Lumber Sizes
Lumber Sizes
(OP)
My local lumber store sells pine 2×4s that are 1-3/4" by 3-1/2". 2×4s are supposed to be 1-1/2" by 3-1/2", as are all the other 2×4s I have seen. I am designing and building bookshelves and chairs here, and this size has been a surprise. A pleasant surprise, but a surprise nevertheless.
Has anyone else noticed this? Am I dealing with a weird lumber store, or is there a different standard for knotty pine?
Has anyone else noticed this? Am I dealing with a weird lumber store, or is there a different standard for knotty pine?
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JHG





RE: Lumber Sizes
RE: Lumber Sizes
I've bought of oversize (or "on-size") lumber before, but found it in a separate pile from the general framing/construction 2x4's.
I could still build a wall panel with those 2x4's, that would fit in many cases, because the boards are just thicker, not wider than standard.
Improves by 36% column stability...
STF
RE: Lumber Sizes
2×4s used for studs around here usually are spruce. I don't recall seeing stamps on the wood I used on my backyard shed. These 2×4s are knotty pine, the cheapest material available for cabinet building. I am building a chair.
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JHG
RE: Lumber Sizes
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RE: Lumber Sizes
RE: Lumber Sizes
RE: Lumber Sizes
RE: Lumber Sizes
It was then planed down to 1 5/8 by 3 5/8. The old circular saws cut an 11/32 kerf. That's within a few % of 1/3 inch.
Lumber is now cut with much thinner kerf band saws. However, not all band saws are created equal. The thinner the kerf, the more tendancy to run off a true cut.
The last mill I worked in, the cut size was enough to ensure a good finish after drying, and planing plus an allowance for possible run-out in the cut.
Lumber shrinks as it dries and the amount of shrinkage depends on the grain orientation.
The normal steps are Cut green, kiln dry, and dress to finished size.
Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
RE: Lumber Sizes
I haven't seen pine 2X4's, just two kinds of pine of both flat or tung-and-grove.
Strangely so much of the wood seems to have a curve to it, that I don't think they are dried very much.
RE: Lumber Sizes
On one of my early projects, I relied on the lumber tables of one of my college mechanics of materials textbooks, which quoted 1-5/8" by 3-5/8" for a 2×4. You know you are getting old when...
The stores in Toronto Canada have knotty pine, select pine, poplar, oak and maple. I can get cedar 2×4s and 4×4s. As I noted above, the structural stuff is spruce.
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JHG
RE: Lumber Sizes
There is no spruce in the midwest, and doug fir only on a good day.
If you want #2KD (which used to be low grade) you have to hunt. If you need something better (SS) you probably have to order it.
The last 2x4s that I picked up were 1 5/8" x 3 1/2"
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P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube
RE: Lumber Sizes
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Lumber Sizes
RE: Lumber Sizes
I am buying lumber from Lakeshore Lumber, in Etobicoke, near Lakeshore and Islington. The structural stuff with the rounded corners that I built my backyard shed out of, is 1.5"×3.5". They told me this material was spruce. When I order pine 2×4s, I get the size noted above, and the corners are sharp. This is not construction material.
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JHG
RE: Lumber Sizes
The strange thing is they have the 2X3's in popular for construction grade. I guess this is for thinner walls.
RE: Lumber Sizes
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Lumber Sizes
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Lumber Sizes
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Lumber Sizes
RE: Lumber Sizes
Leave it to woodworkers and the industry to screw it up, same as providing size "classes" for monitors (and now TVs). I remember back in the day getting a 17"-class monitor and being shorted too many millimeters for my taste. It's either 17" or it's not.
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Lumber Sizes
We also get 'CLS' - Canadian Lumber Standard - which is planed and has beveled corners. Joiners like it because they don't get splinters in their hands so often. A CLS 4x2 is about 89mm x 38mm or ½" down on nominal size in each dimension.
Seems like you guys get a poor deal - under-sized lumber, 3/4-gallon gallons, no proper beer...
