Allegheny Montain Hardwood Flooring started by utilizing the Rift & Quarter Sawn lumber cut from parent company, Hickman Lumber. Hickman Lumber had been cutting & drying rift & quarter sawn since the 1980s and selling it to various furniture companies. In 2000 Allegheny Mountain Hardwood Flooring was founded and was the first to bring a natural grade rift & quarter sawn to the market.
Hickman Lumber was trying to figure out how to cut more quarter sawn from logs that are too small to trandionally quarter saw. Live Sawning was the solution. The thought was to cut the log straight through and then rip out the center and utilize the rift & quarter sawn from either side. We started noticing some really cool boards and decided to keep them together and mill them as flooring instead of ripping them. We had some key installerss from NWFA start using this in high end projects which provided great photography and the trend has taken off! In 2013 Jessica Hickman wrote the article in Wood Floor Business magazine defining the various cuts which officially introduced live sawn into the industry.
A key difference with AMHF live sawn and other "live sawn" on the market is the high percentage of rift and quarter sawn throughout the floor. This provides a more stable flooring option and more cost effective than a wide plank quarter sawn floor due to the cut and the smaller diameter log needed as starting material.