Funny meme aside, there’s usually no good reason to pick up each and every 2x4 in the store and close one eye to stare down it to judge how straight it is before buying.
It’s wood. It bends. You attach it at both ends. If you attach it straight, it’s gonna be straightly attached.
When you actually need a straight piece of wood for finer woodwork like making a guitar fretboard or similar, you make that piece of wood straight yourself by buying a large piece of wood directly from the sawmill and shaping it yourself.
I’m going to whole heartedly disagree. Does it need to be perfectly straight? No. Am I going to eyeball each one to make sure I don’t spend half the project with prybars? Yes.
Also I’m deep in American Pacific Northwest timber country and the mills don’t do business with individuals in my experience unless you’re bringing your own trees.
And I’m not paying money to get the equipment to plane my own 2x10s nor am I going to be able to pressure treat my own lumber.
It’s insane to me that the response to the decline in lumber quality is make your own lumber.
OP is mostly correct, the construction grade boards the home centers sell are going to have some level of warping. If you don’t want to deal with that you need to go to an actual lumber store. There’s one in most cities. In Seattle (well Ballard…) Limback Lumber is a great place to visit.
You don’t want to make hockey stick from a bend piece of wood anyway. Those are made of carbon fibre, and if you want a one from wood it’d be better to use some kind of laminate glued to shape, otherwise it’d feel dead and probably break when used.
Sounds like you don’t do much precision or creative woodworking. Here’s one for you, i made a cat wheel out of wood. A wheel. It has to be perfectly straight to roll on castors or else it’ll be a shit wheel or hurt the cat. A few months back I was working on a bookshelf,that you can slot and take apart when you need to move with little inserts that have to line up just right, you really want straight wood for that or else things aren’t gonna work.
I’ll tell ya too, living in the suburbs outside of Chicago, you don’t get a lot of lumber mills that are small and local, and the actual big mills are like an hour drive and you have to pay a premium to buy in bulk. Sometimes you have to go to home Depot and buy their shit wood. I have a planer so I can deal but it’s still a hassle I’d rather avoid. I don’t know what someone without $300 to spend is gonna do
I got a lot of downvotes… Is your wood really that shit? I buy the cheapest crap in Europe and it’s still… straight (enough) for ordinary construction and even more. It’s only if I needed unfixed poles or detail work that I’d ever consider looking for “straight wood”. We do have shit wood but that’s mainly aesthetics. Look at the edge. Bendy boards are totally fine. They’ll attach just fine.
Anyway, warning, long story coming in:
The only time I’ve purchased wood directly from a mill was for a musical instrument. My friend wanted to build a fretless basd and asked if I wanted to come along for the ride. Sure, dude.
So he got some kind of hardwood from Southern America perfectly cut but still a spare and it cost him more than buying a god damn finished fretless bass.
The best part is that the idiot never even followed through and built it.
He still has that $200 piece of perfect wood somewhere in his boxes of stuff that he didn’t unpack the last 2 times that he moved.
Anyway, go ahead and eyeball the wood. I don’t mind.
I know and I get the meme, hence the introductionary disclaimer, but it appears that I really hit nail on people eyeballing wood in discount wood supply stores for no good reason…
Yeah sure, I doubt anyone would try to sell that as a 2x4.
Anyway the point is that the professional carpenters don’t give a shit about it, so neither should DIYers. Once the 2x4 is put up and covered in drywall, nobody will ever know if it has a mild curve.
The actual thing to watch out for are the edges if they are visible in the end project and also cuts that position the knots poorly. I’ve seen 2x4s where a knot went halfway through the width, which would would only hold half the weight that it’s supposed to.
If your wood for your wall is bowed, and you match the bows, your wall will have a slight bow or cup depending on which side you’re looking at. If you don’t match them, it adds strain on your drywall and may cause deformations. The taller the wall, the more obvious this will be. If your wood is doglegged, it will be almost impossible to match that. Twisting is more of a problem because if it’s bad enough you’re either going to spend a lot of time and fasteners correcting it or you’re going to have a board that doesn’t line up with the rest of them since a board on the diagonal has a greater depth than a square board. This can also cause problems when attaching drywall.
It’s less hassle, and possibly less time wasted picking better boards for your project than it is correcting those defects during your project. It also doesn’t cost any more.
Funny meme aside, there’s usually no good reason to pick up each and every 2x4 in the store and close one eye to stare down it to judge how straight it is before buying.
It’s wood. It bends. You attach it at both ends. If you attach it straight, it’s gonna be straightly attached.
