reclaimed flooring
Original floorboards lifted from the joists of a building undergoing demolition or refurbishment. The boards are detailed and packed for resale with no reprofiling or planing.

remilled flooring
Newly-profiled floorboards of various widths remilled from previously-structural timbers. Many of these timbers are 50mm, 75mm or 100mm timbers resawn to 25mm and profiled with T&G to finish at 19-22mm thickness. If reclaimed floorboards have sufficient thickness and width, they too can be remilled to a smaller dimension. However, this is only successful if they exceed desired finished thickness by 5mm and width by 14mm.

brushed or ground-finish
Also known as wire-brushed or disc-sanded finish - where the essential weathered face of the timber is retained but some colour is brought up by rounding edges and softening faces with sanders and grinders. Often employed where retained metal prevents planing or where the aged appearance of recycled timber is intended as a design element.

adzed face or hewn face
An aged and chiselled look which characterises many original large-section timber beams - even found in early 20ce.

surface checking
A parting, splitting, cracking or separation of timber fibres along the grain. Associated with drying of timber. More pronounced in air-dried (recycled) timber than in kiln-dried. Usually minor and short in length 0.5 to 1mm wide and 10-30mm long. Surface checking - although sometimes exceeding 2mm - can be a stable feature of recycled flooring. 

internal checking
More pronounced than surface checking. Can affect the core of 50-100mm thick sawn timber board while drying - particularly if sawlog is small.

heart checking
Technically internal checking, but due mainly to the presence of - or retention of - 'heart' in the section. This particularly affects large dimension timbers such as 200x200 where the core of the sawlog is hard to exclude. The tensions within a section with retained heart lead to internal checking - whereas sections cut away from the heart release these tensions during the cut.
 
 

quartersawn
When the angle of the sawcut to the growth rings of a sawn board exceeds 45 degrees and approaches 90 degrees. The face grain of the board is therefore strongly lineal. Boards cut this way have greatest strength and are desirable for chair backs and boat oars. Not really possible for boards exceeding 150mm in width nowadays - unless the diameter of the sawlog is large.

backsawn
When the angle of the sawcut to the growth rings is less than 45 degrees and the face grain of the board shows a swirling or contouring movement. This type of cut is also called flatcut or crowncut and was used for centuries as a decorative grain in panelling and vertical faces of furniture. It provides a higher yield from hardwood sawlog than quartersawing and most boards exceeding 150mm in width must be backsawn in native hardwood production mills.

radially-sawn
The ultimate quartersawn method since the angle of cut is always 90 degrees to the grain. Boards may be later backsawn for downsizing. At primary milling this method is highly efficient in log-yield. The compromise is that an unnecessary bulk of timber is sometimes used in a single application and that flexibility is required when the primary boards are resawn to secondary board. Otherwise downstream waste or low-value dimensions are produced.