Have questions?

Call 877-372-9663

RSS Feed

Douglas Fir Flooring Blog

  • Douglas Fir Grades: C & Better

    Posted on April 11, 2012 by Nicole

    Douglas fir C & Better grade

    C & Better grade is the best Douglas fir grade available. But Doug fir buyers and browsers take note: C & Better grade can be many things to many people. So, here’s the lowdown on Douglas fir C & Better grade or C & BTR for short.

    Wait… what’s a ‘grade’ again?

    You may already be in-the-know about how the American Lumber Standard Committee (ALSC) sets the standards for and accredits wood grading systems in the US. You may also know that these standards are carried out by lumber agencies that inspect and grademark different wood species, creating a matrix of standards and grades and finishes that can confuse the heck out of people who just want good quality, good-looking wood.

    Clear Vertical Grain Doug Fir

    What does Douglas fir C & Better grade mean?

    Douglas fir with a C & Better grade has no visible wood-knots and has an even-complexion. Clear vertical grain (CVG) Douglas fir carries a C & Better grade because it is cut to accentuate the light and dark straight grain pattern of the wood fiber. In addition to wood grain clarity, C & Better Douglas fir is less likely to change (warp) – a straight grain stays straight even when its environment doesn’t. So, C & Better grade is your best bet when durability and appearance are important.

    Is Douglas fir C & Better grade the same everywhere?

    No, it’s not. Although the ALSC accredits wood-grading systems for lumber agencies, there is room for interpretation when it comes down to different lumber agencies writing their own set of rules (based on ALSC criteria) and inspecting their own stock of lumber.

    For example, the Western Wood Products Association is just one lumber agency in the US specializing in softwood lumber on the West Coast. The Northeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association or NELMA writes rules for wood-grading systems for softwoods on the East Coast. Essentially, wood-grading systems vary from coast to coast.

    But did you know that there is further variation with how wood can be sold? When it comes to Douglas fir wood grades, there are structural grades and appearance grades and within these two end-use categories, there are further delineations. For instance, Douglas fir appearance grades can be called Select, Finish, Common, and Alternate.

    So why isn’t Douglas fir C & Better grade the same everywhere?

    According to the WWPA, “color, grain pattern, texture, knot type and size are the factors that influence the grade. For this reason Douglas fir [is] marketed as a distinct species to allow for a larger range of visual choices.” So with the wide range of visual choices comes a wide range of visual appearances.

    There’s Douglas fir C & Better grade with a loose-looking grain or standard grain. There’s Douglas fir C & Better grade with a tighter grain or CVG grain. And then there’s Douglas fir C & Better grade with grain patterns somewhere in between.

    All in all, Douglas fir C & Better grade is more than skin…er, wood-deep. It’s a ‘grade’ that accounts for both durability and appearance.

    - Nicole Morales



    This post was posted in All Entries, Douglas Fir Flooring, Douglas Fir Trim, Douglas Fir Paneling and was tagged with Douglas fir flooring, douglas fir trim, douglas fir paneling, Doug Fir flooring, Vertical Grain Douglas Fir, Doug Fir paneling, Doug Fir trim, c and better

  • Clear Vertical Grain Douglas Fir: Where does it come from, and why?

    Posted on April 4, 2012 by Jennifer

    When you’re shopping around for Douglas fir, one of the things you’ll hear advertised often is “tight-grain” Douglas fir. Lumber suppliers like AltruFir pride themselves on the clear, tight, vertical grain of the Douglas fir they sell, and they should--this lumber is stable, strong, and beautiful--among the best building materials you’ll find anywhere. What you may not know is the story behind those claims.

    Much of the tight-grained Douglas fir that’s produced today comes from the forests of British Columbia. Why is that? Why are our neighbors to the north producing large, high-quality logs, while the Douglas fir grown in Oregon and Washington is mostly smaller-diameter? There are a number of reasons why the forests in the U.S. and Canada have developed differently.

    Sit back and learn the tale of two forests.

    Clear Vertical Grain Douglas Fir: Where does it come from? | Altrufir

    Douglas Fir Sapling

    If you were a Douglas fir sapling about 200 years ago, and you planted your roots in the fertile soil of Oregon, chances are you might not have lasted very long. Even before the arrival of European settlers, forests in Oregon and Washington were historically more affected by fire than B.C. forests were. According to a study on the history of old-growth forestsby the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Pacific Northwest research station, frequent low intensity fires were a normal part of the landscape in many of Oregon’s forests. “As a result, trees regenerated almost continuously,” the authors wrote.

