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Building Regulations and Accreditation
News Release from: Forestry Commission | Subject: Visual grading system
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 19 May 2005
New visual grading system for hardwoods
A new system of grading the appearance of hardwood timber grown in the United Kingdom has been unveiled.
A new system of grading the appearance of hardwood timber grown in the United Kingdom has been unveiled It is intended to fill a need for a consistent, unified system that can be applied across UK industries for grading the appearance of planks and boards of hardwoods such as oak, ash, birch, elm, sycamore and beech
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 15 Jul 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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Forestry Commission Scotland business development adviser Derek Nelson explained, "Many hardwood sawmillers were operating their own, in-house visual grading systems for their products, but we recognised that this could be confusing for customers.
There was broad agreement across the industry that we would benefit from having a simple, agreed and commonly understood visual grading system that will allow hardwood boards to be classified into a workable number of quality grades that can be easily understood and applied by sawmillers and their immediate customers.
"We're very pleased with the result, which we believe has succeeded very well in being simple and easy to understand." A key output from the project has been a booklet guide to the new grading system, entitled "Making The Grade".
It includes colour photographs to provide examples of the appearance of each grade of each species of timber.
Oak, for example, is divided into three basic grades and five "special-feature" grades, namely pippy, character, tiger oak and brown oak, quarter-sawn and burr.
Mr Nelson stressed that the new system only graded appearances; it is not a strength grading system.
The new system was designed over the past three years by consultants working in collaboration with industry representatives from all four countries of the UK.
The project was co-ordinated by the Scottish Hardwood Timber Market Development Group (SHTMDG).
The booklet is available free by mail order from Forestry Commission Publications.
It can also be downloaded as a PDF file from www.forestry.gov.uk/hardwoods.
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