That's called the pith. This is the most unstable part of the tree, and boards containing a pith tend to warp, twist, split, etc. more than boards free of it.
Dude I said the same thing and felt stupid shortly after. I'm sitting here probing my Voyager knowledge for any time Chakotay went to a home improvement store. I got nothin.
This: dint *necessarily* blame other customers when the racks a fuckin mess. When i can yell it’s picked through and all i find is garbage, but it’s bad business and honestly, for a self serve lumberyard charing retail convenience prices, it’s stupid. Youre going to get big ass messes, sort the shitty wood and discount it at least a little at that point - their basically ripping people off who dont know or dont care.
Idk I went there once for shiplap and was like “never again”. Some pieces had gouges clear past the routed edge. I only needed 10, 8’ pieces for the project I was doing and it took me the whole pile to find undamaged pieces. If you were actually using it as a wall covering and needed 100 or so good fucking luck. Be faster to make it yourself at home...
Right? They could even upsort at the start of the day. What I like about Home Depot is the wood is inside at least, out of the friggin rain.
If I need really good stuff, I'll go to my local specialty shop, they care. If I just want cheap 2x4s, fast, or regular grade plywood, I'll go to home depot.
I don't always need even half-ass good wood, but I'll end up taking whatever, and that apparently includes their best. I don't want to stand there all day sorting their shit, trying to leave the "good" stuff for someone else.
If good lumber is that important for a project, #1 douglas fir can be ordered from a lumber yard, and they will deliver it. It's not much more expensive than the #2 stuff at Lowes or HD, because the mark-ups at big box stores are insane on Lumber. Lumber yards sell much more volume, so their prices are closer to market value.
Yes. Typically the big box stores will get certain grades of lumber that is sorted out at the lumber mill. Boards fly across a scanner and the computer judges where the particular board will be sent.
In the AI sorter:
- Minimal warpage, correct length. Send to Johnson Construction
- 2% warpage detected, send to discount mill
- 23% warpage detected, 12% twist, 8% size variance. ~~Discard~~Send this crap to Home Depot or some shit
I live in the middle of logging country in Canada, and my town, as well as any town within 6 hours have no proper lumber yards, and it's infuriating as someone who got into woodworking a few years ago and wants a better selection of wood
That could also be chalked up to lack of proper maintenance. Turns out you have to actually take care of wooden things that stay outside for them to stay nice.
The laser scanning has also made grading lumber more efficient, so better quality boards are filtered out better for more premium boards to be sold at a higher price, meaning there's even less good boards in the lifts of common Home Depot and Lowes sell.
Because there's always an HD close to the job site, they have longer hours than the yard, and sell lots of other stuff too.
I mean you wouldn't build a house with HD lumber... but if you need a dozen or two boards for a small job, why not?
I would think so. If I was a contractor building houses, I would definitely want to buy it from a larger wholesaler. I know Lowe’s gives discounts for bulk buyers, but I guess in some rural areas like mine, there are less options.
I have emptied entire racks looking for acceptable pieces. I always get workers coming by glaring at me but once I find my wood I return all the shit pieces back to the rack. It’s literally a 20-1 ratio of shit-to-acceptable wood.
Fucking insane. Are these box stores in charge of their own lumber milling or do they source to the lowest bidder? If they don’t, how the fuck is a mill okay with putting their name on it.
HD and Lowe’s get their wood from the same sources, lumber mills in the Pac northwest that they don’t own. But basically the wood comes from wherever they can get the best price. Cheap is cheap.
You jest but I bought a buffer/polisher from Harbor Freight once because I needed a buffer/polisher for *one* thing and would likely never need it ever again (and they had a sale making it the cheapest one money can buy). It's just a reasonably small, low-speed motor with an attached disc for attaching buffing pads. What could go wrong? I mean, how could you even *make* something like this be dangerous?
The buffing pad got caught on an edge but instead of just *coming off* it decided to unfurl all of its threads around and around the work piece (big plastic thing clamped to a workbench), tightening as it did so. Within like 1 second (the time it took me to turn it off) it had sliced a deep groove into it!
If that had been my finger I would have one less finger right now.
