I dont know why they have to lie about it. At $5/8ft board you’d think I paid for the full 1.5. Edit: I mixed up nominal with actual.
Is their entire stock like this every time, or just this one batch?
Entire stock as of 5/6/24. I didnt even notice it was smaller than usual, busy trying to find the only-slightly warped boards.
Good lumber these days is becoming hard to find. I think it is mostly due to the lumber companies trying to pump out a ton of lumber to meet demand.
I’d say it’s degradation of the market’s quality after all the forced cuts we took in 2020
Nah, lumber was already garbage quality at the big box stores before Covid.
Maybe
I just know quality is down and price is up
Is nobody gonna call out OP for wearing socks with sandals? …and, ostensibly, while preparing to do carpentry?!?
That’s like a cardinal sin squared!
My COVID home-improvement project was hardwoods. Something like 1000sqft. Never did it before. Did 90% of it wearing no more than basketball shorts and flipflops. W/e. Only a few toe injuries.
Well if it was only a few. /s
That’s only 30% of toes, unless we’re going by overall volume.
Nah nothing wrong with wearing socks with sandals when you’re home. Do what ever the hell you want.
But I do agree with wearing proper footwear while doing dangerous things.
Oh absolutely. I wear socks with sandals because my soles sweat and make my sandals sticky.
But yeah, wear proper attire for the work you do!
Steel toe capped crocks
I love this idea. I’m not even sure why, I don’t own crocks.
Jesus did it
Not in socks
No need to crucify him for it.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, the only sin he saw that gave Jesus second thoughts of dying for our sins was socks and sandals.
don’t forget the unbranded Chinesium calipers.
Mitutoyo or bust.
My toolbag calipers are cheap hardware store ones. They’re accurate enough and I’m not out much when they inevitably get damaged or lost.
For a machinist yep. For home gamers, a waste of money. They don’t have the knowledge of where and when to use them nor the skills to get accurate repeatable measurements. So for OP’s use whatever CCC, (Cheap, Cheerful, Chinese), caliper he’s got is good enough.
It’s the definition of “nominal size is what ever we say it is” that pisses me off. Buying wood/lumber is the worst offender of Nominal sizing, but even metals are getting worse. I used to buy a round bar of say, ASA1018 and it would be +0"/-.002". It’s now +0/-.006", (that’s +0/-.05mm and +0/-.15mm for those living in Boca Raton). At the end of my career as a toolmaker I was often forced to purchase oversized stock and waste time turning said stock into the actual sizes required.
I can accept the poor quality tools that might be off by a few hundredths, but using imperial on precision measurement devices is unforgivable.
I regularly wear socks and sandals along with shorts and a sweater.
There was also a time I went to lunch with that plus a lab coat and hairnet.
Sounds like a Rick and Morty episode.
At least the socks aren’t white.
Can’t you see those are safety sandals. And just like safety squints, are approved PPE across the whole 3rd world industrial sphere. OP will be perfectly safe.
Nope. Definitely dead.
I don’t condone it, but I’ve done something similar once in a Boy Scouts meeting as a scout. Had sandals on and I don’t remember the full meeting, but at one point we were chopping wood with an axe. I did it, but that’s not my brightest move. There was also a time where I was getting my metalworking badge and entered the forge one time for a kinda free time work on your project thing with shorts on by mistake. Nobody stopped me in either case. This wasn’t pre-2000s, so I’m not sure how I got away with either event considering safety is usually taken much more seriously nowadays.
Um, wait. I would think that violates some sort of law (but I guess maybe we haven’t codified this?). I mean, building plans expect standards in materials, right? So how can a building meet codes if the materials are not within the expected specs?
You simply change the expected specs…
Agreed, seems like some kind of weights and measures violation.
I’m going to guess they can get away with this because 2x2s aren’t intended for structural use. I’ve never built one into a floor, wall or ceiling.
Sounds like the situation here… good call
Used for furring strips everywhere. Line a block wall with them and sheet it for example.
Would you call that a “structural use?”
That was one example, you can also strap roofs to install sheet metal cladding. Is that not structural? Strap a ceiling? There’s a ceiling use for you.
I figured if I gave you a real world example you could do a little research of your own.
No, that’s not structural since the furring strips are not integral to load bearing capacity of the structure.
In your sheet metal example, they are only there for visual reasons - to help keep the roof flat. The roof can be put down without the furring strips. It might bend, but it still function as a roof.
The roof can be put down without the furring strips. It might bend, but it still function as a roof.
What…? Roof trusses go parallel with the length of the cladding panel, you require furring strips on the perpendicular to install them. Just like in a wall with the studs vertical, you need horizontal furring to install them.
These required larger furring strips due to truss spacing.
Furring strips are not visual lmfao. They are structural components in a lot of assemblies. Without knowing the assembly you can’t say if they are or aren’t structural, that’s the entire point I’ve been trying to make here. You aren’t the quickest one are you? I’ve pointed this out multiple times. There are thousands of use cases where furring strips are structural. To say they aren’t structural is fucking asinine lmfao.
