Saw a log the fast way and the blade runs tangent to the growth rings. It is quick, it wastes almost nothing, and it produces the cathedral grain most furniture is made from. It also produces a board that will cup, because the rings want to straighten as the wood gives up moisture.
Quarter-sawing cuts the log into quarters first, then slices each quarter at right angles to the rings. Every board comes off close to vertical grain. It moves roughly half as much across its width, and it moves evenly.
The side effect is the ray fleck. Oak grows medullary rays outward from the center like spokes, and cutting across them exposes them as a shimmering figure that shifts as you walk past. Mission furniture was built on that discovery. It is not applied, it cannot be printed, and it is the reason a quarter-sawn table costs what it does.
You lose more of the log. You gain a top that is still flat in forty years.