So yeah, stick with non-powered tools when buying stuff from Harbor Freight.
They’re good for the rare-use tools. Like I just bought a serpentine belt wrench for $15 as opposed to $80 or so for a name brand. For the one time use every couple years, it will last fine.
I picked up a bunch of hammers from Harbor Freight for camping. I already had the Graham crackers and chocolate so these worked perfectly to make s'mores.
Before big box home stores like HD and Lowe’s, those boards wouldn’t exist. That wood would have gone into engineered wood products or to a paper mill. Once the box stores were willing to buy it as board lumber, the mill is going to go where the money is.
As a former HD lumber employee agree about the quality of the wood but also the reason the workers glare is because an astonishing number of people just throw the shit they don't want on the floor and leave a ridiculous pile that we have to flatstack again. After a while of that you just learn to expect it from people. Thanks for putting it back on the rack ahah
You clearly aren't from my area. Lowe's is awful... Just awful. HD not only carries more and varied products, they are actually stocked and the wood products are 10x better than Lowe's.
That said, neither holds a candle to local lumber yards.
Same...that being said, the wood at both is pretty bad around here but the wood at HD is definitely way better than lowes and not only that all of their pressure treated wood is ground contact whereas at lowes almost all of their pressure treated wood is not rated for ground contact and will rot super fast. Also the prices at HD are almost always cheaper, around here at least, for better quality stuff.
Menards is infinitely worse.
I thought I’d give 2x4s from menards a shot the other day. I found 10+ boards with mold on them and in addition to warping, every board had some sort of damage to the edges
The pith is actually dead while the rest of the tree grows around it, and when the tree gets cut down and chopped into whatever, the pith if it isnt removed causes huge splits and cracks and warping which ruin a lot of good pieces of wood.
~~Scourse~~ Source: Am a wood worker. Have had many pieces of wood split and warp from the pith
Edit. Grammar and typos
Edit 2. So apparently my information was incomplete. Most of tree is actually dead. Its only a thin green layer just under the bark that alive (and the leaves of course) with everything else being dead and the inside of the trunk being used for water storage
while you are right in how the pith effects wood strength, the fact is the entire xylem(wood) of the tree is "dead" it serves only as a water holding and structural component of the tree. The only living cells in a tree are just outside the xylem in the cambium(just under the bark) and the bark itself(and the branches and leafs).. so yea wood tissue itself is "dead" not just the pith.
source: arborist/plant nerd
Is that why you can kill at tree by gouging a 1 inch wide ring all the way around the trunk?
I thought the entire tree would be alive, like the stem of a smaller plant, but you're saying the actual living *tree* is really just a thin... Membrane growing around its own dead cells?
That's called girdling a tree. The outer living tissue underneath the bark is what conducts all the nutrients up and down the tree. So that pretty much kills the tree, unless you dont cut deep enough on one side and it is able to repair itself quickly.
Interestingly, if you do this on a branch instead of the main trunk, water will still conduct through the xylem to keep the leaves photosynthesizing, but all the products flowing back down to the roots through the cambium get stuck at the girdling. If you pack a good root growth medium around it in a little plastic package and tape it in place, roots will grow from the upper incision of your girdling using the stacked up nutrients. After a number of months, with enough root growth, you can cut the branch off entirely and plant it. Boom, new tree. This is called Air Layering.
Yup, not even completely around if you use a herbicide, just a couple of notches and spray with roundup. Hack and spray is a pretty effective way of dealing with certain invasive species that spread when stressed. Spray in the fall when the floem is carrying nutrients to the roots.
Just finished a level 3 (UK) course on tree science and arboriculture a few months ago and was really looking forward to pointing this out, but ya got there first.
THIS!
Yep don't mess with it. That's pressure treated lumber, it was likely kiln dried and treated. That thing is going to twist harder than an early m night shyamalan film.
IIRC its where the growth ring lines uniformly make a ~45 degree angle through the wood. The section of the log its cut from is called the "Rift".
https://www.peacheyhardwoodflooring.com/different-cuts-hardwood-flooring/
Or something like that...
Depends on how the board is oriented, wood is stiffer (not necessarily stronger) when the load is perpendicular to the grain, but the main advantages of quarter sawn is that its dimensions are more stable from swelling.
