Hi DL,

Agree, not as much as kerfing, but your forbears had been wise also in that you can take a even lower grade of timber, and through embellishment render beauty, relieve surface tension in the timber, and obscure certain blemish of the timber, thereby rendering much more than it would have been. They worked timber into beautiful embellishment to a degree that I have not seen outside of Africa or Southeast Asia, other than perhaps the Norse and some of there timber buildings with great carving.