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.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.
they are then milled straight and square
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
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.
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)
I am in chemical and material handling stuff and it’s the same. What amazes me is when the project manager can’t allow slack where slack is perfectly fine and allows slack where it isn’t.
One guy I will never forget had endless meltdowns about tiny tiny stuff in software and completely forgot that water pipes need heat tracing until the insulation was already installed. Whole project, multi tens of millions of dollars, died because of that. On the plus side before it died the password on the HMI was 8 characters long and required a number and a punctuation symbol.
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.
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.
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.
What I find is culture drives them out. I am pushed a lot to take away all decision making ability from the techs and electricians. This command-and-control organization system. Anyone who can change employment does and I don’t blame them.
Treat people like they are worthless and they leave. No surprises there.
How do they measure despair?
The European wire gauge system makes no sense. There I said it. I don’t need to know the O.D. of the wire, I need to know the amp rating. The O.D. only becomes an issue for bending radius and there is a chart for that as well. Nothing is stopping some a**hole from making a wire almost completely out of plastic that has the O.D. of a typical 14AWG but can’t carry any serious amount of current under the European system. Under the AWG you always know what the current capacity is.
And while we are at it, you might as well standardize your wire sizes based on copper. You are never going to use anything except copper. So your units should reflect the material. I am building a chemical skid, that has nothing to do with the distance between the equator to the north pole.
Also when is the last time you were running wires that you needed a mm of precision? Meanwhile a fraction of an amp really does matter. So should not the thing that does matter be reflected in the product?
How does 16, 14, or 12 AWG tell you anything about ampacity?
You use the chart. How does mm of a wire, including insulation, tell you ampacity? As I said it is easy to imagine a thick wire that can carry almost no current. You can’t pull that crap with AWG system. It tells you the single most important fact, how much current a wire can carry. There is no incentive for wire manufacturers to cheat the system since a thicker insulation wire just means more cost for them.
Which ties in nicely with the other charts. Tell me how much power you need a motor to deliver and what I have to deal with and I can tell you exactly what wires to use, it’s bending radius how thick it is etc. None of which I can do in the CE system.
Ironically outer insulation does impact conductor ampacity, because the rated continuous vs peak loads depend on the heat resistance rating of the insulation.
European wire gauge is not the outer diameter. It is the cross section of the conductor inside the wire in mm^2. It is the same system AWG uses (they are directly correlated) with the added benefit that the numbers make sense (10mm^2/AWG8 wire has 4x the cross section of 2.5mm^2/AWG14 wire, so a quarter of the resistance of the thicker wire and thus roughly double the current capacity).
I honestly can’t tell if you’re doing a bit or are actually serious.
Sounds like a you problem.
The convention is 2" before milling. Milling takes off 1/4"on each side, so the result is 1.5".
Why was that ever accepted? I don’t care what size it was before milling. If I buy a 2x2 I want a 2x2.
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.
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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.
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!
Jesus did it
Not in socks
At least the socks aren’t white.
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.
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.
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.
I can accept the poor quality tools that might be off by a few hundredths, but using imperial on precision measurement devices is unforgivable.
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?
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.
Used for furring strips everywhere. Line a block wall with them and sheet it for example.
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).
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.
Would you call that a “structural use?”
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……
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. Even googling 2x2 will get you a big box store furring strip page. You should know what furring strips are if you are in the industry.
Sounds like the situation here… good call
It’s probably 2x2PT or something. There are standards for board widths.
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.
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.
These are even smaller than that. A standard 2x4 is 1.5x3.5.
deleted by creator
Thanks for the explainer.
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.
It being ugly has absolutely fuckall to do with the structural integrity
What part of this has to do with dimensional lumber?
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.
2x4 is the rough cut dimensions from the sawmill. They end up smaller after drying (wood can hold a lot of water) and planing.
*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
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.
It’s still a bit small, but pressure treated being a little smaller than framing lumber is not necessarily a secret:
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.Looks oversized to me, that’s 3.25 cm x 3.25 cm, looks like they could take it down by 40% and still call it a 2x2 😇
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Fire Walk with Me - 2x4s (Deleted scene)
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Top comment, this. This is gonna be my default when folks ask about dimensional lumber sizes in the future
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.
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.
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
Unfortunately I can’t time travel. The fact has changed.
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
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
