wbrian63
Well-known member
We're working on a project to finish out the space that used to house my workshop. The deal is the landlord orders the materials to spec, and we do the work.
The order was large enough to make it easier to have it delivered. He purchased material from a local lumber yard. Knowing that a for-delivery order is going to be picked by the lumber yard staff, I asked him to order 15% extra on all the dimensional lumber and make sure he could return what we didn't use.
I should have told him to order 50% extra.
I requested 72 2x4-8' stud #2yp, and 35 2x4-10' stud #2yp. With the 15% overage, that meant 82 8-footers and 40 10-footers.
As soon as the banding was removed from the 8' 2x4's, I knew we were in trouble. Banded lumber is going to have some spring when released from the bands, but it shouldn't fly apart...
We have 21 8-footers that are going back as unusable (25%), and 27 10-footers (67%). The only reason why the reject % isn't higher with the 8-foot sticks is we were able to use some of the less-deformed units cut down to make blocks and shorter studs where required.
For the life of me, I can't understand how someone can even attempt to sell the **** we received. This is stud-grade material, supposedly. That means (to me), it should be able to be used as a stud...
I know the trick about making a diagonal cut in a 2x4 and running a screw into the edge of the board bridging the cut to pull the stud into alignment. However, you can only safely do this in a minority of the boards in a structural wall. (None of these walls are structural.) Some of this **** would be bad enough that a 12' wall would require straightening of 75% of the sticks.
Stud grade means exact length. 8' should be 96 inches +/- 1/16". 10' should be 120 inches +/- 1/16". When checked, the lengths varied somewhat, but not enough to matter. However, on a single board, what you got for length depended on where you put the hook and where you pulled your line. I don't think there was a single board that had a close-to-perfect 90-degree cut on the end...
The amount of deformity of the material is truly tragic.
About 6 8' 2x4's had a 1" bow along the edge. Turn it edge-on to the floor and you could almost slide another 2x4 underneath at the peak of the bow - WTF??? Some of those bows occurred in the last 3 feet of the stick...
Many many of the 8' 2x4's had noticeable bow along the face. This is still usable for building walls, so long as the edge is true. If the board winds up at the edge of a sheet, you just pull it into line as you fasten the sheet. If it's mid-span, who cares, other that the deviation in the lumber isn't structurally sound, and makes it hard to find the stud once the sheathing is up, since the center-to-center dimensions aren't accurate.
I saw a few that had every possible flaw contained in one board: excessive wane - less than 3/4" usable edge for nailing, bow on both face and edge in excess of 1/2", twist enough to make it impossible to get a flat nailing face for the sheathing.
There were a few that looked straight along the edge and were usable, if you didn't mind the fact that the end of the board finished 1" to the left of where the start of the board was. I'm talking about an "S" shaped bend - to the left 1", the back to the right 1", so the two faces of the board are parallel, just offset...
On many boards, the difference in density between the spring and summer growth rings was dramatic. Trying to drive a screw through a summer ring in the face almost required a pilot drill, or a hammer to get the screw started. Building walls and attempting to attach a stud to a sole or cap plate in the proper position as marked was sometimes an exercise in futility. How can a board move 1/8" laterally when you drive a screw??? As you pull measurements from one stud to get the next placement, 1/8" errors can quickly add up to major misalignment. Of course, I make my measurements for an entire sole-plate-worth of studs, then transfer those marks to the cap plate. However, if the last stud, once installed, is 1/8" to the right of where it should have been, if I use that stud to pull the marks for the next sole plate, all of the studs in that plate will be 1/8" to the right of where they should be. Have that same problem again in the new wall, and the 3rd wall in the series will have all the studs 1/4" off of where they should be...
There were some that had so many knots right at the end that you couldn't drive a nail or screw without shattering the end of the board.
We spent over an hour just culling the lumber so we could work. We divided the 8' material into 3 stacks - usable, 2nd quality (good for shorter lengths and blocking) and **** (barely good enough for firewood).
When I go to the lumber yard, if they won't let me pick my lumber, I go elsewhere. However, recently, it's getting hard to find enough usable lumber in a unit. I recently culled thru nearly 100 2x4's at a local Home Depot before I found 30 that were usable as-is. Even then, a few went banana on me once left alone at the shop. Now, when I buy large counts of 2x4's, I stack them in a bundle at the shop and put a couple of ratcheting straps around them until I'm ready to use them.
I've yet to see finger-jointed studs here in TX. I've seen some examples of it, and I frankly can't wait. The solid dimensional lumber available today, regardless of price or grade, is ****. It's gotten bad enough that if I know I need near perfect lumber, I buy much larger than I need and mill it myself. A lot of the larger boards (2x8 sometimes, and 2x10/2x12) are actually quarter-sawn and can be ripped down into very stable smaller units. You just pay a premium for the larger material.