    But, if you were a lucky seedling, you might have survived to the early days of the twentieth century. Now it’s about 1920, and Oregon is booming. All the gorgeous Craftsman bungalows in Portland were built out of Douglas fir. Douglas fir that was cut during the early days of Oregon’s logging industry. Another study from the Pacific Northwest Research station puts it this way: “The prevailing harvest practice was simple liquidation.” Large tracts of Oregon forests were cut, slash burned, and left to regenerate naturally.

    And regenerate they did--for about 40 or 50 years, or maybe 75 or 80, at the longest. Then the stands were logged and replanted again-and again. Even as timber management practices have improved over the years, the demand for landowners to get repetitive harvests out of their land has not let up. An article in the Journal of Forestry, describes the race for harvest: “The intensively managed plantations being planted today in the Pacific Northwest are growing at rate on par with intensively managed conifer plantations being harvested today in other regions of the world, where the competition has continued to move ahead.”

    Here’s the thing about Douglas fir that’s harvested as soon as it reaches what’s considered “merchantable diameter”--it may be big enough to cut, but it’s not fully mature. A Forest Service study on the characteristics of old-growth Douglas fir forests says that trees younger than 75 are in the fastest-growing phase of their life. “Forests up to about 75-100 years old can generally be considered ecologically young in the Douglas fir region. This is the period of very rapid growth or ‘adolescence,’” the authors wrote.

    Douglas fir grows more slowly as it ages, and the slow growing phases are when it develops those tight growth rings. These adolescent trees simply haven’t had a chance to mature into the kind of trees that produce the beautiful, high-quality fiber we’re looking for. That kind of growth happens when a tree grows slowly and steadily.

    Now let’s imagine that our little Oregonian Douglas fir seedling did manage to survive fire and repeated harvesting. If that’s the case, it most likely means that this tree is by now in a forest owned by the federal government.

    In Oregon and Washington, most of the remaining old, large diameter trees are now on protected land. This isn’t a bad thing--old growth forests are a marvel that should be preserved for the health of the planet and for future generations. But it does mean that few large logs with tight growth rings are being harvested in Oregon and Washington these days. Federal timber harvests have fallen dramatically in the past 20 years. Instead, much of the U.S. Douglas fir is grown on private timberlands that are managed for maximum output, not slow growth and large-diameter trees.

    Cross-Cut Douglas Fir | AltruFir Doug Fir Flooring

    Grain on display in a Douglas-fir.

    Now let’s imagine that our hypothetical Douglas fir seedling instead found itself blown northward on the wind. Imagine that it grew, instead, in British Columbia.

    This western-most Canadian province is big. In fact, it’s larger than Oregon, Washington and California combined, and two-thirds of the province is forested.

    And the Douglas firs that grew here? They simply weren’t subjected to the kinds of disturbance that their southern neighbors were. The study on the history of Pacific Northwest forests, the same one that mentioned the fire disturbances in Oregon and Washington forests, notes that “fire was rare or absent...” In a natural landscape in this area, the small patches of old, young, and maturing trees create a nearly continuous old-growth forest with a fine-grained texture.”

    Basically, if you were a Douglas fir seedling growing up in British Columbia, nothing happened to you. Ever. To this very day, according to the best estimate of the Canadian government, 68 percent of the trees in British Columbia are 160 years old or older.

    That doesn’t mean that if you grew in Canada, you were immune from the possibility of harvest. On the contrary, logging has been historically and continues to be a huge part of British Columbia’s economy. The difference here is the sheer size of the province’s forests.

    The majority of Canada’s timber land--93 percent--is owned by the government, and it’s managed differently than the privately-owned forests in the U.S. The forests that are cut, planted with a single species, and then cut again in a few decades? They’re virtually non-existent here. In fact, B.C. does not have any “intensively managed” forests that meet the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s definition of a plantation forest. Even Weyerhauser, one of the largest timber companies in the world, says that it does things differently on its Canadian lands: “Because of differences in weather, soil conditions, and ownership, we manage land in Canada less intensively than we do land in the United States and Southern Hemisphere, working to maintain natural forest qualities and serve a wide range of community interests while still producing timber.”

    So, let’s sum up: if you’re a Canadian Douglas fir seedling, you’re much less likely to have been torched by fires when you were young; the land you stand on probably isn’t owned by a company that feels pressured to harvest as soon as you get to 40 or 50 years old; and there are so many millions of you big, old trees that the government is still able to harvest some of you without worrying that doing so is depriving the world of the last 100+ year-old trees in the province.

    Does this mean the second- and third-generation Douglas fir grown in the U.S. is worthless? Certainly not. Douglas fir is one of the best construction materials around, and the trees harvested today produce thousands of board feet of valuable timber each year.