Those aren’t furring strips in that photo. That’s dimensional lumber. In this case, those spans are large enough that they require the strength of actual lumber.
Structural use means load bearing. So no.
Furring strips are used in plenty of places, I provide one example where it is used in most residential homes to support drywall.
Is it not structural if it’s holding ceiling drywall…? So why are people still bickering that walls aren’t structural when they still hold drywall up…?
If it’s part of a code wall detail, would that not be structural…?
What’s with the pedantism over something like this to try and save face over not knowing what a furring strip is?
Furring strips and drywall don’t count as load bearing. Structural means that it carries the weight of the overlying structure. Basically if the building falls down if that element is missing, it’s structural. So staircases for instance are almost never structural. Many interior walls are not load bearing so they can get knocked down without consequence. You can also split a room by building a wall that won’t be load bearing.
Furring strips and drywall don’t count as load bearing.
Except for the thousands of use cases where they are used for lateral bracing to support the structure….
Like in shear walls… strapped drywall ceilings… load bearing walls….
Yes they can be used non-structurally, I’ve never claimed otherwise, yet you are ignoring the fact that they can, and are used in load bearing structural applications……
No, that’s is not structural.
Structural means it’s intended to support and transfer loads in a way that cannot be safely removed.
Since neither the furring strips or drywall are part of a structural requirement, they are not load bearing.
Drywall is structural, when used on block walls it helps provide lateral support.
This is why being pedantic usually backfires.
Drywall is inherently structural.
Regardless. It’s furring strips, you want to argue furring strips aren’t used in structural applications? They are used in all three applications the person said they haven’t used them in. They also claimed to be a wood wroker elsewhere, so I don’t see how they would use anything structural anyways….
To someone from central europe it’s always weird how houses get build from wood in the US. 😅 I imagine you can hear ~everything happening ~anywhere in the house?
it’s extremely common for americans to dismiss apartments because they simply cannot fathom the idea of housing that actually blocks noise, it’s one of the primary arguments i see used against denser housing.
Yup. Over here in the Western US, nearly every apartment is built as cheaply as possible and run by slumlords that will do everything that they can to refuse to return deposits. Painting over bugs and black mold between tenants is the norm, in my experience, not the exception. Add to that that insulation between apartments is scant, if present and frequently there are no physical barriers between apartment building attic accesses (in every top-story apartment that I’ve been in, it would be easily possible to gain access to others’ apartments via the attic and the attics also act to channel sound between all top apartments).
I want to say that stick-built homes are really not so fragile as people seem to think. There’s tradeoffs, of course, and ways to build them that make them uncomfortable at best and blatantly unsafe at worst. That being said, they’re pretty sturdy, fairly easy to repair and modify, and relatively quick and cheap to build.
It’s a big improvement from making them from straw.
Not really, unless the house was built incredibly cheaply with thin studs and crappy drywall.
Wood is pretty decent at blocking sound – it the voids between the studs that’s an issue. Filling them with sound deadening insulation solves that problem.
It’s not as good at blocking sound as a masonry wall obviously, but it’s “good enough” at a fraction of the price.
Depends. The cheap houses, yeah, there’s as fair bit of noise, but you can’t hear everything. From downstairs, you can hear when someone walks across the room above you, but not when they’re walking in other upstairs rooms. And from rooms on the same level, you can hear if someone is talking loudly in the room next door, but not enough to make out what they say unless they’re yelling.
Well-built houses or buildings made for occupancy by multiple families usually have better sound insulation between the units, so it’s not always an issue.
The 2x4s that have been sized this way do meet structural code. It was found that a full 2x4 is way over spec’d for what they were used for, so why bother wasting extra parts of the tree?
Pretty much everything built with dimensional lumber in the last century has been done with undersized 2x4s, and it’s fine. The name stuck for historical reasons. Companies that build houses and order this stuff by the pallet all know what the real size is, and so do building inspectors.
These are even smaller than that. A standard 2x4 is 1.5x3.5.
Pretty much everything built with dimensional lumber in the last century has been done with undersized 2x4s, and it’s fine.
It’s fine, folks. Nothing to see here.
What part of this has to do with dimensional lumber?
It being ugly has absolutely fuckall to do with the structural integrity
Rough 2x4s were 2" x 4". Then we started finishing them for better consistency, taking about 0.5" from each dimension. Later we started using saws with narrower kerfs to have less loss due to saw blade width, better cutting and planing systems so the rough size could be smaller and still have the same finished size, then they lowered finished size some more.
It’s probably 2x2PT or something. There are standards for board widths.
Nothing is immune to shrinkflation aka merchant gouging
This has nothing to do with shrinkflation. Just an oddity of the US lumber sizing.
