Rough sawn means cut to thickness on the mill and left alone. Not surfaced, not planed, not sanded. The saw marks are still on the face and the board is still every bit as thick as it was when it came off the mill.
Everything I cut leaves rough sawn, and that is a decision rather than a stopping point.
Why It Leaves Rough
A board is not finished moving when it is sawn. It gives up moisture for a long time afterwards and it changes shape while it does — that is normal, and it is covered in drying, acclimation and movement in old wood. If I surface a board now, I take thickness off it now, and then it moves anyway. Whoever ends up with it has less material left to true it flat once it has settled.
Leaving it rough keeps the thickness in the board and leaves the final sizing to the person who knows what the board is for and what room it is going to live in. It is the honest stage to hand something over at.
It Also Hides What the Board Is
Worth knowing if you are looking at rough stock for the first time: a rough band-sawn face hides figure almost completely. Wipe it with water or mineral spirits and the grain comes up out of nowhere. That is not a trick — it is roughly what the wood will look like once it is surfaced and finished. Judge a rough board wet, never dry.
Old Timber Varies Board to Board
This matters more with old timber than with anything off a production line. Density changes through a two-hundred-year log, and so does internal stress, so two boards out of the same tree can behave differently. There is no single correct thickness to surface them all down to, which is another reason that decision does not belong to me.
What comes off one of these trees, and where in the log each piece comes from, is on the frugal milling page. How the board is taken out of the log — and what that does to how it behaves — is on quarter sawn, plain sawn and rift.
Contact
Old Growth Mill
Axson, GA 31624
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (912) 310-0650
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