    But when it comes to the lumber we favor at AltruFir, it’s the large-diameter trees from B.C. that are more likely to pass our inspections and give us the kind of tight grained, high-quality wood fiber help us live up to our advertising.

    - Jennifer Rouse



    This post was posted in Douglas Fir Flooring, Douglas Fir Trim, History and Interest, Douglas Fir Paneling and was tagged with Douglas fir flooring, clear vertical grain, douglas fir trim, douglas fir paneling

  • Douglas Fir Porch Decking: Clear vertical grain or mixed grain?

    Posted on March 8, 2012 by Jennifer

    Sipping a glass of tea on a big front porch is the essence of Americana: classic, neighborly, and relaxing. If you’re building a porch, you can probably picture it right now. What you may not have pictured in your front-porch daydream is what kind of lumber you need to turn that dream into reality.

    Prefinished CVG Douglas Fir | AltruFir Doug Fir Flooring

    CVG Douglas Fir

    Traditionally, porches on historic homes were built with clear, vertical-grain Douglas fir decking. Though grown in the Pacific Northwest, it was shipped all over the country to serve as porch floorboards as far away as Chicago and New Jersey.

    Why? Because 100-125 years ago, old-growth Douglas fir with beautiful vertical grain was not only recognized as a superior choice for quality and durability, it was also plentiful and affordable.

    These days, vertical grain Douglas fir is still the recommended choice for a porch that will last for your home’s next several decades—but it’s more expensive than a shipment of mixed-grain Douglas fir decking. Some homeowners think, if you’re just going to paint your porch floor anyway (another historic home tradition) who's going to know what type of porch decking is under that paint?

    Unfortunately, you will be able to tell in just a few years whether you’ve opted for a wood product that will stand the test of time, or one that will begin to wear out and buckle.

    To understand why clear vertical grain Douglas fir (you might see it abbreviated at lumber suppliers as CVG) works so well for an outdoor use like a porch floor, first you need to understand what woodworkers mean when they talk about CVG vs. mixed-grain.

    Vertical Grain means that the grain of the wood runs parallel along the face of the board. When you look at it, you’ll see straight lines running up and down the length of the board. These straight vertical lines give CVG Douglas fir some important benefits.

    For one, those parallel lines mean that as CVG Douglas fir naturally expands and contracts in response to moisture—as any wood product does—it expands and contracts evenly. It is less prone to warping, buckling, or bending. This is especially important when you’re talking about a porch, where the wood will be exposed to constantly-changing weather conditions.

    CVG Douglas fir is also generally regarded to be the most durable grade of Douglas fir, holding its shape well and holding its fasteners tightly.

    Mixed grain is exactly what its name sounds like—a mixture. That means that when you order a batch of lumber from your supplier, some of the boards you get will be vertical grain. Others, however, will come from boards that were sawn the other way, parallel to the annual growth rings of the tree. These are called flat grain, sometimes FG, and you won’t see neat lines running along the face of the board. You’ll see a wavy pattern of wood grain, which is attractive in its own way, but not best suited for an outdoor application.

    The historic home experts at “This Old House” magazine wrote about this very problem in a Q&A column: the homeowner wrote in that his porch had been replaced with fir graded “D & Btr mix-grain,” that was primed and then painted. “Now every winter the floor buckles, and in the spring it flattens out again,” he wrote.

    This Old House’s master carpenter, Norm Abram, replied: “Flat-grain boards expand and contract more than vertical-grain wood, which has rings nearly perpendicular to the face. To make matters worse, all that swelling wood is pushing against your porch piers and your house without anywhere to go. Buckling is the inevitable result.”

    A CVG Douglas fir porch, on the other hand, if treated properly and regularly painted and maintained, will last 40 years or more. Tim Carter, a building contractor who writes a nationally-syndicated “Ask the Builder “ column, writes that vertical grain Douglas fir is his number-one choice for porch decking. “Some of the wood is over 100 years old and still in good condition,” he said in his column.

    So when you’re choosing your porch decking, take a lesson from what historic homeowners across the nation can tell you about the quality and durability of vertical grain Douglas fir.

    Or what they would tell you, if you could get a hold of them. They’re all outside with their feet up, sipping tea on their big front porches.

    - Jennifer Rouse



    This post was posted in Douglas Fir Flooring and was tagged with douglas fir porch decking, cvg douglas fir

Items 28 to 30 of 65 total

Page:
  1. 1
  2. ...
  3. 8
  4. 9
  5. 10
  6. 11
  7. 12
  8. ...
  9. 22