RE: Lumber Sizes
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Lumber Sizes
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Lumber Sizes
RE: Lumber Sizes
You know don't you that you can now go back and edit your own posts, at least for a day or so. Just look in the lower right corner of any of your recent posts and you should see an 'Edit' icon, as shown below;
Just keep in mind that after a post has been edited anyone can take a look and see what it was that was edited so you can't use this feature to 'rewrite history' or completely 'un-ring' a bell
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Lumber Sizes
Before Canada turned metric, we used Imperial gallons. I remember the signs on the gas pumps announcing to Americans that our gallons are bigger.
It does seem some of my local 2×4s are bigger. I was planning to publish the drawings of the chair I am building. Things are inconvenient when it turns out I am using some sort of exotic material.
--
JHG
RE: Lumber Sizes
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Lumber Sizes
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Lumber Sizes
RE: Lumber Sizes
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
RE: Lumber Sizes
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Lumber Sizes
Harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction
RE: Lumber Sizes
Who's framing walls?
STF
RE: Lumber Sizes
"I am designing and building bookshelves and chairs here,"
Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
RE: Lumber Sizes
At a former shop, we had one of the bathrooms completely replaced.
The new interior structure plans called for steel framing.
The guy who erected the framing spent two or three whole days on what he had bid as a one day job, because his supplier had done him a favor by selling him 16 gage framing instead of the normal, what, 26 gage tin.
He couldn't find a self-drilling screw that would go through the framing; he had to predrill every damn fastener. Boy, was he pissed.
</tangent>
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Lumber Sizes
Needless to say, they do have a top and bottom, but is un marked as such.
RE: Lumber Sizes
Some brands have the logo printed on one end so that you can keep them straight.
With plywood sheathing you can build very strong walls.
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P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube
RE: Lumber Sizes
Steel studs seem weak at first, but when I put them back to back they were more ridged. Maybe not necessary, but it made me feel better about them.
Also mixing different brands is not a good idea either, as you can be sure the holes won't match.
RE: Lumber Sizes
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Lumber Sizes
Softwood lumber used for framing is milked to consistent dimensions. Studs and fence boards tend to be cut to precise lengths. Longer boards tend to give you a kerf allowance, ie a 16' board may be 16' 0-1/4" long so you can cut it into a few pieces without being short by your saw kerf width.
If you joint rough cut lumber, ie if you also care that the piece ends up straight as well as having parallel smooth faces, it will end up whatever thickness it takes to get it straight. For a long enough piece, that may be impossible. Sometimes, you need to design the structure of what you're building to hold the material straight rather than designing for straight material.
Furniture is best made from rough lumber, which can be cut to rough dimension and then jointed, thickness planed and dimensioned with minimal waste.
You bought material that was rough cut to 8/4 and then thickness planed to 1 3/4". Nobody cheated you, nor did you get something for nothing.
RE: Lumber Sizes
Not having a cabinet shop, but still having pretty nice tools - for a DIY, but no planer, no shaper: I tend to buy S3S 3/4 X for 99% of everything I do. If I need a special thickness, our local hardwood supplier will run it through his planer for me - for a suprising nominal fee. Have not had any use (yet) for rough cut hardwood - and the intesnsive labor required.
Just the opinion of a DIY engineer - not a professional cabinet maker like his dad was.
ice
Harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction
RE: Lumber Sizes
Eventually I bought both so I could work with rough lumber efficiently without spending my life hand planing, which loses its charm rapidly if you want to build more than a few small pieces. Some material I found and sawed myself, including a pile of short 8/4 cherry I've been using for legs and cabinet corners over the years. I now have a huge pile of green ash air drying in a stickered pile in my backyard- thanks to the emerald ash borer, an understanding neighbour who had the arborist fell his dead trees rather than hacking them into firewood, and a great young guy with a portable bandsaw mill. Building my kitchen (all doors, drawer fronts and face frames) from rough cherry paid for these tools several times over.
RE: Lumber Sizes
S4S or S3S is handy for those without the equipment, but most of the time it is not all that useful for a furniture building unless it is the correct size. Many times sawing relives tension stresses within the wood, and you will find it ends up crooked once cut. It takes a jointer and planer to fix. I buy 8/4 6/4 and 4/4 from a wholesaler at about 1/2 the price I can buy it from a local shop in dressed form. If you do much woodworking a cheap 6" jointer and lunchbox planer can be a savings if you have the patience. Norm Abrahams (this old house or whatever it was called) built a shed on his show one time, and the crazy bugger jointed and planed all the pieces. Way too dedicated I thought.
