dpb wrote:
On 2/24/2014 8:31 AM, BenignBodger wrote:
On 2/24/2014 9:09 AM, Bill Gill wrote:
...
... yesterday I stopped by the nearest
home supply to get one. They had the rattiest selection of
1 X 4s I have ever seen. They were #3 S4S (square four sides),
but I don't think a one of them had all 4 corners the full length.

...

I am always hearing from people that lumber was better in the 'old days'
where 'old days' is only vaguely defined. I just had the opportunity
(necessity) to become more familiar with the internal structure of my
smallest bathroom, stripping it back to studs and joists, including
removing the damned mud bed floor. I can say from that experience that
1964 was definitely not the 'old days' of superior lumber quality. ...

As always, depended on where the purchaser went in large part...

I need to find out where a local "historical society" bought the wood for a
"railroad storehouse" that they were building. I was walking through a
local park with my wife and we came upon a small building that was under
construction. There was a couple inside taking some measurements. Curious,
I stuck my head in, said hi, and we got to talking. It turns out that the
county was paying the historical society to have replica building erected
on the original site of a storage facility that used to be near the RR
tracks that ran through the park. It was a small building that would
contain public restrooms and could be used for meetings and small
gatherings. A lot of the work was being done by volunteers, Boy Scouts for
Eagle projects, etc.

The 1 by material that was piled up inside the building was the clearest,
straightest, most beautiful pine I had ever seen. Everything from 1x2's all
the way up to 1x10's. I mentioned it to the couple and they told me that it
sure was nice to work with. They said some of it was going to be stained,
but a lot of it was going to be painted. It was decided early on that it
was easier to buy stain quality wood for everything instead of trying to
figure out what was to be painted and what was to be stained. That way they
could grab whatever they needed at any time and use it.

After talking to the couple for a while, and offering some suggestions for
dealing with a door trim issue that they were having, they asked me if I
wanted to put a few hours helping out. They were nearing the end of the
project and had a deadline for completion and the opening ceremonies with
some county big-wigs in a couple of weeks. I showed up a couple of times
and put in a few hours trimming doors and hanging wainscoting and chair
rails. It was a lot of fun and now I can say I had a part in building a
pretty cool building.

I really need to call them and find out where the wood was purchased.


OTOH, I can confirm that stuff from back in the '10s - '20s was in
general "much more better"...

The barn here was begun just after rationing was lifted after the WWI
armistice (Nov '18) and is open construction. There are 2x6 wall studs,
2x8 haymow floor joists and builtup 2x6 beams (3 or 4 together) and
columns from 12 to 16-ft in length. A large number of them are clear and
very few aren't full dimension all sides. And, of course, the surfaceed
dimensions are nominal -3/8" instead of -9/16" or more (ie, they're
1-5/8" thick, not 1-1/2 or 1-7/16).

As far as the '60s, we built a set of grain bins in the haymow for a
little feed mill around then and there's some leftover material from that
still stored. Included are some 20-ft 2x10 and 2x12 Doug fir that are
also almost clear and several of which are. I hate to guess what one
might pay for one of those if one could even find a 20-footer at all.

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