Hi Mike sometime several years ago I put together a presentation that I converted to a web page. The presentation attempts to explain good saw logs from firewood logs . It also has some various band mill techniques to produce different "cuts" of lumber, its very basic and written in easy to understand terms. It might be advantageous to bone up on the basics of logs to lumber making so you know when someone posts something like this on CL, you'll be able to be a little more educated about what it is your looking at...
You can find the presentation here --->
https://sites.google.com/site/millscustomsawing/logs-to-lumber-1
If you have any questions after having looked at the presentation, just post them here... This site has lots of resident experts that will be more than happy to answer yours or anyone elses questions you may have.
Thanks