Hello fine conveyor of hats, WoodReviewer here, today I am taking a look at the most wretched hive of scammers and thieves… I mean perfectly legitimate place for business for the finest hat traders, Trade Hangout by Merely and Seranok. The place is a classic now, but still fairly small since a majority of the places purpose is to look at how large your number is compared to other peoples. Seeing as my number was 0, I was unable to to participate in the number looking, so I did what I do best: I went around looking at wood.

This was the first piece of bad wood grain I saw, a simple umbrella pole next to a beach that extended to the end of the world. Literally, the map is only like 200 studs by 200 studs. Still, the umbrella pole should be correct and have wood grain going vertical rather than the current horizontal position. A stiff breeze and the umbrella will go right into the water.  As for the base, it seems unneeded; the umbrella pole should be able to directly go into the sand without needing a large base to hold it up.

Looking through the rest of the map, well, there wasn’t much. As mentioned, the map is only about 200×200, so not much was hidden. In fact, I can review basically every piece of wood in the place rather than just reviewing noteworthy pieces or one asset that is reused, so here is all the wood in the place, starting with a door.

It has good wood grain because it appears to just be a decal of a real door.

Next up to get to the apartment were these wooden trusses. For those of you unfamiliar with trusses, they should never be used with wood or wooden planks. As you can see, the vertical supports of the truss have improper wood grain. There is no way to fix it. Don’t use it, ever, with wood grain.

At the bottom of the truss, however, is a classic example of what can be fixed; bad wood grain on a window frame. Instead of going vertical, the wood grain goes horizontal, which is improper and will cause the window to become weak.

Next up, some good wood grain. This table has proper wood grain.

And this red building has no wood grain in it, trust me I checked.

For the last bit of good wood grain, this shelf has good wood grain.

Unfortunately, the shelving is overshadowed by some bad wood grain on the desk right in front of it.

As you can see, the wood grain on the entire counter top goes front to back, which is good on part, but not all of it. It is hard to explain, but imagine the wood grain as a bunch of lines. If it was proper, the wood grain should follow the red lines in the next image.

So toward the front it should go side to side, middle diagonal, and at the back front to back, like it does. On the bottom part of the desk, the wood grain should always be parallel to the ground, not perpendicular like it is in parts.

So, how was the wood grain? On the door, table, and shelves it was good. On the desk, windows, umbrella, and trusses it was bad. A common comment might be that there isn’t much wood grain so it doesn’t mean much. That is incorrect; the fact there is so little wood grain means it can more easily be fixed. The umbrella would take literally seconds to fix; the windows maybe a minute. For the trusses, they would either take a few seconds to select a new material for them, for 5-10 minutes to make a new wooden ladder. The desk should take about a minute if it is fixed with CSG, maybe 10 if it is fixed without. So, to fix all the wood grain would take a generous 30 minutes. 30 minutes to fix a major visual issue in a place that completely ruins the place. And 30 minutes may seem like a while, but to fix all the wood grain in a place 30 minutes is nothing compared to what it would take to fix one of Asimo3089’s places, for example. And trust me, I know how long that takes.