dpb wrote:
Aaron Fude wrote:
Hi,

I'm not an expert carpenter by any means, but sometimes it seems to me
that lumber one finds at home depot is to bowed and twisty for most
things such as building a wall. Yesterday I went to hd to by some
2x10's to replace a few joists in kitchen floor and once again, the
lumber is a little bowed a litte twisted a little chipped and a little
banged. But for joists (with plywood and hardwood to go on top), does
it really matter? Should I stick with HD or go to a lumber yard and
pay double or triple? How about lowe's?
...

What you get is what's there when you happen to be by.

Despite the other stories, it's not likely there's much (if any) real
difference between the comparable construction lumber at any of the
yards--they're all buying graded material in bulk.

From what I have seen they can specify what grade they want. If you go
to the local real lumber yard in my area and watch when they open a new
bundle there isn't really anything to cull out. I asked about that some
time ago and their buyer happened to be up by the counter and he showed
me how many grades of the same lumber he could order and that it is
their policy to order better grades.

The major difference is usually that at the Borg what you see is almost
always only the culls because when you get there it's already been
picked over by tens if not hundreds of others ahead of you and they
don't empty the bins except when they're actually empty.

Construction framers have the luxury of being able to select the pieces
for where it matters to a certain extent and most also cull and simply
return the truly unusable.

But, for construction, appearance isn't all that critical (once it's in
the wall or floor and covered up, what's to see, anyway?) and it's "tied
down" when installed. For wall studs it's nice if they're at least
reasonably straight so walls aren't terribly bowed, but as others have
noted, unless it is kiln dried, there's a reasonable chance it's going
to warp as it dries further, anyway, even if it's straight going home.

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