End of Monday rant...
The order was large enough to make it easier to have it delivered. He purchased material from a local lumber yard. Knowing that a for-delivery order is going to be picked by the lumber yard staff, I asked him to order 15% extra on all the dimensional lumber and make sure he could return what we didn't use.
I should have told him to order 50% extra.
I requested 72 2x4-8' stud #2yp, and 35 2x4-10' stud #2yp. With the 15% overage, that meant 82 8-footers and 40 10-footers.
As soon as the banding was removed from the 8' 2x4's, I knew we were in trouble. Banded lumber is going to have some spring when released from the bands, but it shouldn't fly apart...
We have 21 8-footers that are going back as unusable (25%), and 27 10-footers (67%). The only reason why the reject % isn't higher with the 8-foot sticks is we were able to use some of the less-deformed units cut down to make blocks and shorter studs where required.
For the life of me, I can't understand how someone can even attempt to sell the **** we received. This is stud-grade material, supposedly. That means (to me), it should be able to be used as a stud...
I know the trick about making a diagonal cut in a 2x4 and running a screw into the edge of the board bridging the cut to pull the stud into alignment. However, you can only safely do this in a minority of the boards in a structural wall. (None of these walls are structural.) Some of this **** would be bad enough that a 12' wall would require straightening of 75% of the sticks.
Stud grade means exact length. 8' should be 96 inches +/- 1/16". 10' should be 120 inches +/- 1/16". When checked, the lengths varied somewhat, but not enough to matter. However, on a single board, what you got for length depended on where you put the hook and where you pulled your line. I don't think there was a single board that had a close-to-perfect 90-degree cut on the end...
The amount of deformity of the material is truly tragic.
About 6 8' 2x4's had a 1" bow along the edge. Turn it edge-on to the floor and you could almost slide another 2x4 underneath at the peak of the bow - WTF??? Some of those bows occurred in the last 3 feet of the stick...
Many many of the 8' 2x4's had noticeable bow along the face. This is still usable for building walls, so long as the edge is true. If the board winds up at the edge of a sheet, you just pull it into line as you fasten the sheet. If it's mid-span, who cares, other that the deviation in the lumber isn't structurally sound, and makes it hard to find the stud once the sheathing is up, since the center-to-center dimensions aren't accurate.
I saw a few that had every possible flaw contained in one board: excessive wane - less than 3/4" usable edge for nailing, bow on both face and edge in excess of 1/2", twist enough to make it impossible to get a flat nailing face for the sheathing.
There were a few that looked straight along the edge and were usable, if you didn't mind the fact that the end of the board finished 1" to the left of where the start of the board was. I'm talking about an "S" shaped bend - to the left 1", the back to the right 1", so the two faces of the board are parallel, just offset...
On many boards, the difference in density between the spring and summer growth rings was dramatic. Trying to drive a screw through a summer ring in the face almost required a pilot drill, or a hammer to get the screw started. Building walls and attempting to attach a stud to a sole or cap plate in the proper position as marked was sometimes an exercise in futility. How can a board move 1/8" laterally when you drive a screw??? As you pull measurements from one stud to get the next placement, 1/8" errors can quickly add up to major misalignment. Of course, I make my measurements for an entire sole-plate-worth of studs, then transfer those marks to the cap plate. However, if the last stud, once installed, is 1/8" to the right of where it should have been, if I use that stud to pull the marks for the next sole plate, all of the studs in that plate will be 1/8" to the right of where they should be. Have that same problem again in the new wall, and the 3rd wall in the series will have all the studs 1/4" off of where they should be...
There were some that had so many knots right at the end that you couldn't drive a nail or screw without shattering the end of the board.
We spent over an hour just culling the lumber so we could work. We divided the 8' material into 3 stacks - usable, 2nd quality (good for shorter lengths and blocking) and **** (barely good enough for firewood).
When I go to the lumber yard, if they won't let me pick my lumber, I go elsewhere. However, recently, it's getting hard to find enough usable lumber in a unit. I recently culled thru nearly 100 2x4's at a local Home Depot before I found 30 that were usable as-is. Even then, a few went banana on me once left alone at the shop. Now, when I buy large counts of 2x4's, I stack them in a bundle at the shop and put a couple of ratcheting straps around them until I'm ready to use them.
I've yet to see finger-jointed studs here in TX. I've seen some examples of it, and I frankly can't wait. The solid dimensional lumber available today, regardless of price or grade, is ****. It's gotten bad enough that if I know I need near perfect lumber, I buy much larger than I need and mill it myself. A lot of the larger boards (2x8 sometimes, and 2x10/2x12) are actually quarter-sawn and can be ripped down into very stable smaller units. You just pay a premium for the larger material.
End of Monday rant...