When you actually need a straight piece of wood for finer woodwork like making a guitar fretboard or similar, you make that piece of wood straight yourself by buying a large piece of wood directly from the sawmill and shaping it yourself.
I’m going to whole heartedly disagree. Does it need to be perfectly straight? No. Am I going to eyeball each one to make sure I don’t spend half the project with prybars? Yes.
Also I’m deep in American Pacific Northwest timber country and the mills don’t do business with individuals in my experience unless you’re bringing your own trees.
And I’m not paying money to get the equipment to plane my own 2x10s nor am I going to be able to pressure treat my own lumber.
It’s insane to me that the response to the decline in lumber quality is make your own lumber.
OP is mostly correct, the construction grade boards the home centers sell are going to have some level of warping. If you don’t want to deal with that you need to go to an actual lumber store. There’s one in most cities. In Seattle (well Ballard…) Limback Lumber is a great place to visit.
What are you building that requires perfectly straight wood?
It doesn’t have to be perfectly straight, but I’d like things to be reasonable square to prevent as much extra work as possible.
It does not need to be straight, but I’m not in the sporting goods section looking for a hockey stick.
I think there is a middle ground
You don’t want to make hockey stick from a bend piece of wood anyway. Those are made of carbon fibre, and if you want a one from wood it’d be better to use some kind of laminate glued to shape, otherwise it’d feel dead and probably break when used.
Sounds like you don’t do much precision or creative woodworking. Here’s one for you, i made a cat wheel out of wood. A wheel. It has to be perfectly straight to roll on castors or else it’ll be a shit wheel or hurt the cat. A few months back I was working on a bookshelf,that you can slot and take apart when you need to move with little inserts that have to line up just right, you really want straight wood for that or else things aren’t gonna work.
I’ll tell ya too, living in the suburbs outside of Chicago, you don’t get a lot of lumber mills that are small and local, and the actual big mills are like an hour drive and you have to pay a premium to buy in bulk. Sometimes you have to go to home Depot and buy their shit wood. I have a planer so I can deal but it’s still a hassle I’d rather avoid. I don’t know what someone without $300 to spend is gonna do
I got a lot of downvotes… Is your wood really that shit? I buy the cheapest crap in Europe and it’s still… straight (enough) for ordinary construction and even more. It’s only if I needed unfixed poles or detail work that I’d ever consider looking for “straight wood”. We do have shit wood but that’s mainly aesthetics. Look at the edge. Bendy boards are totally fine. They’ll attach just fine.
Anyway, warning, long story coming in:
The only time I’ve purchased wood directly from a mill was for a musical instrument. My friend wanted to build a fretless basd and asked if I wanted to come along for the ride. Sure, dude.
So he got some kind of hardwood from Southern America perfectly cut but still a spare and it cost him more than buying a god damn finished fretless bass.
The best part is that the idiot never even followed through and built it.
He still has that $200 piece of perfect wood somewhere in his boxes of stuff that he didn’t unpack the last 2 times that he moved.
Anyway, go ahead and eyeball the wood. I don’t mind.
Not “my wood” specifically home Depot wood. The joke is that the company is infamous for having shit wood
I know and I get the meme, hence the introductionary disclaimer, but it appears that I really hit nail on people eyeballing wood in discount wood supply stores for no good reason…
I have nothing against warped wood, but when it makes a 45° bend halfway in I grab a different one
Yeah sure, I doubt anyone would try to sell that as a 2x4.
Anyway the point is that the professional carpenters don’t give a shit about it, so neither should DIYers. Once the 2x4 is put up and covered in drywall, nobody will ever know if it has a mild curve.
The actual thing to watch out for are the edges if they are visible in the end project and also cuts that position the knots poorly. I’ve seen 2x4s where a knot went halfway through the width, which would would only hold half the weight that it’s supposed to.
Tell that to the closet door I can’t close all the way because the goddamn builders couldn’t be bothered to make sure it was right.
You’re kind of making his point, as well as showing why it results in a subpar finished product.
How can I make his point AND show it results in a sub par product
If your wood for your wall is bowed, and you match the bows, your wall will have a slight bow or cup depending on which side you’re looking at. If you don’t match them, it adds strain on your drywall and may cause deformations. The taller the wall, the more obvious this will be. If your wood is doglegged, it will be almost impossible to match that. Twisting is more of a problem because if it’s bad enough you’re either going to spend a lot of time and fasteners correcting it or you’re going to have a board that doesn’t line up with the rest of them since a board on the diagonal has a greater depth than a square board. This can also cause problems when attaching drywall.
It’s less hassle, and possibly less time wasted picking better boards for your project than it is correcting those defects during your project. It also doesn’t cost any more.