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I mean the old growth straight grained stuff, the real deal. Like this:





If so please let me know.

Darren Hippner posts a lot of sets on ebay. They are of various qualities. If you want vertical grain across the entire width, you might try contacting him and see what he has. Recently, his ebay name has been "classicalvintageguitars".

Do you have a price range in mind?

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John

Darren Hippner has a pretty nice old quartered set on now for $650.

If you are referring to the set with number 19 written on it, the back is not quartered. It appears that his current auction photos have been juiced to make the wood appear redder.



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John

I haven't bought BRW from Darrin but have bought a lot of other woods from him. he has been in the process of getting rid of a lot of his Tonewood over the last 5 years. I got some really good deals from him over the years.

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I've bought some nice BRZ and other wood from Darren over the years and it's all been good. I asked him about the reddish colored stuff he was selling and he said it was from a different region, heavier than other Brazilian he has used and less fragrant although still sweet. It doesn't look like he is labeling D.Nigra on those auctions.


Pat

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Pat

So have I. Darren is not only a wood dealer, he is a luthier, mainly building classical guitars. But with all that experience, you would think he would know what 'quartersawn' means.
This is not a one time instance of his misrepresentation on Ebay.

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John

I have found before that different people or different industries use the term "quartersawn" differently. So, I used to think that quartersawn meant vertical grain the entire width, but I find published guides to types of lumber sawing that show quartersawn very similar to what I think of as rift sawn. Somewhere between vertical grain the entire width and rift sawn, you have to call the grain something.

'Quartersawn' can include grain up to 45 degrees off vertical, but the issue I have with Hippner is that the questionable wood has the heart, where the grain is dead slab. The current one is what I term narrow heart, where the cut is close to the center of the log. That creates mostly straight grain on the face, but a close inspection usually reveals the truth. In this photo, I have highlighted the heart in each half with a white line.

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John

https://www.finehomebuilding.com/2018/0 ... aight,grai

https://www.wardclapboard.com/about.html

There is a bit of mud when it comes to terminology with the various ways of sawing logs. And even the illustration for "quartersawing" in the fine home building article linked differs from the method I understand quartersawing to be. My understanding of quartersawing is that you quarter the log and then cut boards from alternate faces, flipping the log after each cut, to produce vertical grain, near vertical grain to progressively more rift grain boards as the log is flipped and sawn, and the boards get narrower. It produces more warp resistant wood , but narrower boards, and requires more labor.
Sometimes radial sawing was done to produce vertical grain clapboards which were considered to be "riftsawn". This naturally produced a beveled siding with minimal cupping and twisting.

Parse it any way you want. Quartersawn does not contain the heart (AKA flat grain) somewhere near the center of the board. If you want to rip it down the middle, fine. But absent that, the definition is plain sawn, no matter how close to vertical the grain is on the edges.
Just to be clear, the above back was cut all the way through the log, just off the center of the rings. It is not quartersawn, by any definition.
Just to repeat myself, this is not the exclusive domain of Hippner on Ebay, but he is a frequent and persistent offender.

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John

By the way, "straight" grain in my mind is a totally different issue than quartered. I see lots of examples of vertical grain that is also curved or even curly along the length of the board.

In the clapboard link posted, the rift sawn example looks like it only produces perfect vertical grain. I think that is an error.

Yes, the rift sawn illustrations that are all over the Web are incorrect. Those are actually radial sawn, which maximizes vertical grain. It is the proper way to cut spruce soundboards.

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John

https://www.oldhouseonline.com/repairs- ... ng-siding/
Further down in the above linked article is pictured a radial saw mill. Many of the illustrations you see online show rift/radial sawing as a cumbrous and wasteful proposition, but with the right mill, and the expectation of getting tapered boards, it is somewhat less so.
Hi John,
I would agree with you - that looks like plain sawn lumber, the most common method of sawing used today. Having some vertical grain in the center and some off quarter and slab toward the edges is getting more and more common.

