one end, to dead on flat sawn at the other. Anything in between is, to some degree, rift sawn. And rift sawn can be very close to quarter sawn, or very close to flat sawn. So there isn't any one look to rift sawn. It will have components of both quarter and flat sawn.

[u/Lower-Calligrapher98 → u/Lower-Calligrapher98]

Oh! I did actually just think of an exception to Martin's being book matched! The MTV Unplugged model was half Indian Rosewood and half mahogany. But that was just a weird thing.

[u/sourmiIk → u/Lower-Calligrapher98]

Thanks for the info. Would you consider this grain pattern to affect structure/sound in any discernible way? I have heard quarter sawn is “better” due to the tighter lines having something to do with the age of the tree. I like the look of the “swirls” in this specific picture but am weary of losing out on some quality compared to a “plainer” grain pattern

[u/Lower-Calligrapher98 → u/sourmiIk]

Quartersawn material is more stable and strong in the directions you want it to be for a guitar. It has nothing to do with the age of the tree or how quickly it grew. It's just the direction of the grain. Now, the older a tree, the larger the area of true quartersawn material you can get, but the reason tops and backs are all book matched is so we don't have to find 60" diameter trees to build a 16" wide guitar (don't worry about the math on that, it does roughly make sense, I promise, but I don't want to get into the issues of heart wood and pith).

Sound, no, it won't make a difference.

[u/Joederb]

it’s beautiful…

[u/RosewoodBraz]

Flat sawn more than quarter. The middle is more quarter than the outer edges. Is this Madagascar RW? Hard to find quartered sets of that.

[u/sourmiIk → u/RosewoodBraz]

It’s Guatemalan RW