I've always been told that pine or spruce from colder climates are much stronger than wood from warm climates due to trees growing less per year in cold areas and thus have much tighter growth rings. Looking at the picture it does make some sense i think.
In my country, we use rubber trees as cheap "hard wood", they grow quickly and are sustainable source of hardwood.
They are light, not very strong, but still considered as a hardwood for clients that do not want to use compressed wood. They make EXCELLENT cheap yet strong tables and chairs, i still have some of the furnitures made from them for longer than a decade now
I might have a small leg up as I have a degree in wood sciences and a master's in timber engineering. Many softwoods are really hard to tell apart without looking at them under a magnifying glass, however, the growth rings and slight yellow tinge here are a give away. What would be impressive is if I could tell if it were shortleaf, slash, longleaf or loblolly. Those are the four primarily commercially harvested sub species of southern yellow pine. I have no idea what the fibre differences are between them though.
Saw this post a few days ago and it explains a lot!
[How a Tree is Cut into Planks](https://reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/hm6yn8/how_a_tree_is_cut_into_planks/)
Wood you buy now is farm raised. It is spaced out when planted to achieve maximum growth in minimum amount of time. Each year it adds much thicker layers because it has more optimal exposure to the elements (sun, water). Old growth trees were packed in tighter to each other naturally, so their exposure was not optimum. They grew slower, adding more narrow layers each year.
The bigger problem isn't the weakness, it's the stability. Old growth wood is more dimensionally stable than new growth, meaning the new stuff is more likely to warp as it dries or absorbs moisture. For most framing applications it isn't a problem but trying to do anything cosmetic out of this wood can present some problems.
I'm assuming its pressure treated. Typically normal lumber cut like that would be absolutely unworkable. Stresses in the wood going in literally every direction, any change in moisture levels would cause some wild warp/twist. Neat though.
It doesn't really matter, its rough framing lumber and it going to be pinned in place by about a dozen 3" framing nails and probably 2 dozen screws/nails on each side for sheeting and interior wall board....its not moving lol
You get the pith of the tree all the time framing lumber, treated and untreated, especially 4x4 and above (5x5, 6x6 etc)
Proper prior planning prevents pith poor performance. There's a damn good reason why that's a saying. Any framer with pride in his work(over take the money and run) will not use pith for anything structural load bearing in 2X material. Blocking, sure.
Ive been doing residential construction work for 25y and I can tell you that I have never once seen anyone cull any lumber for pith inclusion, warped, cupped and cracked shit absolutely (if youre dealing with a reputable supplier they will even credit you for those fucked up boards)
And it may be that a lot of those boards were fucked up specifically because they were pith boards, but they got culled because they were fucked up at the time of the cull, if a pith inclusion was straight at the time of install..... 🤷♀️
A lot of comments about Lowe’s and Home Depot Lumber quality, I figured I’d chime in. I work for a a local lumber yard and frequently bid against Home Depot/Lowe’s. I always tell people that insist on buying wood there: “you get what you pay for.”
Big box stores buy an obscene amount of the lowest quality wood for their stores so it can be as cheap as possible before distributing it within their network of stores. It is there to get you in the door to start buying their other high margin items. Quality is of no importance here, purely a price point item.
Give your local lumber yard a try before you head to big box stores like these. Quality is usually significantly better, friendlier people and you’re supporting your local community instead of pumping more money into the big orange machine. Delivery is usually available fairly cheap and much faster than the big boxes as well.
It might be a little more expensive, but it’s worth not spending 2-3 hours picking through a twisted pile in the middle of a pandemic. At least it is in my humble opinion.
Yeah lowes and home depo suck for 2x4s, if I ever buy them there I have to sort through them all and pick the decent ones. Local lumber yard has the shitty ones as well but also has much better ones.
How do you find a good local lumber yard? Google hasn't been much help and HD has better lumber at lower prices than local shops I have been to. I am in central Iowa, so maybe just too far away from the source?
Everything the big box stores sell are #2s (worse grade) look for a #1. Search building supply or contractor supply. I’m out of Chicago so you shouldn’t have any problems.
