Method of facilitating check grader reaction to output produced by automatic board lumber grading system

A method of improving board feature quality grading by facilitating human check grader reaction to grading output produced by an automatic grading system included in a board lumber scanning system, the board lumber scanning system scanning faces of boards that pass through a scanning zone and projecting onto the boards grading designations that represent board feature quality information produced after analysis of the boards by the automatic grading system, the grading designations developed from successive standard rule-based grades representing board structure and appearance metrics, each of the standard rule-based grades expressed as a range of values, and the ranges of values of successive standard rule-based grades representing different degrees of board feature qualities, comprising:

• specifying, for application by the automatic grading system to the faces of boards passing through the scanning zone, a virtual grade stored in memory and expressed by a range of values that overlap values in a pair of the successive standard rule-based grades, the pair of successive standard rule-based grades representing higher and lower board feature qualities;
• producing, by the board lumber scanning system, a board grading solution in response to detection of a board feature quality representing the virtual grade of a board analyzed by the automatic grading system;
• in response to the board grading solution, projecting a virtual grading designation onto the board to which the virtual grade corresponds and to which a check grader can react to assess whether the board exhibits board feature quality that exceeds the lower board feature quality of the pair of successive standard rule-based grades;
• processing check grader input to a check grader-actuatable interface of the board lumber scanning system, the check grader input indicating the check grader's assessment made in reaction to the virtual grading designation;
• and
• assigning to the board, by the automatic grading system, the standard rule-based grade representing the higher board feature quality in response to receipt of the check grader input indicating an assessment justifying the higher board feature quality in reaction to the virtual grade designation.