Glossary

Blackwood grading terms:

Clear.
A descriptive term meaning defect free. Interchangeable with ‘clean’. Thus ‘clean heart’, ‘clear heart’ and ‘heart clears’ all mean defect free heartwood. Can also indicate that the grain is uniform and not curly or wavy.

Colour.
In the timber grading context, ‘colour’ means each board contains both heartwood and the paler sapwood

Heart (Heartwood).
The timber that comes from the center area of the tree. It is darker, denser, slightly harder and more durable than the pale sapwood which comes from the outer area of the tree.

Sap (Sapwood).
The pale timber from the outer part of the tree. Slightly less hard and dense than heartwood but still a fine hardwood floor material.

General timber terms and abbreviations:

AD.
Air dry. The product has been dried to the local equilibrium moisture content. If you have timber that has dried under cover or in a shed for a few years then you would be correct to say it is ‘air dry’.

KD.
Kiln dry. The product has been dried in a controlled environment, usually with some form of heating to achieve a lower and more uniform final moisture content than can be achieved with just air drying. All our timber flooring products are KD.

RS.
Rough sawn. Not machined smooth.

KDRS, and ADRS.
Kiln dried rough sawn, and air dried rough sawn.

GS.
Green sawn. Straight from the sawmill. Not dried or machined.

End-matching.
This is where each board has a tongue and groove on the ends, as well as along each edge. This means that the boards lock together end on so they don’t have to be joined on a solid joist. No particular advantage if the floor is being glued down as an overlay except that it speeds up the installation. End matching is only available on our full 19mm thickness flooring. No end matching on 12mm overlay because it is too thin to go through the end matching machine

BSF.
Bandsawn face. While KDRS timber may typically have a bandsawn finish, it will usually be marked and stained from the drying process. So whenever we sell a product with a bandsawn face, like BSF weatherboards, we always run the stock through our band resaw to make a nice even bandsawn finish with no drying or fillet stick marks.

DSF.
Dressed face. The good face is machined smooth. This is the default when ordering machined weatherboards.

D4S.
Dressed 4 sides. Also called ‘square dressed’. All 4 sides are machined smooth and square to the required size.

RL.
Random length.

Lm.
Lineal metres, as opposed to M3 (cubic metres), and M2 (square metres).