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.
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.
Shouldn’t the normal size be 2? Given, well, the name?
You’d think so, but no.
Short story is the ‘nominal’ size is the size before going into a planer to smooth the faces.
Yes, it makes little sense, like many things related to construction stuff.
Yeah sorry. The tree was originally 50ft tall so we call the pieces that. But you only get 3ft
Is like buying 1200lbs steaks because that’s what the cow weighs before it gets parted
Better example would be raw vs cooked weight of a 1/4lb paddy.
Exactly. Because it is easier to weigh the correct amount before cooking than find out you were wrong after.
But you should probably be feeding Patrick more.
That’s a very small area to grow rice in.
Or a very offended Irish person.
Leprechaun
They prefer vertically challenged…don’t be insensitive
A full bag of crisps, but a third is just air
It’s not a 2x4 it’s a “2x4.”
And if you’re a fan of quotation marks you could call it a “2"x4”."
You have to escape the quotes…
“2\“x4\”” or use differing quotes ‘2"x4"’
I think this is an excellent time to point out that curl quotes (“ ”) are what are typographically used for quotations and apostrophes and hash marks (" ') are what are used for feet and inches. So it would look something like:
“ 2"× 4’ ”
(Spacing is still a bit ugly, I’d kern me some quote marks)
In CSV, you escape a double quote with a double quote.
Or use tsv or xsv and never quote a field again.
Sometimes we don’t get to pick what libraries and data formats we work with.
Especially with legacy systems and customer requirements.
I know. I have nothing against the format in general, as it’s plain text and will always be readable. I actually prefer it to Excel sheets, although a proper database is the nicest. It’s just annoying that someone chose comma, a super commonly used punctuation mark, as default field separator for csv.
In CSV you do whatever the fuck you want, and afterwards you delete the file cause CSV is trash and no one should use it.
ah the infamous NaN lumber 🤣
[Object][Object]deleted by creator
This one of those things that sounds correct, but isn’t even remotely true. Like not at all, not even based on anything even.
Wall finishes varies in thickness wildly, and the milled wood also varies in final dimensions depending on moisture content.
Their comment made me almost consider posting an emoji on Lemmy.
The singular is emojus.
Dammit I had to look it up. It’s sheep, sheep.
Hoist on my own petard I was
When I was designing kitchens, I and literally everyone in the construction industry around me all assumed that drywall was 1/2”
Fire rated partition wall? 2 layers of 5/8 each side for a total thickness of 6”
Not to mention the other side already needs a finish making it 4-1/2 already if they are both 1/2 claddings.
Come to think of it I think we were modeling it as 3/4 on each side, because I seem to remember the 3.5” 2x4 stud becoming a full integer thickness with drywall on both sides
Factually incorrect; the board is 2 inches by 4 inches (or whatever the marked dimension is) when rough sawn. After kiln drying and milling, it will be 1.5" thick and 3.5" wide. It still took 2 by 4 inches of the tree to make so that’s what you pay for.
Do I get the sawdust in a bag with it?
Maybe, if you ask the sawyer nicely.
Is his name Tom?
He gets high on you
The two-by-fours at your local home center are not 2 inches thick or 4 inches wide…not anymore at least. They spent several weeks at that size though. The sawmill cut them to that size to stack and kiln dry, and then when removed from the kiln they are then milled straight and square. Used to be they would sell the rough stock to carpenters who would do the milling themselves, but then they figured out that the railroads were charging them a fortune to ship a lot of wood that was going to be ground to sawdust anyway, so they started milling the boards before shipment. Same amount of construction lumber arrives at the construction site and it took less fuel for the locomotive to deliver it.
Lol. Trying to find lumber that’s straight and square is a pipe dream these days.
It was straight and square when it was milled. Problem is that the big box stores cut corners during the kiln drying phase, so the boards have a ton of moisture still in them. As that dries, the boards twist and cup.
Plus poor protection from the elements at each storage step, which means rapid temp changes, which also causes wood movement.
