Apperance Grade Wood Policy

Less than 100% usage comes with the territory of natural wood.

The beauty of wood is that it’s a product of nature – every piece is unique. When buying natural wood for appearance applications, expect imperfections. Wood that’s good the day it ships may not be as good the day you go to install it – wood moves. It can take on or let go of moisture unevenly resulting in temporary or even permanent warping and cracking. Today’s sustainable forestry practices yield more lumber out of a tree, so the quality is not the same as in days past.

For natural wood that we stock or remanufacture, we make an effort in our buying, storing, and handling to reduce the amount of “defects” with your order. In some cases we also sort through and cut down for other products, and some even for firewood. But we can only go so far to raise the quality before it stops making business sense.

For natural wood that we do not stock, we simply pass along orders of wood from our suppliers the way we get it, and we do not re-sort, cut down, or otherwise raise the quality. In this case you must be enough of a craftsman to deal with imperfections by cutting off, cutting out, ripping, sanding, splicing, covering, pinning, hiding, etc. Therefore, we recommend that you order a little long and/or a little extra, but not too much, because we cannot accept returns for special-order wood.