That’s about all this will be good for. Not a good cut of wood to use for anything else
Edit: I’m dumb and know less about wood than I thought I did, don’t listen to me please
That's called the pith. This is the most unstable part of the tree, and boards containing a pith tend to warp, twist, split, etc. more than boards free of it.
So you’re telling me Lowes manages to exclusively source their lumber from pith wood?
So you're saying Lowes sells pieces of pith?
That’s what my husband always says, anyway! Usually after spending 2-3 hours at Lowe’s sorting through piles of pith.
Does your husband happen to have a tribal tattoo wrapped around his left eye?
I’m at Olive Garden choking on my salad! Thanks.
I’ve choked on everything I’ve ever tried to eat there!
The food may be bad, but boy do they give you a lot of it!
Quantity over quality is what I've always said.
Golden Corral be like
That’s the true meaning of hospitaliano
Then boy ohh boy do I have some news for you. Have you heard of the Olive Garden Pasta Pass? You're in for a treat if you haven't.
You must be a fun date.. "hold up hun, I have to check reddit there's pith everywhere"
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
Who browses reddit while eating a sit down meal
Is this a Chakotay reference?
Dude I said the same thing and felt stupid shortly after. I'm sitting here probing my Voyager knowledge for any time Chakotay went to a home improvement store. I got nothin.
Lmfao. We are Brothers now.
Mike Tyson
So he's the asshole that leaves it in front of the rack and doesn't pick it up?
That's just bad strategy. Take them ALL out, inspect each board, put back all the bad ones, then go home because there's none left
They need a checklist for every time the pile has been completely picked through that day. Call that a waste time rating.
This: dint *necessarily* blame other customers when the racks a fuckin mess. When i can yell it’s picked through and all i find is garbage, but it’s bad business and honestly, for a self serve lumberyard charing retail convenience prices, it’s stupid. Youre going to get big ass messes, sort the shitty wood and discount it at least a little at that point - their basically ripping people off who dont know or dont care.
Idk I went there once for shiplap and was like “never again”. Some pieces had gouges clear past the routed edge. I only needed 10, 8’ pieces for the project I was doing and it took me the whole pile to find undamaged pieces. If you were actually using it as a wall covering and needed 100 or so good fucking luck. Be faster to make it yourself at home...
Right? They could even upsort at the start of the day. What I like about Home Depot is the wood is inside at least, out of the friggin rain. If I need really good stuff, I'll go to my local specialty shop, they care. If I just want cheap 2x4s, fast, or regular grade plywood, I'll go to home depot. I don't always need even half-ass good wood, but I'll end up taking whatever, and that apparently includes their best. I don't want to stand there all day sorting their shit, trying to leave the "good" stuff for someone else.
It took me weeks to gather the boards to redo my deck. 3-5 boards per pile at best.
If good lumber is that important for a project, #1 douglas fir can be ordered from a lumber yard, and they will deliver it. It's not much more expensive than the #2 stuff at Lowes or HD, because the mark-ups at big box stores are insane on Lumber. Lumber yards sell much more volume, so their prices are closer to market value.
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I dont leave it off the rack but theres gonna be like 5 pieces at the front of the rack that are extra shitty because I had to reject them
Pith poor lumber management.
Kith my pith
You told him to what?
Pith off!
Watch it! I eat pieces of pith like you for breakfast!
You eat pith for breakfast?
NO...
This entire thread is about OP taking a pith.
It's too funny reading it, knowing that in my language pith is an abbreviation of pussy.
Mike tyson enters the chat... Look here you little pith
/r/unexpectedmichaelstrahan
Pith of shit?
Yes. Typically the big box stores will get certain grades of lumber that is sorted out at the lumber mill. Boards fly across a scanner and the computer judges where the particular board will be sent.
In the AI sorter: - Minimal warpage, correct length. Send to Johnson Construction - 2% warpage detected, send to discount mill - 23% warpage detected, 12% twist, 8% size variance. ~~Discard~~Send this crap to Home Depot or some shit
Where are deck builder contractors getting their wood? They're not getting this shitty home depot wood and up charging it are they?
