Hardwood Grade Stamps Explained: What FAS, Select and #1 Common Really Yield

The lumberyard hands you a board with a crayon mark on the end: FAS. Next to it, a board the same species, same thickness, marked 1 Common. Bell Forest Products' published table puts 5/4 Hard Maple at $6.25 a board foot in Sel & Btr and $4.50 in 1 Com. You do the obvious math, grab the cheap one, and go build.

Then you cut around the defects, and the cheap board isn't so cheap. That's the whole game. The grade stamp is not a quality rating. It's a yield calculation, and if you don't read it as one, you're paying for clear face you're going to cut off and throw in the burn pile.

The Stamp Is a Percentage, Not a Promise

Hardwood is graded from the poorer face. The grade is set by the size and number of clear, defect-free rectangles, called cuttings, that can be pulled out of that face, expressed as a percentage of the board's surface measure. That's per Wagner Meters' grade table and Schaller Hardwood's measurement guide. Softwood grading is a different animal, all appearance and structural design values, so if you learned to read stamps on framing lumber, unlearn it here.

FAS (Firsts & Seconds) needs at least 83-1/3% clear cuttings, and each cutting has to be 4 inches by 5 feet or 3 inches by 7 feet. No. 1 Common needs only 66-2/3%, and the minimum cutting drops to 4 inches by 2 feet or 3 inches by 3 feet. That's the mechanism behind everything else in this article. The lower grade doesn't just have more defects. It's allowed to have them in smaller pieces, which means you can work around them with shorter parts.

Here's the trap. Schaller, an NHLA-certified participant, states FAS yields 83-1/3% to 100% clear wood and #1 Common yields 66-2/3% to 83-1/3%. Those percentages are floors, not typical yields. A given FAS board might be nearly perfect or might just squeak in. You're buying a minimum, not a measured outcome.

One more stamp-reading detail worth knowing: Schaller says the minimum kiln-dried FAS board is 5-1/2 inches wide by 8 feet long, not 6 inches. The 6-inch requirement applies to green lumber, and the half-inch allowance covers kiln shrinkage. Wagner and Buskirk both list 6 inches. Schaller's explanation is specific and credible, so if you're measuring a dried board at the yard and it comes in at 5-3/4 inches, don't assume it's a misgrade.

Select Is Not What You Think It Is

This is the correction that saves the most money. Selects is essentially FAS 1-Face in smaller boards. The better face grades FAS. The poorer face grades No. 1 Common. Wagner Meters states it plainly for FAS 1-Face: one face meets FAS and the other is no lower than No. 1 Common. Selects is the same deal with smaller boards allowed, down to 4 inches wide and 6 feet long.

Gene Wengert, writing in FDMC Magazine in 2009, confirms the consequence: "The yields from FAS 1-Face, Select, and No. 1 Common are very close, as the poorer face of all three is graded as No. 1 Common."

So when a seller offers you Select & Btr, understand what you're getting. Schaller, admittedly a competing dealer, observes that sellers using that label instead of FAS & 1F end up with an overall lower quality of #1 Common lumber, because the Select boards got pulled out of the #1 Common pile. Treat that as one dealer's observation, not a rule. But the underlying math is sound.

Wengert also gives worst-side clearness figures: 83% for FAS, 67% for Select, FAS 1-Face and No. 1 Common, 50% for No. 2A and 2B, 33% for No. 3A. His 67% for Select isn't a contradiction of Wagner's 83-1/3% table. They're describing different faces. Wagner's table is the grading face. Wengert's number is the back.

The Grit: What Your Cut List Actually Pulls Out

Wengert's FDMC column is the only real yield data in front of me, and it's the whole argument. Expected usable yield after ripping and crosscutting, based on kiln-dried footage, as a function of the smallest cutting you're taking:

Shortest cutting	FAS	#1 Common	#2 Common
15 in	76%	71%	59%
26 in	71%	63%	53%
2 in x 30 in parts	64%	53%	38%
3 in x 40 in cuttings	56%	42%	29%

Read that table twice. If you're cutting drawer sides and small parts, the gap between FAS and #1 Common is five points. You're paying a premium for clear face you don't need. If you're cutting long rails and stiles, the gap blows out to fourteen points, and FAS starts earning its price.