Hi wbergman,
I didn't see where in the linked article that is said it produced "straight grained" lumber - only riftsawn vertical grained lumber. I will re-read it a bit more closely.

"Riftsawn vertical grain" is an oxymoron. Riftsawn is correctly identified as being between vertical and flat grain. In other words, between quartered and plain sawn.
Synonyms:
Vertical grain = perfect quarter = radial sawn
Rift sawn = off quarter, usually 30 to 75 degrees (no flat grain)
Note that the quartersawing process produces both quartered and rift boards, with the widest boards the most vertical. It cannot produce flat grain.
Plain sawn = flat sawn (any board that has flat grain anywhere)

Through sawing of a log will produce grain with varying angles. The center board (AKA the 'dog' board) will be 'quartersawn', but only after ripping it through the heart to eliminate the flat grain.

Offset heart, where the flat grain is off-center, is common on 2-piece backs. In that case, it is preferable to place the heart on the outside of the back, outside the waist. That results in the most vertical grain in the center.

Ripping the heart out of flatsawn boards can produce quartered, off-quartered, or rift sawn boards.

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John

Clay,

I was changing the subject. Probably I should have started a new paragraph. I was done with the mention of the error in the link, and going on to point out that the request for straight grain is not really a request for vertical grain, depending upon who is thinking what. Straight is the long way, but vertical is a different direction. But even my mention of that was not clear.

John Arnold wrote:
"Riftsawn vertical grain" is an oxymoron"

Actually it is not an oxymoron. A rift sawn board will have vertical grain. That is why that sawing method was employed.
Colloquially "rift grain" boards are those which many of us believe are those whose grain is neither "vertical" nor "flat", but somewhere in between. I think there is a rift between what the sawyer means and what the carpenter means with this term. Depending on who you talk to, you will be looking at a different board.

this subject, which has been discussed/argued over already, is really an issue of perspective...we woodworkers use terms to describe the grain orientation of a piece of wood whereas a sawyer uses the same words to describe how the log is cut up...I've decided to use the term "vertical grain" as opposed to quarter sawn in an attempt to make sure my meaning is conveyed to others correctly. I find the biggest confusion can arise over the term rift sawn and I suspect there are times suppliers fall back to some other definition to cover their heinies...

the images above of the BRZ are certainly not vertical grain or quartersawn since there is the heart of the tree visible down the middle of the pieces

This is true quartersawn BRW. The only caveat to being "perfect qtr" is that just outside of the upper bout area, the grain falls to "rift"
This is the good stuff, that is almost non-existent these days.

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This is flatsawn BRW. Beautiful spiderweb figure, flatsawn, but not the "heart" area of a flatsawn plank.

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That's what I'm talking about! I have about 12 sets of that in house now and that is why I was asking here if anyone knew if this stuff even exists any more. I did notice that ebay sale and I'm with John on that one and in fact I found it kind of troubling. It seems to me as thought that breaks the rules of eBay selling stuff not as described. Those are still nice sets for sure and maybe worth the asking price but they are NOT quarter sawn which any luthier from amateur to pro knows means vertical grain |||||||| or close to it regardless of the terms a sawyer would use.

I don't even mind the flat sawn boards as long as they are old growth dark chocolate red like the ones in my pics and in Arron's, or like most of the sets I have are vertical in the middle and taper off. Heck Martin used flat sawn BRW in the golden years. Strait grain to me is for example being able to follow the same line down the length of the sides even if it's off quarter ///////. Not cathedral ceilings or 'figured' wood which is just really stump wood.

John Arnold I will send you a PM...

This is the best set I ever got. From a client that collected it in the 80’s I think. It was not even for a guitar for him but one he wanted to gift to a friend.

I’ll probably never see another set like it in my career. Not the best pictures -

B29035B6-4FE3-44C3-992D-A52908E80D16 by Terence Kennedy, on Flickr

548A9E5E-6343-445A-9715-7F4A092A4B98 by Terence Kennedy, on Flickr

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