The thing is, other packs of the same wood to the same spec were better. We were able to sort through and get one graded/rated the same, but without problems.
I know about wood quality and I have deliberately bought higher and lower grade wood. But even so, quality varies greatly.
Yeah, that is correct. Sawmills often produce only one or two grades of wood and don’t do aggressive binning. That’s why the quality is so variable within the grade. There are also factors that affect the grade but don’t necessarily impact every application (eg warping and knots are sometimes ok), so the bins are coarse-grained.