Wengert's worked plant example, running 19-to-30-inch parts, priced out at $0.0118 per square inch of part for 100% FAS and $0.0098 for 100% No. 1 Common. That's $0.71 versus $0.59 for a 2-by-30 piece. FAS yielded 68% versus 59%, but it also processed faster, 2.0 hours versus 2.3. Carry his caveat with you: "The cost of lumber and the processing cost for each plant will be different, so you cannot use the data from these examples directly."

That's not a home-shop number. It's a mechanism. Lower grade means more lumber handled per finished part, and if your time is worth anything, the savings shrink.

Cooked to Perfection: Running the Bell Forest Spread

Here's the exercise the angle demands, using the only clean same-species pair in the brief. Bell Forest's 5/4 Hard Maple: $6.25 Sel & Btr versus $4.50 1 Com at the under-10 tier. Roughly 39% more for the Select stamp. At the 10-99 tier it's $5.65 versus $4.05, and at 100-499 it's $4.70 versus $3.40.

Take a hundred board feet of 5/4. Select runs you $470 at the 100-499 price. #1 Common runs $340. You've saved $130.

Now cut to your list. Wengert's figures show Select yields tracking close to #1 Common, since both carry a No. 1 Common back face. If your parts are 15-inch and shorter, FAS recovers about 76% against 71% for #1 Common. You paid $130 for a yield difference that, on short parts, is close to nothing. That's a bad trade.

If your parts are 3-by-40, FAS yields 56% against 42% for #1 Common. So the long-part premium you're paying for is real, but it's FAS you want, not Select.

These are Wengert's plant percentages applied as a thought experiment, not a promise about your shop. Your defect layout, your skill at the bandsaw, and the specific boards on the rack will move the numbers. But the shape of the decision holds: the grade premium only pays when your parts are long, and Select doesn't buy you the long-part yield.

Traps That Cost You Real Money

Length is tallied in whole feet, truncated. Schaller's guide is explicit: an 8-foot-6 board and an 8-foot-11 board both count as 8 feet. You don't get paid for the offcut at the end, and a "9-foot" board that measures 8-foot-10 is an 8-foot board on the invoice. Measure before you accept the tally.

Surface measure is width in inches and fractions times standard length in feet, divided by 12, rounded to the nearest whole number, per Wagner Meters. The rounding is real money on a stack.

Grade has nothing to do with color. Wengert: "It is important to note that the color of wood is not part of the basic grading rule." A walnut board with pale sapwood can carry a FAS stamp. If you're buying for color, the stamp tells you nothing.

Cabinet grade is a trade nickname for #1 Common, and economy grade is a nickname for 2A and 2B, per Buskirk Lumber. Nobody's lying to you, but nobody's using the rulebook either.

Hearne Hardwoods' price list is a reminder that grade is one lever among several. They quote Red Oak, all thicknesses, "Common, FAS" as a single $3.00 to $10.50 per board foot span, and White Oak at $6.50 to $19.50. That's a species range, not a grade pair. Wide FAS is a different purchase than narrow FAS.

Right Tool for the Job, Applied to Lumber

Buy the grade that matches your cut list. That's the whole article in one sentence.

Short parts, small furniture, drawer boxes, anything where a 15-inch cutting clears a defect: #1 Common is the right material and the Select premium is wasted money. Schaller makes the same point from the dealer side, noting that short lengths in #1 Common, 4 to 6 feet, will often yield as high a percentage of clear lumber as longer FAS lengths, and become a good buy for anyone who doesn't need the length.

Long rails, table aprons, anything where a 40-inch clear run matters: FAS earns its price, because the defect layout in #1 Common will fight you on every board.

Select and FAS 1-Face sit in the middle, and if your cutting yields are close to #1 Common because you can work around the back face, ask yourself what you're paying for.

If a yard claims NHLA certification, know what it means. Schaller describes the program: a National Inspector runs a random grade sample, and the member's sample must fall within 4% of the inspector's value to be certified, with follow-up checks at least twice a year. That's a reasonable assurance that the stamp on the end of the board matches the board.

Check the stamp, then flip the board. The face you're working is the one that matters, and on Select it's not the one the grade number describes.