Here is some of my floors and my stairs before it got to the shop.
RE: Lumber Sizes
RE: Lumber Sizes
So those crooked pieces are not all bad. However Home-Depo seems to have many more than what people want (Not that I blame Home-Depo).
What it appears to me is that much of the lumber is not allowed to dry prior to being cut. And it's so bad that I can frequently find lumber wet in the store.
The other thing I've seen is 2 X 4's that have bark on one end. And while not crooked, they are frequently rejected to the cull bin.
I am guessing all of this happens because of the rush to profits from saw mills, and trying squeeze as much wood from every tree. It's not just limited to the lumber industry, but maybe we just see it more.
RE: Lumber Sizes
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Lumber Sizes
1 The lumber is rough cut.
2 The lumber is dried, usually kiln dried.
3 The lumber is planed to the finished size.
Lumber is often shipped by weight. Kiln drying saves a lot in shipping costs.
Lumber shrinks when dried. Lumber does not shrint uniformly.
The worst case that I have seen was a kiln load of tropical flooring in Central America. The operators were instructed to first dry the wood and to then plane it to size. This was a wood that was very hard when dry. The operators decided that it would be too hard on their equipment to plane the wood when it was dry and planed the wood green.
Remember, this was flooring, one uniform spec size.
All the boards shrank and would not match up with standard flooring.
That's not all;
The edge grain shrank by a different amount than the flat grain.
The flat grain shrank by a different amount than the quarter grain.
They ended up with three distinct different widths and three difference distinct thicknesses, depending on the grain orientation.
$40,000 potential value of wood at distress sale prices.
Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
RE: Lumber Sizes
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Lumber Sizes
That describes approximately zero of the wood I've used in the past twenty years or more.
Rift sawing wastes a huge amount of wood. Quartersawing wastes less, but yields a lot of narrow boards unless the log is huge. Both methods consume a lot of saw time, which on a portable sawmill can add up quickly. In some species, these methods give a look which is very different- almost like a different species. Sometimes that's charming in its own right (i.e. the ray flecking in quartersawn oak), giving features that are valuable as well as imparting dimensional stability. But in some species, it makes a beautiful wood look rather plain by getting rid of the very grain varability that draws your eye to it in the first place- it feels less like a natural material.
Flatsawn material builds up stresses when dried, even when air dried very slowly in a stickered pile. It takes on whatever new shape those stresses decide. Sawing it relieves some stresses and changes the shape again. After it is dried, you look at the boards, lay out the pieces you need, and start bucking and ripping to rough dimension. Then you can dimension the lumber with minimal waste. But it takes time and patience and generates a lot of shavings.
RE: Lumber Sizes
Soft wood has an open cell structure and can be dried rapidly.
Hard wood has a closed cell structure and must be dried slowly.
What is "rapidly" and "slowly" in hours?
I have used drying schedules that would dry a batch of soft wood in 18 hours.
My drying handbook listed some drying schedules for hardwood that ran over 28 days.
If you dry the wood faster than the moisture can migrate to the surface, the vapour pressure may split the wood.
I have seen peak spot temperatures in a softwood kiln hit 230 deg. F
Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
RE: Lumber Sizes
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Lumber Sizes
That was a long time ago when CRT (Constant Rising Temperature) schedules were used to dry soft wood.
The hotter softwood is, the more permeable the cell structure is. The more permeable the cell structure the faster the wood may be dried without the internal vapour pressure splittng the wood.
It was found that the wood could be brought up to temperature faster by flooding the kiln with saturated steam. It may seem counter productive to inject steam and make the atmosphere wetter when you want to dry the wood, but the steam and external moisture allowed the wood to be heated up more rapidly without damage. Once the wood was hot, it could be dried very rapidly with an overall reduction in drying time.
Counter=intuitive but it works.
Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
RE: Lumber Sizes
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Lumber Sizes