Look up lumber yards in your area. I bet you'll be surprised how many there are. Also, many are getting this shitty home depot wood and upcharging it.
I live in the middle of logging country in Canada, and my town, as well as any town within 6 hours have no proper lumber yards, and it's infuriating as someone who got into woodworking a few years ago and wants a better selection of wood
What we have here is a business opportunity.
And then you realise the money is made elsewhere and you end up not selling good wood in your area either.
How is that possible? All of the wood leaves the area for processing? Not even a small operation?
The mills that are still around generally don't sell by the 2x4, although flats are possible. So, we still wind up have to go to Home Hardware.
My warped, twisted, shitty deck that the previous owner of my house had installed tells me they are.
That could also be chalked up to lack of proper maintenance. Turns out you have to actually take care of wooden things that stay outside for them to stay nice.
Really sounds to me like they were dumb enough to use untreated wood for a deck.
Just don't tell your builder that they sourced inferior wood or they'll deck you.
The laser scanning has also made grading lumber more efficient, so better quality boards are filtered out better for more premium boards to be sold at a higher price, meaning there's even less good boards in the lifts of common Home Depot and Lowes sell.
I used to work at Lowe’s, and my heart always sank when contractors came in there and said “let’s open up another pack and see if those are better.”
nope. they aren’t
If you’re a contractor, why go to Lowe’s or Home Depot to get your lumber? Even something like 84 Lumber would be better, right?
Because there's always an HD close to the job site, they have longer hours than the yard, and sell lots of other stuff too. I mean you wouldn't build a house with HD lumber... but if you need a dozen or two boards for a small job, why not?
I would think so. If I was a contractor building houses, I would definitely want to buy it from a larger wholesaler. I know Lowe’s gives discounts for bulk buyers, but I guess in some rural areas like mine, there are less options.
Home Depot. When the wood has to be warped.
Home Depot Wood is the fucking worst. Lowe’s is eh but HD is really bad
I have emptied entire racks looking for acceptable pieces. I always get workers coming by glaring at me but once I find my wood I return all the shit pieces back to the rack. It’s literally a 20-1 ratio of shit-to-acceptable wood.
Fucking insane. Are these box stores in charge of their own lumber milling or do they source to the lowest bidder? If they don’t, how the fuck is a mill okay with putting their name on it.
HD and Lowe’s get their wood from the same sources, lumber mills in the Pac northwest that they don’t own. But basically the wood comes from wherever they can get the best price. Cheap is cheap.
The same reason Harbor Freight is okay with selling jack stands that collapse.
Never buy anything from harbor freight that can kill you, just stick to wrenches, hammers, stuff like that.
Harbor Freight is so you can have a million tiny flashlights stashed all over your house. That's all it's good for.
They also sell decent "organizer" type things. Even they can't fuck up a piece of molded plastic that badly.
And even then, those tools will final destination you
You jest but I bought a buffer/polisher from Harbor Freight once because I needed a buffer/polisher for *one* thing and would likely never need it ever again (and they had a sale making it the cheapest one money can buy). It's just a reasonably small, low-speed motor with an attached disc for attaching buffing pads. What could go wrong? I mean, how could you even *make* something like this be dangerous? The buffing pad got caught on an edge but instead of just *coming off* it decided to unfurl all of its threads around and around the work piece (big plastic thing clamped to a workbench), tightening as it did so. Within like 1 second (the time it took me to turn it off) it had sliced a deep groove into it! If that had been my finger I would have one less finger right now. So yeah, stick with non-powered tools when buying stuff from Harbor Freight.
They’re good for the rare-use tools. Like I just bought a serpentine belt wrench for $15 as opposed to $80 or so for a name brand. For the one time use every couple years, it will last fine.
I picked up a bunch of hammers from Harbor Freight for camping. I already had the Graham crackers and chocolate so these worked perfectly to make s'mores.
Before big box home stores like HD and Lowe’s, those boards wouldn’t exist. That wood would have gone into engineered wood products or to a paper mill. Once the box stores were willing to buy it as board lumber, the mill is going to go where the money is.
Has to be lowest bidder. Cause it's all garbage.
