On Mar 16, 11:04*am, Wayne Whitney wrote:
On 2008-03-16, Harry K wrote:

The trick to nailing two (or more) 2X members together so you have a
straight member is to eyeball them and then lay them so the curve is
opposite. *Start nailing at one end and keep pulling the opposite
ends to make the area being nailed match each other as you proceed.
A helper is nice but not really needed. *It will be easy at the
start but grows harder the nearer you approach the opposite end.
The last nail or two may require a clamp to make the members match.

Interesting, when I've been in this situation I've always aligned the
ends and nailed those off, then aligned the midpoints and nailed that,
and then the quarter points, etc. *At a certain point it becomes very
difficult to eliminate the slight difference remaining, so I give up
on the straightening. *This gives me something that is on average
straight, but with perhaps small amounts of curvature between each
nailing point.

So that raises the question of whether one of these ways is better
than the other. *I don't know, any thoughts?

Cheers, Wayne

You need to be a lot more picky about your lumber. It shouldn't be
necessary to go through all that fuss to get a good result. When you
sort through the junque lumber at the box store, look at the endgrains
and then check for excessive knots, warping, cupping, twist and
whatever. There is a relationship between the endgrain pattern and
quality of the wood straightness. Doesn't take too much inspection to
see the differences and pick out the better pieces. If that stack is
hopeless, go to the other box store or maybe a real lumberyard. Some
species are better than others, too, so it pays to know if is aspen,
pondersosa pine, spruce (not likely), larch, or hemlock (ugh). Yellow
pine is neat stuff but a bear to work with unless you must have its
special properties. HTH

Joe