# Timber grades?



## stage1v8 (10 Jan 2011)

Hi Folks,

Just been trawling the internet looking at local timber suppliers and getting a little stumped by how they refer to different types of timber.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a guide to how timber is graded and identified?

Examples are:

5th scan red g1
4th Russian red g2
5th scan red b1
6th scan red g3

I assume that "scan" is referring to scandinavian and "russian" is from russia. Red is red wood but no idea what 4/5/6th is or G1/2/3 & B1 are.

Cheers

Jon


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## BelgianPhil (10 Jan 2011)

For everything you always wanted to know about timber grading but were afraid to ask ( includes anatomically correct diagrams):
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/MTG-WEB.pdf/$FILE/MTG-WEB.pdf


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## srp (10 Jan 2011)

The link is for hardwoods, whereas the op is asking about softwoods.

4ths and 5ths is what you normally get if you buy prepared or par softwood in your local timber or builders merchants, usually Scandinavian or Russian redwood. 6ths is what you get if you go to the likes of B and Q - very poor quality and horrible to work with. 
Unsorted should be 4ths and better. Buying unsorted will get you better quality as by careful cutting you can get rid of the bad bits to leave you with something better than 4ths - I often buy 50 x 225 unsorted red, from which I usually get 2 bits of good quality 50 x 100 plus the 25mm strip down the middle which is usually rubbish as it contains the pith. The highest grade (1st) is something I've never seen for sale - but the big joinery manufacturers like Velux seem to use such high quality stuff for their windows.

A little bit more here http://www.joinery3.co.uk/page.php?id=8 ... 1384nr7ac7

I have no idea what the g1, g2 etc mean. There is also a difference between grading for appearance and stress grading. Stress grading applies to timber used for construction, which is not usually redwood these days, more likely to be spruce or whitewood. And then there's CLS, which may have a different grading system applied to it as it comes from Canada. I think you have some Googling to do....


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