Surfaced Two Sides: What That Means and What Your Shop Still Has to Do

Nearly every shop that calls me asks some version of the same question inside the first two minutes: what condition is the wood in when I get it? It is a fair question, and the answer is a short phrase that does a lot of work — surfaced two sides. The Ecuadorian plantation teak I import (Tectona grandis) is sold surfaced two sides, and I would rather you know exactly what that includes than find out at your jointer. Here is what the term covers, what it saves you, and what is still sitting on your bench after the truck leaves.

If you want to look at what is on hand while you read this, start with the Ecuadorian teak lumber listings.

What "surfaced two sides" actually describes

Surfaced two sides — S2S, if you see it written short — means the two wide faces of the board have been run through a planer. Both faces are flat, and they are parallel to each other. Set a board on your bench and it sits down instead of rocking. You can read the figure, the color, the pin knots, the places where the grain changes its mind. Nothing is hiding under mill marks.

What the phrase does not cover is the edges. The faces were machined. The edges were not. They came off the saw and they stayed that way, which means they are neither straight nor square to the faces. That is normal, and it is the right call, because the edges are where you make your own decisions anyway.

What it saves you

Two things, and they are worth more than people expect.

The first is sighting. A board with two machined faces tells you the truth about itself. You can judge color across a lift, pick out the board that wants to be a drawer front and the one that belongs in a back panel, and see runout before you commit a cut. Nobody buys wood well in the dark, and sawn faces keep you in the dark.

The second is machine time at the front of the job. The first passes on a board are the loud, dusty, low-value ones — the ones that fill a barrel with chips and tell you nothing you wanted to know. Those are already done. Your knives meet the wood on the pass that matters, which also means your knives last longer, and teak is hard on knives.

What is still on your bench

This is the part I want to be plain about, because a shop that expects finished stock will be unhappy and a shop that expects to do its own work will be fine.

You still have to joint an edge. One straight reference edge per board, your call where it falls, which matters when you are chasing figure or working around a knot. You still have to rip to width off that edge. You still have a final pass to your own thickness, because your project number is yours and not mine — and you want a little left to take, not a board already planed down to somebody else's guess.

You also have to expect a small amount of movement. A board that was dead flat on the day it was surfaced may show a touch of cup or a little bow weeks later in a different building. That is wood. Leave yourself the material and the schedule to take it out, and it is a non-event. Plan a job with zero margin and every board becomes an argument.

Last, you do your own layout. I do not pre-select for a cut list. I will talk through what is on hand and what the lift looks like, but which board becomes which part is a decision made in your shop by somebody holding it.

Why the tally reads in 4/4 nominal board feet

Teak lumber here is sold on 4/4 nominal board feet, with the tally taken at loading. Two things sit inside that sentence.

Nominal means you are buying the board as it was sawn, not as it stands after the planer took its share. That is the convention across hardwood, and it is the only one that stays honest once stock gets surfaced — otherwise every planer in the chain would quietly shrink what you paid for.

Tally at loading means the count is taken on the actual boards going out, board by board, at the moment they go. Not a count estimated off an average, and not a number carried forward from a list made weeks earlier. If you want to see how the count was taken on a particular lot, ask me and I will walk you through it.

One more thing worth knowing

The teak is kiln-dried — 100 percent of it. What that does not mean is that a board arrives already in equilibrium with your shop in February with the heat running. Give it time in the space where it will be worked. A week on sticks in your own building, with air on all four sides of the stack, costs you nothing but patience and tells you more about a board than any conversation with me will.

What to ask before you order

Ask how long the stock runs and how much of it sits at the longer lengths, because that is what decides whether a cut list works or fights you. Ask what the color spread looks like across the lift, since teak is not one color. And ask whoever you are buying from to say plainly what has been done to the wood and what has not — that one question sorts out a lot of suppliers.

I answer my own phone. If you run a shop and you want to talk through a cut list before you commit to anything, the page for millwork and cabinet shops lays out how I work with trade accounts, and I am reachable directly.

Norman Jimenez
(773) 584-7334
info@platinumluxuryteak.com