Finger joints in structural timber and glulam lamellae are often used to enable production of long members or to allow forre-connection of parts of a member after removal of weak sections. According to the European Standard EN 15497, certainmargins are required between knots and a finger joint in structural timber, which means that a considerable amount of clearwood becomes waste when finger joints are applied. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the possibility of reducingthe quantity of waste using different criteria for placement of finger joints. The investigation was based on (1) applicationof methods of colour scanning and tracheid effect scanning to detect knots and grain disturbance on board surfaces, and (2)interpretation of the requirements of EN 15497 regarding where finger joints may be placed. The standard’s requirementwhen producing finger joints is that the minimum distance between a knot and a finger joint is three times the knot diameter.The standard allows for the minimum distance between a knot and a finger joint to be shortened to 1.5 times the diameterwhen the local fibre orientation is measured. Utilizing this in simulated production resulted in reduction of waste from 7.4to 4.0%, when using finger joints simply to produce timber of long lengths. If finger joints are also used to re-connect partsof members after removal of weak sections, even larger savings can be made. Furthermore, it is concluded that knowledgeof fibre orientation obtained from scanning could be used not only to decrease the waste in production but also to increasethe quality of finger joints.