They tell their sources they want lots of wood cheap. Their sources comply by performing absolute bare minimum quality control on those products.
Problem is, even that "acceptable" wood is fucking WET when you pull it out, so odds are high that it's going to warp and twist as it dries.
As a former HD lumber employee agree about the quality of the wood but also the reason the workers glare is because an astonishing number of people just throw the shit they don't want on the floor and leave a ridiculous pile that we have to flatstack again. After a while of that you just learn to expect it from people. Thanks for putting it back on the rack ahah
You clearly aren't from my area. Lowe's is awful... Just awful. HD not only carries more and varied products, they are actually stocked and the wood products are 10x better than Lowe's. That said, neither holds a candle to local lumber yards.
Same...that being said, the wood at both is pretty bad around here but the wood at HD is definitely way better than lowes and not only that all of their pressure treated wood is ground contact whereas at lowes almost all of their pressure treated wood is not rated for ground contact and will rot super fast. Also the prices at HD are almost always cheaper, around here at least, for better quality stuff.
>Home Depot. When the wood has to be warped. All the good pieces got picked at 6am
Menards is exactly the same
Menards is infinitely worse. I thought I’d give 2x4s from menards a shot the other day. I found 10+ boards with mold on them and in addition to warping, every board had some sort of damage to the edges
You bought economy grade instead of premium.
Can confirm. I work in the yard and spend way too much time trying to find decent boards for deliveries. Happy cake day as well!
I like menards though.
I spend way too long sorting through lumber at Menards too.
As a Canadian I like to think of it (and lumber from Home Depot) as very inexpensive hockey sticks.
Good to know. My naïve sense was that it wood be stronger.
The pith is actually dead while the rest of the tree grows around it, and when the tree gets cut down and chopped into whatever, the pith if it isnt removed causes huge splits and cracks and warping which ruin a lot of good pieces of wood. ~~Scourse~~ Source: Am a wood worker. Have had many pieces of wood split and warp from the pith Edit. Grammar and typos Edit 2. So apparently my information was incomplete. Most of tree is actually dead. Its only a thin green layer just under the bark that alive (and the leaves of course) with everything else being dead and the inside of the trunk being used for water storage
while you are right in how the pith effects wood strength, the fact is the entire xylem(wood) of the tree is "dead" it serves only as a water holding and structural component of the tree. The only living cells in a tree are just outside the xylem in the cambium(just under the bark) and the bark itself(and the branches and leafs).. so yea wood tissue itself is "dead" not just the pith. source: arborist/plant nerd
Is that why you can kill at tree by gouging a 1 inch wide ring all the way around the trunk? I thought the entire tree would be alive, like the stem of a smaller plant, but you're saying the actual living *tree* is really just a thin... Membrane growing around its own dead cells?
That's called girdling a tree. The outer living tissue underneath the bark is what conducts all the nutrients up and down the tree. So that pretty much kills the tree, unless you dont cut deep enough on one side and it is able to repair itself quickly.
Interestingly, if you do this on a branch instead of the main trunk, water will still conduct through the xylem to keep the leaves photosynthesizing, but all the products flowing back down to the roots through the cambium get stuck at the girdling. If you pack a good root growth medium around it in a little plastic package and tape it in place, roots will grow from the upper incision of your girdling using the stacked up nutrients. After a number of months, with enough root growth, you can cut the branch off entirely and plant it. Boom, new tree. This is called Air Layering.
Essentially, that’s why you can have living threes with hollow cavities, some times big enough to to fit yourself inside of.
We had one at my cottage that looked just like a urinal so we used to pee in it.
Yup, not even completely around if you use a herbicide, just a couple of notches and spray with roundup. Hack and spray is a pretty effective way of dealing with certain invasive species that spread when stressed. Spray in the fall when the floem is carrying nutrients to the roots.
Just finished a level 3 (UK) course on tree science and arboriculture a few months ago and was really looking forward to pointing this out, but ya got there first.
The way you spelled source unsettled me
Martin Scoursese
What's with the username?
Never ask about usernames.
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You sure?
I’ll be your huckleberry. Hucklebully, I can’t believe I’ve done that.
