/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>2x4
>is 1½x3½
>warped and bent
>full o' tiny holes

>2x8
> is 1½ x 7¼

>>787934
Sounds about right.

>>787934

>2x4" WAS 2x4"
>2x4 SHRINKS to 1 1/2" by 3 1/2"

also fun fact, when buying lumber, you pay for the fucking sawdust... ask any sawyer.

>>787974
It doesn't shrink you tard, they plane it. Thats cause OP, who is no doubt a Grand Dragon in the Order of the Faggots, is buying S4S lumber. Don't buy lumber thats been through a planer and you will find that it is 2x4. Complaining about it is like crying that your 1/4 pound burger was less than that after they cooked it.

>>788000
>Imblying wood fairies don't take their cut.

>>788118

>>788000

there's no reason to be upset

What is eventually sold as 2x4 is not 2x4 when green, there isn't even a standard for it. What you can trust is that once on the shelf after drying/planing it will be extremely close to 1½ x 7¼

In other words you work backwards to get a reliably sized board on the shelf.

You have a ways to go until you makle Grand Dragon anon

>'merica, 1886
>a panel of experts set out to rationalise the clusterfuck of pipe dimensions
>pic related was their perfect solution that would remove all ambiguity
>130 years later, ASME are still trying to foist this nonsensical bullshit on the rest of the world

>>788139
My local lumber yard carries full dimension lumber. Its rough as shit and just about spot on for its advertised size. They also carry planed lumber, which is about .5 inches smaller on the planed sides. Planed lumber is a lot easier to work with and more useful then the rough stuff. Some people do buy it though. I asked who and the local guys said its mostly contractors doing renovations to older building in the area. That way they don't have to use furring strips to bring new timber up to the same dimension as the older ones.

>>787934
mfw when home depot 2"x2" are 1/8" off in one dimension and you discover this when trying to assemble two halves of a project.

I need to get a table saw.

>>788221
This is correct.
nominal vs dimensional
old houses were framed using nominal lumber because that was the standard back when people made good things.

>>787934
wait until you find out CLS is advertised as 38x63mm etc. (actual size)
at least over here it is.

>>788188
>cant into nps

>>788252
Wait, so they just take the standard old English units and just convert them to metric? They don't actually CUT the wood to metric dimensions?

>>788275
>hurr let's ignore the globally-recognised thread standard that's worked fine for 40 years
>we'll create our own Freedom Standards that're only slightly different to avoid the patent burden
>fuck you whitworthbongs, we mighty independant nation now, doing our own engineering
>don't thread on me

Lumber yard worker and woodcrafter.

The wood you buy at a big box is all s4s ( surfaced 4 sides) and kiln dried.

The dring cost your 8-15% of the green boards dimensions, the plaining and milling account for the rest, to uniform the lumber at its final size.

S2S is more common in specialty store, and is usually bought in quaters but due to the jointing ( flatening and truing of one face and one edge) will be slightly less then a true 4/4 inch. For most woodworkers this isnt an issues as we will resaw, joint, and plane this lumber to our working size.


If you have thw tools and shop space, rough lumber is the cheapest ( compared to s2s, s3s, and s4s) to buy, but many yard and dealers dont sell rough , because there is less market for it.

If you buy rough ut will be true to size , a 4/4 will be 1".


You will need to run one face on a joiner , or some other milling tool, plane it to make it flat, then fun it through a band saw or table saw ro get the width you want.


When i ger rough lumber ( usually from small mills directly) i do my first edge using a 3hp router and table.
Then i run it on a jointer to establish a flat edge, then on to the power planer to match the other side and get it to working thickness, after that i use a 10" table saw to establish width, then a chop saw to establish my board length.


This is of course after i air dry the lumber, rotating and flipping it so it does not warp much. Untill it is at about 6% ( depending on species)

>>788221
A real lumber yard you mean. This is what we do at work. We get 8/4 and 4/4 stuff its rough as shit still got bark and shit on the edges. Gotta put it through a surface planer and put a straight line on it. After that we turn it into whatever usually lots of mouldings,corbels,bannisters,handrails and everything in between. Although the width is what it is at least here locally. 5-7 is one category and 8-12 is another. We have a lot of waste drops, but man unlimited firewood supply. Bonfires and being a carpenter seem to go hand it hand

>>788241
>old houses were framed using nominal lumber because that was the standard back when people made good things.

No. There are a lot of reasons why a 2x4 is not 2" by 4", but cost savings isn't what started it.

For the full story, read "Early Standards" in the link below.

http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/misc/miscpub_6409.pdf

TL;DR version:

Early in the country's development we had lots of local mills that served local markets. Local mills sold to local craftsmen, and each region worked out their own standards and techniques that worked well. On top of that, roughly dimensional or non-dimensional lumber wasn't as big a problem prior to 1900 because the inability to produce uniform, dimensional lumber meant that carpenters expected to work it into shape anyway.

As the demand for lumber expanded and local sources of wood were exhausted the wood mills started shipping lumber by rail. This meant that the ad-hoc system of standards that had developed previously didn't work anymore, and led to the development of the first national standards. These first standards allowed for up to a 1/2" to an 1" difference than nominal measurements, depending on the type of lumber and how many sides were surfaced.

The problem for these distant mills was that the cost of shipping freight was very expensive. Dimensional lumber of equal quality, but shipped by railroad, could be twice as expensive as lumber cut at the local mill. This shipping cost was the big incentive for mills to cut dimensional lumber smaller than nominal lumber, which didn't come about until after standardization at modern sizes.

Sure, there was always the incentive to cut smaller boards to get more boards, but even as early as 1900 that wasn't the dominating economic force in lumber pricing, it was the shipping cost.

>>788241

Also, modern dimensional lumber sizes were a thing as early as 1906. So by "back when people made good things" you must mean prior to 1906.

I just measured the joists in the basement of my house built in 1905, and they're 1 5/8" to 1 6/8" oak. The oak is significant, because it means it was probably cut and milled locally rather than made of the pine being shipped from the north and south.

>>788299

>don't thread on me

>>788188
>n = -39\log_{92} \left( \frac{d_{n}}{0.005~\mathrm{inch}} \right)+36 = -39\log_{92} \left( \frac{d_{n}}{0.127~\mathrm{mm}} \right)+36

why.jpg

>>788332
I keep al my scraps.... Imagine burning purpleheart or ebony.


If i ever become a millionaire, im making an ebony bonfire

>>788353
i bet it was specced out on a perfectly sensible thing like footage per pound of steel in a roll mill of a standard width (since the pounds per square foot of gauge metal is all nice clean fractions)

then it got applied to wire where it worked fine in practice and folk could use their existing gauge measures, but the gauge number was totally fuckin' abstracted from the amount of metal.

>>788391
seems like it would be one of those things where the exact specific size isn't nearly as important as everyone agreeing on using the same set of sizes...

>>787934
>knotty pine