The presence of wood irregularities such as knots are decisive for the mechanical properties of sawn timber, and efficient utilisation of timber requires methods by which grade determining properties can be predicted with high accuracy. In the glulam and sawmilling industries today, there is a potential and a need for more accurate prediction methods. This paper concerns the performance of a set of indicating properties calculated by means of data from surface laser scanning, dynamic excitation and X-ray scanning, the latter used to obtain boards’ average density. A total number of 967 boards of Norway spruce originating from Finland, Norway and Sweden were used to determine statistical relationships between the indicating properties and the grade determining properties used to grade sawn timber into T-classes. Results show that the indicating properties give coefficients of determination to tensile strength as high as 0.70. Furthermore, results also show that laser scanning of boards with sawn surface finish give basis for almost as accurate grading as what scanning of planed boards do. The results imply that more accurate grading of timber into T-classes is possible by application of a new set of indicating properties. This paper is part one of a series of two papers. In the second paper, two models to derive settings and calculate yield in different strength classes using the indicating properties presented herein are compared and discussed.

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The strength of structural timber largely depends on the occurrence of knots and on the local material directions in the surroundings of such knots. There is, however, a lack of methods for establishing a full dataset of the local material directions. The present research aims at the development and application of a laboratory method to assess the geometry of growth layers and the orientation of fibres in a high-resolution 3D grid within wood specimens containing knots. The laboratory method was based on optical flatbed scanning and laser scanning, the former resulting in surface images and the latter, utilizing the tracheid effect, resulting in in-plane fibre angles determined in high-resolution grids on scanned surfaces. A rectangular solid wood specimen containing a single knot was cut from a tree in such a way that it could be assumed that a plane of symmetry existed in the specimen. By splitting the specimen through this plane through the centre line of the knot, two new specimens with assumed identical but mirrored properties were achieved. On one of the new specimens, the longitudinal-radial plane was subsequently scanned, and the longitudinal-tangential plane was scanned on the other. Then, by repeatedly planing off material on both specimens followed by scanning of the new surfaces that gradually appeared, 3D coordinate positions along different growth layers and 3D orientation of fibres in a 3D grid were obtained. Comparisons between detected fibre orientation and growth layer geometry were used for the assessment of the accuracy obtained regarding 3D fibre orientation. It was shown that the suggested method is well suited to capture growth layer surfaces and that it provides reliable information on 3D fibre orientation close to knots. Such knowledge is of great importance for understanding the properties of timber including

Finger joints in structural timber and glulam lamellae are often used to enable production of long members or to allow for re-connection of parts of a member after removal of weak sections. According to the European Standard EN 15497, certain margins are required between knots and a finger joint in structural timber, which means that a considerable amount of clear wood becomes waste when finger joints are applied. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the possibility of reducing the quantity of waste using different criteria for placement of finger joints. The investigation was based on (1) application of methods of colour scanning and tracheid effect scanning to detect knots and grain disturbance on board surfaces, and (2) interpretation of the requirements of EN 15497 regarding where finger joints may be placed. The standard's requirement when producing finger joints is that the minimum distance between a knot and a finger joint is three times the knot diameter. The standard allows for the minimum distance between a knot and a finger joint to be shortened to 1.5 times the diameter when the local fibre orientation is measured. Utilizing this in simulated production resulted in reduction of waste from 7.4 to 4.0%, when using finger joints simply to produce timber of long lengths. If finger joints are also used to re-connect parts of members after removal of weak sections, even larger savings can be made. Furthermore, it is concluded that knowledge of fibre orientation obtained from scanning could be used not only to decrease the waste in production but also to increase the quality of finger joints.