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Understanding Oak Timber Grades
Oak is available in a range of qualities, or oak timber grades. Today, we’d like to help you understand what each oak timber grade means to ensure you get the right look when you are choosing oak ledged doors or flooring
European Oak Timber Grades
Most northern European oak comes from France, with most of the sawmills in the central and northern areas. When oak is cut, the sawmills group boards into quality brackets called grades. The grading rules are standardised and so an understanding of them can really help know what kind of product you will receive.
Rustic, Select Rustic & Prime
When you compare oak doors or flooring being sold in the UK, there can be a bewildering range of descriptions for the oak timber grades you will receive.
Rustic, character, prime, tavern and many others are common to hear used to describe oak. These can be useful descriptive terms, but they normally have no fixed meaning, making comparing one product to another very hard.
At Heritage we use Rustic, Select Rustic and Prime to describe our doors, but what exactly does this mean?
Certified Timber
Heritage uses European oak to produce its solid oak doors and floors. We buy the timber direct from the sawmills in France, as we find each mill has a slightly different interpretation of the grading rules. Our oak and pine timber is PEFC certified.
French Oak
French mills grade oak in numbers 1 – 4, depending on the quantity and sizes of knots in the oak.Grade 1 will have few/no knots, whereas 4 will have significant quantities. Oak is available commercially in groups of grades. So for example for our rustic doors we would buy a mix of 2 & 3, whereas for prime doors we’d buy 1 & 2.
Even then we have to regrade the timber when it arrives. Each load will contain around 10-15% of boards that are outside the grade. Occasionally in a 2/3 we will find a 1/2 board, but the bulk of offgrade boards would be 3/4. So our 3 door grades would be made up as follows;
Oak Timber Grades
Prime – 1/2
Select Rustic – 2/3
Rustic – 3/4
To further describe oak, French mills add letters. So a typical oak grade might be;
QF2/3x
This stands for Q = Quercus/latin for oak, F denotes that the board has had its edges trimmed straight at the sawmill, 2/3 shows the it is a mix of grade 2 and grade 3, and finally the x denotes that a small amount of lighter colour sapwood is allowed in the grade.
Products With Multiple Grade Options
The main product where oak timber grades are available is our oak ledged doors. For the majority of doors in this category, you can select from Rustic, Select Rustic and Prime. We also offer a Super Rustic Door for those looking for an authentic, natural and cost effective door.