Go to a local lumber yard. They tend to do a better job at kiln drying. You’re still going to have warped boards, but far fewer in my experience.
Yeah, once I get my garage sorted out (and buy a jointer or make a Jig for my planer) I’m going to start getting rough cut lumber and finish it myself.
I tried the sled with shims on my thickness planer. It worked, but it was certainly a pain in the ass and unwieldy due to weight and length.
Picked up a 6" bench top jointer. Not great at long boards due to length of the feeds. Picked up some roller stands hoping that would be close enough, but I moved and the garage needs a lot of work before I can try them out.
If you can pick up a full floor sized jointer and have room for it, you’ll save yourself several headaches if you plan on jointing a ton of rough cut lumber.
I have to talk to someone at the lumber yard though …
I’ve had better luck at a real lumber yard, instead of the big box stores.
It’s the same 10 pieces on the top of the pile for weeks. Everyone is reaching for the pieces under. As long as it’s not 2x2PT
Which is why I buy stock rough sawn and mill it myself.
That’s my plan once I find a used jointer for sale.
if you own a thickness planer, you don’t immediately need a jointer. You can flatten a face with a sled and shims in the planer, and joint edges a frillion different ways. I have a jointer and sometimes I use my router table for edge jointing.
Lumber is weird because it has been industry standard to lie about dimensions since before the US existed so it’s just kinda a thing they get to do
No its not Maybe in the US? At least here, it is and has to be, very precise especially when it comes to industry quality. It is precise down to the mm!
How does that work when wood varies due to moisture content? If they give precise mm measurements, only 20% of boards will meet those criteria.
All they are giving is the planned dimensions instead of nominal in mm form, it’s still not precise, it can’t be.
Construction lumber, especially pressure treated lumber, is sold so wet I don’t think it really matters. I’ve actually never tried to calculate wood movement for construction lumber because who the fuck cares? But for furniture lumber which is dried to between 6 and 14% moisture, there is a formula:
width of the board in inches x percentage of moisture change * expansion coefficient for a particular species.
Yellow pine (extremely common construction lumber) has an expansion coefficient of .00263. A 2x4 (actual dimension 1.5" by 3.5") that undergoes a 4% moisture content change will grow/shrink 3.54.00263 = 0.03682 inches, or just over 1/32". That’s in width; it’ll vary by less than half that in thickness. Wood basically doesn’t move along the grain; the board won’t get appreciably longer or shorter.
Maybe they mill, store, and sell under the same moisture conditions?
Also, how big is the difference in size and moisture for the same piece of wood? I would expect that moisture is usually not higher than 90% and not lower than 10% or something like that, but don’t know how it really is
Once it leaves the mill they go to various stores and regions with different conditions. Some places store them inside, others outside.
Once I buy it at the store and take it the site, it’s now different from the store. You should acclimate all lumber for 48 hours before using it as well, this is so the wood doesn’t swell or shrink more after installing it.
A 2x10 can be anywhere from 9-1/2 to almost 8-1/2 depending on final site conditions.
So, more than 10% difference, that’s enough to be a problem, indeed
A yellow pine 2x10 might move a tenth of an inch, not a full inch.
These were bought at the same time and are both 2x10 installed a couple days ago. You can even see the difference in the connection in the picture.
Over 3/8 of an inch and they both still need to dry.
I think if I was you I’d go have a talk with your sawyer, talk about “man if I wanted my wood this wet I wouldn’t have broken up with Meagan. Is your kiln in working order?”
Bullshit. Wood expands and contracts so ther is no way you can be precious down to the mm.
That’s why the standards specify the moisture content of the wood as well as the dimensions. This is even the case for US standards.
I’ve not really encountered this wood expanding and contracting thing. Are you sure?
Absolutely sure. It’s not really a factor in construction because of how the structure is engineered, but woodworkers have to constantly think about it.
