The orientation of wood fibers and the resulting surface roughness of radiata pine are studied during a peripheral milling with acoustic emission control. Studies were undertaken in machining process for radiata pine, where a surface quality problem appears when cutting is not well controlled. It is known that acoustic emission signals are a good monitoring element of the surface roughness with different cutting conditions. Previous studies have shown that changing cutting conditions affects acoustic emission signals; these variations are related to surface roughness and chip formation. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and quantify the surface quality and the consumption of cutting energy in radiata pine with differing grain angles, and to determine the relationships of grain angle with acoustic emission signals in order to better optimize cutting conditions.