Prime 2 x 4's at the big blue box....

Re: Prime 2 x 4's at the big blue box....

John K Jordan

Don't worry, it will get worse. Eventually they'll be gluing 2x2s together to make 2x4s and there will be pith in both pieces.

Re: Prime 2 x 4's at the big blue box....

Dick Coers

Hope you let them dry before you used them. If they are the usual 20% moisture, that's too wet for stickers and you might just get some mold in there. Good luck.

Rejected?

Jerry Nicholson

I assume you don't mean lumber rejected by Lowes but rather lumber rejected by their customers and returned. I don't think Lowes (or any of the other Borgs) is capable of rejecting anything, no matter how terrible.

When I built my shed 18 years ago, I spent a lot of time going through the stacks of 2x4s and 2x6s finding some that I thought were straight enough. Big waste of time --- two days later they were all warped, bent, and twisted anyway. The shed is still standing though!

Jerry

Re: Prime 2 x 4's at the big blue box....

Keith Mealy

The last few projects, I have bought #1 2x8 or 2x10 SYP at Menards and ripping them down the middle. Much better wood. I convinced a friend to do this and resaw to get some 1/2" to 9/16" wood for Japanese tool boxes that he's making. I planed the planks for him and they look great, rift sawn and hardly any knots.

Re: Prime 2 x 4's at the big blue box....

Dick Coers

I did that when I first started making furniture in 1978. Even then you got much better lumber. I'd buy 1x10 and 1x12, rip off the rift or quarter sawn sides, then throw the heart section in the scrap barrel. Got some really nice stock that way.

SDR

John K Jordan

>>>... bought #1 2x8 or 2x10 SYP at Menards and ripping them down the middle. Much better wood.

Google search for saw-dry-rip. I don't know about today, but this used to be the recommended method to get straight boards from a number of species such as tulip poplar. When I first got my sawmill I found references to SDR from at least 30 years earlier.

Using the larger boards also guarantees the wood came from a larger tree!

JKJ

Re: Rejected?

Barry Irby

Once in a while the local store has piles out front with reduced price stickers on them. Years ago I had some walnut and Cherry cut off the family farm and sawed. I bought piles of the rejected stuff and ripped literally a mile of stickers. I spent a LOT of time shoving stuff through the TS and calculating how many feet I had ripped.

So Yes, they do clean up once in a while.

Re: SDR

Barry Irby

Had not heard of SDR. OTOH, I think PRIME is a grade the big box stores invented.

I used to make some pine furniture out of wood about 1 3/8" thick. To get decent stock I went to the big boxes and picked through the piles of 2 x 12's and 2 x 10's and stashed the pieces indoors for months. Then ripped them down and through out the center. I thought I invented that myself. All my best ideas were stolen by the Ancients.

Dick, the stickers did not seem "that" wet and I rode them around in my truck for several days to air dry them at high speed.

I am going to spray the stacks with BoraCare in the next few days.

Difference in Quality

david weaver

There's a supplier here in Pittsburgh that i cannot recall the name of (2x4s aren't something i'd buy regularly), but I had a room renovated about 7 years ago now and the contractor is a guy in my neighborhood. Higher price than almost anyone else, but nearly perfect work.

He brought a stack of (pine) 2x4s and trim wood in for the job and put it in the room (basically was an enclosed porch that was finished and made into a permanent room) and they were pin straight when he brought them in and they stayed pin straight the entire time they were there until they were built into the room.

They were dropped off a week before he even started. He said the cost isn't enough more to deal with crap lumber.

I will pick quartered pieces of DF out of the racks at home depot when they're on the top for the few things that I do (shop storage, cutting future stickers, etc), but even those don't stay straight for long. They're never really good enough to use for anything else (e.g., cutting sections out of, resawing and gluing the quartered bits together).

Re: Prime 2 x 4's at the big blue box....

Don Stephan

Richard Jones' excellent book Cut & Dried likely has some discussion of framing lumber and of sticker stock. I have read more than once that "Kiln dried" framing lumber is dried from about 33% moisture content when green to about 18% in the kiln, then bundled and shipped. So framing lumber should be somewhere between 18% and about 10-12%.

A fellow who once was a forestry agent always recommended poplar for stickers as he claimed it was less likely to cause mold stains on the lumber. And kiln dried poplar probably doesn't leave the kiln until 10-12% moisture content.

I'd suggest doing some research.

stickers

John K Jordan

I mostly use eastern red cedar for stickers. 1x1s go from green to dry almost while you wait. Never had any staining or mold.

JKJ

Re: stickers

Barry Irby

We had old fence rows removed from the farm. Someone begged for the old cedar trees that were in the fences. Some of them had three or four layers few woven wire fencing and barbed wire embedded in them. The bottom five or six feet would have been hell on a saw mill, but they took them anyway.

These stickers from crappy 2 x 4's were frying fast. Some of them turned into pretzels in a day or two.