Oak Flooring from Hackworth Sawmill

Character Grade Oak Flooring

There is no standard grading system for wooden flooring in the UK. Suppliers of imported chinese hardwood flooring tend to use a four or five grade system A,B,C,D,E, where A is prime and E is essentially firewood, but many UK wood flooring manufacturers stick to a simpler three grade system, rustic, character, and prime. Rustic grade generally has quite large knots, possibly splits, and almost certainly lighter sap wood. Prime grade, on the other hand, is mainly free of knots other than sometimes very small ones.
Character grade, then, comes somewhere between the two. Our character grade is free of sap. It contains some sound knots, some of which may possibly have cracked during the kilning process. Some people prefer to leave these un-filled, others fill them with flooring putty or other filler before applying a sealer. We could if we wished cut out any knots and sell the remaining short pieces as prime grade at a higher price, but as we specialise in supplying long floorboards in oak, ash and American black walnut, it gives you, the customer, the choice. If you do find a large knot which you object to, the solution is quite simple. The fitter of any hardwood floor aways needs some shorter pieces to start and end rows. So cut either side of the offending knot and use the good pieces in this way. Also any cut boards can easily be joined by using a biscuit joiner which cuts a slot in the ends of the boards to be joined, and a small piece of wood, the biscuit, replaces the tongue. Any floor fitter who has had experience of solid wood flooring will accept that this is standard procedure and have the appropriate equipment.
Just occasionally a knot is un-sound, and so has dropped out during the kilning process. Although we try to pick these out, it is always possible that one slips through. We are only human, after all. If this happens, simply cut either side of the hole as above, and use the piece with the hole to make a bird box.
Most of our sales of wooden flooring are of character grade. Apart from sap, it contains all the features of the natural timber, and so the floor looks like real wood. We have had instances where people have purchased prime grade, and then been a bit disappointed because it looks too much like a laminate.