Wood grain

Wood grain is the longitudinal arrangement of wood fibers or the pattern resulting from this. Wood grain is the longitudinal arrangement of wood fibers or the pattern resulting from this. R. Bruce Hoadley wrote that grain is a 'confusingly versatile term' with numerous different uses, including the direction of the wood cells (e.g., straight grain, spiral grain), surface appearance or figure, growth-ring placement (e.g., vertical grain), plane of the cut (e.g., end grain), rate of growth (e.g., narrow grain), and relative cell size (e.g., open grain). Perhaps the most important physical aspect of wood grain in woodworking is the grain direction or slope (e.g. against the grain). The two basic categories of grain are straight and cross grain. Straight grain runs parallel to the longitudinal axis of the piece. Cross grain deviates from the longitudinal axis in two ways, spiral grain or diagonal grain. The amount of deviation is called the slope of the grain.