Wood expands and contracts across the grain, but not so much along it. If you take a board that has been in a dry environment, put it in a humid environment, and allow it to acclimate, it will increase in width and thickness but not in length. At the microscopic level, wood is kind of like a bunch of ropes glued together with sponge, as it soaks up water the sponge wants to expand but the ropes don’t let it expand along their length.
Us woodworkers have to think about that when building things like doors, which might fit fine in the winter and then stick in the summer. It’s why we build frame and panel doors like this:
The large panel in the middle can expand and contract so much that it might be a problem, so we literally put it in a box. The outer dimensions of the frame are made mostly of the length of boards so it won’t expand and contract much, and the panel rests in a groove in the frame, not nailed or glued in place so that it can safely expand and contract as it wants to.
Attaching wide boards end-to-face can even present a situation where the boards want to move in different directions and they’ll eventually break each other.
You can even calculate the amount of wood movement given the species, of the wood, the dimension of the board and the amount of moisture change, you can read about it here.
You aren’t serious are you…?
Exaggeration
Realistic answer
Boards can shrink and grow due to moisture.
True, but the amount they shrink and grow across the grain tends to be proportional. A 2x4 is very rarely measurably different from 1.5"x3.5", but a 2x10 (like you’ve shown) is 1.5"x9 1/4" but is often anywhere between 9 1/8" to 9 3/8"
That’s crazy, how can you make a profit if you give the customer the exact measurement? You have to saw a bit off and pad your earnings!
That’s not why there’s a nominal size vs actual size.
It’s not exactly a lie, just a standard. Nominal board sizes were based on the unfinished lumber size. Another 1/4 inch is taken off each side to get a smooth surface that makes it easier to work with.
Here’s an old image (reddit warning)
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2F6Oy1DmXVFs0lyKxq9OmjaI-2gsPj8QO6joLlY1rB7m4.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D4fa73a2eaf8d96d4de26378be1ba9c404b210685
that shows the rough cuts of boards from a log. When they look at a log, they determine how many of each size they can get from it, and at that point, a 2x4 is 2 inches by 4 inches.
From my understanding, as tools have gotten more precise, the raw boards have gotten slightly smaller to reach the same standard size with less waste. So, 2x4 doesn’t even refer to modern unprocessed 2x4s, but rather a hypothetical unprocessed 2x4 at some point in the past.
That wouldn’t surprise me, but also the standard has been around for so long, changing the size of standard lumber is probably harder than changing the manufacturing process (which is likely automated and computer controlled anyway).
Not entirely true. I lived in a house that was just over a century old. The framing was exactly what it said it was, a 2x4 was 2” by 4”. Same for all the structure. These were mill cut, but still pretty clean. It was WW2-ish and after that we started to get planed lumber that gave us 1.5x3.5. It wasn’t even until probably the early part of the 1900s that lumber started to become “dimensional”, as in the standard sizes we know of today.
How could you use bundle when Business is the collective noun?
What are you talking about
A group of Ferrets is called a Business, or Busyness
This, my friend, is no mere “group” of ferrets. It is a horrific amalgam of a quantity greater than 300, bound together with simple twine in a structure of horrific dimension in a way that could only have been conceived by a mind twisted in reckless disregard to even a most basic understanding of the nature of our world.
As if american measurements have ever made sense. Look up how they measure screws or wires and despair.
Or shotgun shell sizes and loads.
“It all started in 1840 when the dram was a common unit of measurement…”
And they all had onions on their belts as was the style at the time.
Five bees for a nickel.
Expect for the .410 gauge. That one is a caliber, because reasons
It’s a wonder they manage to build anything. They have pocket calculators dedicated to the building industry. It’s surreal.
Not everyone
Some people are gods when it comes to metal math
🤘🏻
every house I’ve lived in has had something fucked up in it. Even if you have one guy doing everything correct, you have 20 other contractors coming in that can’t do basic addition and subtraction, let alone fractions.
I don’t think you’re implying this is exclusively an American issue or anything but that’s just the nature of construction unless you’re paying top dollar for accuracy when it matters.