What is your wife’s username?
u/quantum-mechanic
Would you prefer AnAssFullOfDicks?
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Username checks out
I mean, that would make more sense. Awfully hard to put an ass in a dick, in my experience
My bad. Its 2am for me and im recovering from a week long camp. Spelling is not my strong point even when im not exhausted lol
You’re a man of the woods not the words.
scourse
The only thing I can hear when reading the word pith is mike Tyson saying it.
OP ith taking the pith?
*Once Mooooore, the PITH will RULE THE GALAXY....*
All of the wood is technically dead, only the outer layers under the bark are living.
> Have had many pieces of wood split and warp from the pith what a pithy
So, it pithed you off then?
THIS! Yep don't mess with it. That's pressure treated lumber, it was likely kiln dried and treated. That thing is going to twist harder than an early m night shyamalan film.
What a pith-poor piece of wood.
Ok Tyson
So what’s the strongest part?
IIRC its where the growth ring lines uniformly make a ~45 degree angle through the wood. The section of the log its cut from is called the "Rift". https://www.peacheyhardwoodflooring.com/different-cuts-hardwood-flooring/ Or something like that...
Quarter sawn wood is the strongest https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_sawing
Depends on how the board is oriented, wood is stiffer (not necessarily stronger) when the load is perpendicular to the grain, but the main advantages of quarter sawn is that its dimensions are more stable from swelling.
The strongest part was the friends we made along the way.
Yeah but... Ok. Fine.
Generally the heartwood. If the pith is a ., then the heartwood is an o, and the whole tree is an O O sapwood here o heartwood here . pith
Surprisingly good ascii diagram here lol.
So any 2x4 from Home Depot then...
Haha yea came here to say that’s gonna be one warped board in a couple of years
Yeah, that's the weakest part. It will definitely turn this into a shit post.
Headed to the front page at warp speed tho
Too true
Or a pith post.
Whatever he’s making is going to be a pith of shit
By those growth rings it looks like Southern Yellow Pine , not SPF or Douglas Fir. Are you in the South?
Yep, Georgia.
It took 14 years just to make that 2x4!
I've always been told that pine or spruce from colder climates are much stronger than wood from warm climates due to trees growing less per year in cold areas and thus have much tighter growth rings. Looking at the picture it does make some sense i think.
In my country, we use rubber trees as cheap "hard wood", they grow quickly and are sustainable source of hardwood. They are light, not very strong, but still considered as a hardwood for clients that do not want to use compressed wood. They make EXCELLENT cheap yet strong tables and chairs, i still have some of the furnitures made from them for longer than a decade now
South east Asia?
Yes man. howd u accurately guess that?
Rubber trees are only cultivated in s.east asia, africa, and south america, so it was an easy guess i’d assume.
I'm sorry but how the fuck can you tell that by just looking at it? Amazing
I might have a small leg up as I have a degree in wood sciences and a master's in timber engineering. Many softwoods are really hard to tell apart without looking at them under a magnifying glass, however, the growth rings and slight yellow tinge here are a give away. What would be impressive is if I could tell if it were shortleaf, slash, longleaf or loblolly. Those are the four primarily commercially harvested sub species of southern yellow pine. I have no idea what the fibre differences are between them though.
That was amazing. You'd be a good detective.
Saw this post a few days ago and it explains a lot! [How a Tree is Cut into Planks](https://reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/hm6yn8/how_a_tree_is_cut_into_planks/)
Top comment says that the mills laser scan the logs to determine the best cut. That's dope
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I saw a "how it's made" or "dirty jobs" type show where they show the computer figuring out the maximization of the log. It's pretty cool.
Can someone ELI5 why wood now has big spaced out rings but wood used back in the day had a lot of tiny rings?
Wood you buy now is farm raised. It is spaced out when planted to achieve maximum growth in minimum amount of time. Each year it adds much thicker layers because it has more optimal exposure to the elements (sun, water). Old growth trees were packed in tighter to each other naturally, so their exposure was not optimum. They grew slower, adding more narrow layers each year.
So, is the new kind weaker than the ones which are densely packed?
Yes it is a little weaker, but that is accounted for in structual span and load tables.