What is your definition of gouging
Increasing prices just to fill corporate pockets, or keeping prices elevated far beyond the market necessity
Highly relevant when topically adjacent to woodworking.
Good thing you checked, that’s ridiculous. If I’d cut a dado for some mixed stock and found out some of them were 1 & 1/3 instead of 1 & 1/2, I’d be pissed.
For a dado, you’d better measure every board.
But in reality, if you’re looking for a perfect fit for construction lumber, you’d also better let it dry out for a week before measuring and fitting, cause it was probably 1.5" soaking wet from the yard, and shrank a bunch.
There is a lot of manufacturing deviation with lumber. If you are that picky maybe you could try talking to one of the associates. They tend to know the best places to look and they may even help you measure.
I worked construction in the early 2000s and there was no variation in lumber dimensions.
Go to Home depot and measure
Dimensional lumber has negligible variance in width/depth most of the time which is why it’s called that. It’s really the length that’s a crapshoot. Gotta love when you buy a bunch of 10’ planks and a couple are a few inches short
Well, if your dadoing your probably not using soft wood dimensional lumber….
I’ve found some applications for it, honestly.
I made a work bench with oak 4x4s for legs and dado’d in pine 2x4s for the cross braces. Nice and sturdy with a good enough fit and no movement I noticed over the past 3 years.
Top comment, this. This is gonna be my default when folks ask about dimensional lumber sizes in the future
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Fire Walk with Me - 2x4s (Deleted scene)
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Beat me to it!
RIP Jack Nance and Ed Wright.
Why is 2x2 meant to be 1.5x1.5 and not 2x2?
Premill size vs sale size. Something like that. Probably not the correct term.
Similar to how steak is measures in precooked weights.
*Planed/straight wood versus raw lumber. It threw me off when I first started building stuff and summed that a 2x4 was actually 2"x4" in all my measurements/plans
*Or it would be straight if you’re lucky and don’t pick from the top of the bin at Home Depot
The old * uncooked weight
2x4 is the rough cut dimensions from the sawmill. They end up smaller after drying (wood can hold a lot of water) and planing.
TBH that looks like a furring strip, not dimensional lumber
It’s possible they stocked the wrong thing, but it was rung up as Pressure-Treated so maybe they applied the wrong barcode?
That green tint means it is pressure treated. Just take it back (this time bring a tape measure.)
And clip it to the belt loop of your khaki cargo shorts like the rest of us weekend warrior dads 😂
I usually bring my 9ft magnetic tape from my car’s ceiling and my 4" brass fractional caliper from the glove box into the store but always end up prowling the lumber section for the loose tape measures. Wouldn’t want to look like I’m stealing, right?
He probably bought “five quarters”
How is it in countries using the metric system ?
in France :
https://www.mara-materiaux.com/bois-de-charpente/8094-lambourde-38x63-mm-long4-m-traite-9202001090740.htmlLAMBOURDE 38x63 mm long.4 M TRAITE Unité de vente : le mètre linéaire 1.42 € /m
5.68 € /(4 m)So, this is aprox ($6.?) for one “…2x3x(~13ft)…”
(treated wood)
… verry expensive, yet, upfront size disclosure.Pretty much all of Europe lists wood in exact size of the cut that you get. It sounds highly illegal to call it a 5x5cm piece of wood and sell some other random smaller size.
Thank God freedom units give us the liberty of doing away with that commie nonsense.
Distributors send their junk to home stores because they know they won’t reject it.
They don’t even send back the garbage pieces, just restock if they get returned
Wait… if you were building a home with this lumber, at least parts of it, wouldn’t this technically hurt the integrity, or better yet, be less structurally sound? Or am I a dumb dumb?
2x2 is not a structural type of lumber. Houses use 2X4 or 2X6 for structure.
Oh good… Yeah, I’m ignorant in home construction.
yes, no dumb dumb
It’s still a bit small, but pressure treated being a little smaller than framing lumber is not necessarily a secret:
2x2PT has been 1.25x1.25 for as long as I can remember (10 years or more). It’s only the pressure treated deck stuff for railings. This does not apply to the rest of the 2x lumber, as those are still 1.5 actual. I got Simpson corner 2x2 brackets for crazy cheap way back but ended up not really using them. The 2x2s are warped to hell and a ripped 2x4 was too big in the original 2x dimension.
I’m wondering if it’s a regional thing? I just looked online for pressure treated 2x2’s and all the ones I’m seeing (home hardware, home depot, advantage lumber, etc) list as actual being 1.5x1.5
That’s possible. I just moved from CA to MI 2 years ago. I know they were 1.5 then because I built alot of props and temp walls with it. I was reusing a 3d printed joint I designed to make a garden trellis when I noticed the wood didnt fit like before.
There is quite a lot of deviation with lumber these days. If you need something the right size go for a higher quality and then measure them until you find the one you are looking for.
Well shit. That explains alot
