Reading character timber.

Character timber is a record. Every mark on a hewn or weathered board is something that happened to it, and once you can read the marks, you can spec character the way you spec any other finish: deliberately, in the amount the room calls for.

The vocabulary

Nail holes say the board was fastened and where. Ferrous staining, the dark halo around old iron, says how long. Checks, the long splits that run with the grain, say the timber dried slowly in place, usually over decades. Circular saw marks date a board to one era of milling; the straight kerf of a band saw to another. And sun and weather grade the color: silvered faces lived outside, honeyed ones lived under a roof.

None of these are defects. They are the reason character material is worth specifying. But rooms want different amounts of them, and that is a design decision, not luck.

Specifying character

The useful spectrum runs from clean to rustic. A clean face has tight grain and minimal marking, and reads almost contemporary once finished. A moderate face keeps nail holes and color variation but planes away the roughest texture. A rustic face keeps everything, including the original weathered surface.

The honest advice: pick from full-size boards in the actual light of the actual room, not from a screen or a two-inch swatch. Photographs and small samples flatten variation. The board in your hand is the only spec that cannot be misread.

To see where character lands in a finished order, browse the eight cedar finishes on our custom beams page.