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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bullshit. Wood expands and contracts so ther is no way you can be precious down to the mm.
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!
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)
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.
Why does the consumer need to know the dimensions at harvest when it’s been processed multiple times?
That’s like calling an 4oz can of evaporated milk a gallon because it came from a gallon of milk before processing (I have no clue on the ratio)
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.
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.
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…”
It’s a wonder they manage to build anything. They have pocket calculators dedicated to the building industry. It’s surreal.
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?
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).
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?
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 don’t fret. The next bundle of 2-by-4s you pick up in the hardware store are certain to be the exact same size: 1.5-by-3.5 inches.
So they can measure precisely, after all
It’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 :(
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
Why is 2x2 meant to be 1.5x1.5 and not 2x2?
