Riftsawn! For those of you who are not woodworkers, you may never have heard of riftsawn. There are a variety of ways a piece of lumber can be cut from a log of wood - plainsawn, quartersawn, and riftsawn. Furniture made out of riftsawn lumber has a uniform appearance due to the similarity of grain patterns among different boards. Unfortunately due to the poor yield of the rift-sawing method with its many wedge-shaped scraps, most lumber is either plainsawn or quartersawn. The following diagram illustrates the cross section of a riftsawn log.
