Blackwood flooring grades explained…

All about our 4 Blackwood flooring grades:

Please refer to the glossary for detailed meanings of grade specific words such as clear, clean, heart and sap.

Clean Heart… the finest grade:

This grade is clear heartwood with minimal or none of the pale sapwood. This grade has shades of chocolate similar to traditional heart rimu. The most consistent grade for colouring. Mostly uniform grain but may include wavy or curly grain.

Clean Colour:

Still defect free clear wood but every board will be a dynamic mix of clean heart and the paler clean sapwood. This gives a contrasting look and is a visually striking floor.

Feature grade:

Feature Grade contains larger amounts of natural features such as bark pockets, knots, natural stains and pinholes. All end matched for easy installation and low wastage. Feature grade may have surface voids that will need filling to achieve a perfectly smooth surface

We also offer this feature grade in an ‘All Heartwood’ option. This still retains all of the feature characteristics, but has none of the paler sapwood, so is a more uniform colour.

General Grading rules:

Lengths are random mix 0.8m through to approx. 5m.
Clean heart and clean colour grades may have very minor defects such as wavy grain, minor pinhole and tiny knot in up to 10% of boards.
Feature grade will contain boards ranging from ‘nearly clear’ right though to boards with multiple knots and bark features. Voids may be present but generally we use a ‘rule of thumb’ criteria to reject boards, thus if a void associated with a knot or bark pocket that needs filling is bigger than a thumbnail, then we reject it.
Moisture content is industry standard for flooring being in the 9 to 13% range.