The timber planks used for floorboards are flat. These are cut from trees that were round. It only takes a little speculation to realize that there are many ways to cut a thin flat plank from a thick round piece of wood. The various different ways of cutting wood from the tree will give timber boards different properties.
Two important properties of wood are stability and the wood grain appearance. Planks that are cut from a tree log in different ways will have different properties.
This has the timber planks cut from one side of the tree log to the other. Planks cut through the centre of the tree are fairly strong and stable, and tend to have good wood grain. Planks cut from the top and base of the tree have lower stability and poor woodgrain.
This type of cut will not waste much wood, but the quality of the timber planks produce this way will vary.
This has timber planks cut from the outer rim to the centre of the log. This gives timber planks that tend to have attractive woodgrain, and that is quite stable. But some of the wood is wasted by this cutting method.
This also cuts from the outside to the middle of the tree. But there is minimal wasted wood between the planks that are cut because the cuts are not made towards the absolute centre of the tree.
Quarter Sawn wood tends to have consistently good woodgrain patterns, though this varies between each piece of timber, and the timber planks are as stable as can possibly be expected.
Wooden floors made from Quarter sawn timber planks will greatly benefit from sanding and polishing because they tend to have attractive woodgrain. These floors also tend to be quite stable.
Have your timber floors restored with our floor sanding. Or have the floors re-sanded if you want to change their colour and finish when redecorating.
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