I’ve been on a hundred or more construction sites and I’d confidently wager that most houses don’t match the plans perfectly because of unforseen reasons…equipment changing due to lead times, electricians running their conduit in the wrong stud bays, etc. I’ve had to do a lot of creative problem solving and design modifications are inevitable. That’s the only thing I really miss from my old career
I’m just saying it doesn’t matter if one guy is really good because on projects that require multiple people a good team is all that matters. As far as uniqueness to the US vs everywhere, its probably worse here in the US but we have a lot of checks for extreme fuckups so we tend to just have a lot of low-mid tier fuckups. The big fuckups are when somebody lies on their expertise (like that university post tensioned beam bridge that fell in florida)
Even when you are paying for accuracy… I went to a home once for someone who paid for the builders to get everything perfect; the walls were crooked and warped like every wall I’ve ever seen.
Part of that is that you need to work hard to find good people who do good work.
The other issue is that all the skilled works are either old or dead. The young guys aren’t the same type.
At a societal level young people arent getting the benefits of their work. We’re getting what is paid for. They’re paying those old guys pensions+benefits but their own has been cut to the marrow. Consumers pay isn’t going to them. And good fucking luck to any of them trying to start up against behemoths both local and national that can nip them in the bud before they become competitive.
My parents just had a house built last year and there is so much shit wrong. The biggest thing I found is one of the alcoves on the side of their fireplace is a full 1.5" wider in the front than the back. You don’t have to measure to see it. How the fuck the guy who did the framing, or the guy who did the drywall, or anyone else walking past that fucking thing didn’t notice I have no idea. They sold their nice old house for that pile of shit and it’s not even better even if you ignore all the problems. It pisses me off so much because I told them this was going to happen.
How do they measure despair?
The convention is 2" before milling. Milling takes off 1/4"on each side, so the result is 1.5".
Is this a joke? (I know it isn’t).
Why would I want to know the dimensions of the unfinished product? I’m not a construction worker, so honestly is there any reason?
I can only think it was when the lumber mill was the dictator of terms. That’s what they put out, so that’s what it was.
Why was that ever accepted? I don’t care what size it was before milling. If I buy a 2x2 I want a 2x2.
They were when the name was made, but due to changes in the manufacturing process, they aren’t anymore. The name stuck, though.
https://www.popsci.com/two-by-four-lumber-measurements-explained/
So they can measure precisely, after all
Ans yet this piece is 1.28
1.28 is the new
21.5It’s due to the milling to square it.
You can get rough cut 2x4 or 2x2 or anything that are actually that size but by the time you trim and square it you will end up at the measurements sold in big box stores
Edit: I mean the size they used to be in store, not OPs version :(
I think this commenter is trying to say that the nominal size of a 2x2 is 2" by 2" (and it looks like they typo’d nominal to “normal”)
The actual size of a 2x2 is 1.5" by 1.5", and OP incorrectly calls these dimensions nominal
It was done for largely sensible reasons.
https://youtu.be/WaJFudED5FQ?si=7j005FmfJVr_JQL_
In short, a 2x4 was originally 2x4 inches, full stop, but it was found that this size wasn’t necessary for the strength being applied to them in construction. We were wasting lumber for no reason. They went through a few cycles of sizing down as the actual needed strength was understood better. The naming convention stuck, though.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/WaJFudED5FQ?si=7j005FmfJVr_JQL
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
No.
https://www.lowes.com/n/how-to/nominal-actual-lumber-sizes
It’s weird because it’s the size of lumber BEFORE smoothing the edges. Manufacturers take this inch a mile and the 2x4 (as well as all other dimensional lumber) has gotten smaller and smaller.
O that’s the size before planing.
Even if it was 2" from the lumber yard, it would shrink or expand quite a bit depending on the moisture content. Expecting natural products to be an exact size would be crazy, especially when talking about construction lumber.
Now this is a very extreme case, but it was probably milled to 1.5" soaking wet, and shrank a bunch after drying out on the rack. That’s also a big reason why they’re all warped.