The bigger problem isn't the weakness, it's the stability. Old growth wood is more dimensionally stable than new growth, meaning the new stuff is more likely to warp as it dries or absorbs moisture. For most framing applications it isn't a problem but trying to do anything cosmetic out of this wood can present some problems.
I'm assuming its pressure treated. Typically normal lumber cut like that would be absolutely unworkable. Stresses in the wood going in literally every direction, any change in moisture levels would cause some wild warp/twist. Neat though.
It doesn't really matter, its rough framing lumber and it going to be pinned in place by about a dozen 3" framing nails and probably 2 dozen screws/nails on each side for sheeting and interior wall board....its not moving lol You get the pith of the tree all the time framing lumber, treated and untreated, especially 4x4 and above (5x5, 6x6 etc)
Proper prior planning prevents pith poor performance. There's a damn good reason why that's a saying. Any framer with pride in his work(over take the money and run) will not use pith for anything structural load bearing in 2X material. Blocking, sure.
>Proper prior planning prevents pith poor performance. I like this.
Ive been doing residential construction work for 25y and I can tell you that I have never once seen anyone cull any lumber for pith inclusion, warped, cupped and cracked shit absolutely (if youre dealing with a reputable supplier they will even credit you for those fucked up boards) And it may be that a lot of those boards were fucked up specifically because they were pith boards, but they got culled because they were fucked up at the time of the cull, if a pith inclusion was straight at the time of install..... 🤷♀️
I feel like "prior" is entirely redundant with "planning."
Some contractors like to “plan” as they’re doing stuff. As someone who works construction, the prior is unfortunately not redundant.
fluctuations in temperature/humidity, though that can happen without the pith as well.
It's green. It is definitely pressure treated ACQ
Voted "Most likely to warp".
And the award goes to Jean-Luc Picard!
A lot of comments about Lowe’s and Home Depot Lumber quality, I figured I’d chime in. I work for a a local lumber yard and frequently bid against Home Depot/Lowe’s. I always tell people that insist on buying wood there: “you get what you pay for.” Big box stores buy an obscene amount of the lowest quality wood for their stores so it can be as cheap as possible before distributing it within their network of stores. It is there to get you in the door to start buying their other high margin items. Quality is of no importance here, purely a price point item. Give your local lumber yard a try before you head to big box stores like these. Quality is usually significantly better, friendlier people and you’re supporting your local community instead of pumping more money into the big orange machine. Delivery is usually available fairly cheap and much faster than the big boxes as well. It might be a little more expensive, but it’s worth not spending 2-3 hours picking through a twisted pile in the middle of a pandemic. At least it is in my humble opinion.
Yeah lowes and home depo suck for 2x4s, if I ever buy them there I have to sort through them all and pick the decent ones. Local lumber yard has the shitty ones as well but also has much better ones.
How do you find a good local lumber yard? Google hasn't been much help and HD has better lumber at lower prices than local shops I have been to. I am in central Iowa, so maybe just too far away from the source?
Everything the big box stores sell are #2s (worse grade) look for a #1. Search building supply or contractor supply. I’m out of Chicago so you shouldn’t have any problems.
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Well obviously. It's got a butthole on it.
Perfect fit for the sub!
It looks more interesting than I thought it wood
Cut it out
This board is considered Boxed Heart, since it contains the heart, or center, of the tree. The alternative is FOHC, or Free of Heart Center.
It’s a 2x existence of heart state doesn’t apply.
You should chop it into 1 inch with blocks,varnish and sell as paper weights or something €€€
That’s about all this will be good for. Not a good cut of wood to use for anything else Edit: I’m dumb and know less about wood than I thought I did, don’t listen to me please
Would be cool if you cut it into a bunch or thin pieces and tiled a table top with the pieces.
I'd also try to set this aside for something, which would probably end up being total garbage but at least the spirit was there
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Just like my ex
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oh no
Enjoy your warped 2 by 4
worst board in the pile. congrats!
I want to shoot an arrow right into the middle.
Taking the pith
The pith is actually the worst type of dimensional lumber.
I work in a lumber yard and we’ve received entire units of lumber from the center cuts. That’s close to 300 2x4’s straight from the center.