Rough sawn vs DAR: what you’re actually paying for
Two stacks of the same hardwood. One says $5 a metre, one says $12. The cheap one looks hairy, the dear one looks like furniture. Here's what the gap actually buys you, and which side of it you should be on.
What the words mean
Rough sawn is timber straight off the mill saw. Fuzzy surface, saw marks, sizes are approximate. A rough sawn '100x50' is roughly 100x50, give or take a few mm, and it might have a bow or twist in it.
DAR (Dressed All Round) is the same timber run through a planer on all four faces. Smooth, straight, accurate. And smaller: dressing removes material, which is why a DAR '90x45' started life as a rough 100x50. You're not imagining that dressed sizes are always odd numbers below round ones. That's where the missing timber went.
The real price of cheap
Rough sawn is cheaper because the mill did less work. But that work still has to happen, and now it's yours: a jointer to get one face and edge straight, a thicknesser to bring it to size, and the time to do it. If you own the machines, rough sawn is a genuine bargain - you're buying timber at timber prices and adding the labour yourself.
If you don't own the machines, that $5/m board is not $5/m. It's $5/m plus a machinery problem you haven't solved yet. A garage full of rough sawn hardwood and no way to dress it is one of the most common regret purchases in woodworking.
When rough sawn wins
- You have a jointer and thicknesser, or mates with them
- You want thick stock - dressing your own means you choose the final size instead of accepting 19mm
- Character matters - you pick which face survives, which knots stay
- Big quantities - the savings scale with every metre
When DAR wins
- No machines, no machine access - buy it ready and build today
- Dimensioned projects - framing, decking, anything where standard sizes are the point
- Small jobs - dressing three boards isn't worth the setup time even with the gear
The one trap
Don't buy rough sawn 'to dress later' unless later has a date on it. Timber moves while it waits, and a board that was nearly straight in the seller's shed can be a banana in yours by spring. Buy rough when you're ready to machine it, not when you're ready to dream about it.
Doing it yourself: with the machines
The order matters and it's the thing beginners get backwards. The full square-up is four surfaces in this order: jointer makes one face flat, jointer makes one edge straight, thicknesser makes the second face parallel, table saw rips the second edge parallel. Run a wonky board straight through the thicknesser and you get a thinner wonky board - the rollers press the bow flat, the knives cut, and the bow springs right back.
On the jointer: concave face down, so the board sits on its ends and can't rock. Start with your pressure on the infeed side, and the moment enough board is past the cutterhead, shift your pressure onto the outfeed table and keep it there - the outfeed is the new flat reference, and pressing down on the infeed end late in the pass rocks the board and planes the flat back out of it. Light cuts, 1mm or less. Then the flat face against the fence for the edge, same pressure logic sideways.
On the thicknesser, the enemy is snipe - that scoop the machine takes out of the first and last 75mm, caused by the board tipping when only one feed roller has hold of it. Three fixes, in order of effectiveness: buy your boards 100-150mm long and cut the snipe off (the pro answer, snipe never fully dies); feed boards butted end to end so the rollers never let go; and support long boards level going in and coming out. Take your final passes light - snipe shrinks with the cut.
The last edge comes off the table saw: jointed edge against the fence, rip the rough edge parallel, and the board is square all round. This is best practice, not a shortcut - the saw makes a parallel edge faster and straighter than jointing both sides ever will.
Tearout is grain direction. Feed the board so the grain slopes down and away from the cut, like patting a dog from head to tail. If a board tears out, flip it end for end before blaming the machine.
What to buy: a bit of context first: I build furniture for a living, out of a workshop with no room for floor machinery - so everything below is what I actually run, not what a catalogue recommends. And here's the bit I wish someone had told me before I stood in the shop: the benchtop machines are better than the salesmen admit. I run Carbatec's 200mm spiral head benchtop jointer and their 330mm helical head benchtop thicknesser, and with the extension supports out I've put 2 metre hardwood boards across that jointer with perfect results. The 'benchtop is only for small stuff' line nearly talked me into a machine three times the price - with worse blades. If benchtop gear turns out professional furniture, it will handle your bookshelf. The pair together costs around $2,200 - less than any floor combo, and the thicknesser's blades are better than most of them.
For the table saw, mine is Carbatec's Deluxe 10" cabinet saw - their entry cabinet saw, and still serious money. Any entry-level table saw with a decent fence will rip that second edge fine. But a warning from experience: buying the better machine once is usually cheaper than buying the cheap one twice. Frustrating gear gets replaced; good gear gets kept.
The blades matter more than the machine. Three tiers, and the gap between them is enormous:
- Straight knives - old technology, honestly. Loud, tear-prone, and when they dull (they will), replacing them is a fiddly, maddening job you'll put off until the machine's cutting badly. Avoid if you can.
- Spiral heads - rows of small rotating carbide inserts. Great: quieter, far less tearout, and a dull insert just rotates to a fresh edge. This is what's on my jointer - very good, not absolutely perfect.
- Helical heads - the same idea refined, inserts angled for a shearing cut. This is what's on my thicknesser and the finish is glass. If a machine you're comparing offers a helical option, that's where the extra money should go - not into a bigger machine with worse blades.
And check The Heap first - jointers and thicknessers turn up second-hand for a fraction of new, usually because someone's downsizing a shed, not because the machine's had it.
Doing it yourself: without the machines
- One straight edge, via the table saw: screw or clamp a known-straight length (a spirit level, a track, the factory edge of a strip of ply) to the rough board, overhanging one side. Run the straight edge against the fence and the saw cuts the rough edge parallel to it. Unscrew, flip, and you now have a straight reference edge for everything else.
- Flat faces, via a router sled: the full method is its own guide - How to flatten a slab without a thicknesser - and it works on boards as well as slabs.
- Thicknesser but no jointer (the most common half-way shed): hot-glue the rough board to a flat sled of MDF or ply, shim the wobble solid, and run the whole sandwich through the thicknesser. The sled is your flat reference. Once the top face is flat, bin the sled and thickness normally.
- Hand plane: a coarse-set No. 5 across the grain roughs a face flat, a long plane trues it. Real skill, real workout, genuinely viable under about a metre.
- Sanding: an honest warning. A belt sander makes a rough face smooth, but smooth is not flat and it is not straight - sanding follows the wave, it doesn't remove it. Fine for a rustic shelf, wrong for anything that has to fit anything.
- Or pay the joinery. Same maths as the slab guide: $50 of machine time against a Saturday of yours.
Either way, listings on The Heap are tagged 'Rough sawn' or 'DAR/Dressed' right on the card, so you can filter to your side of the gap before you fall in love with the wrong stack.