Good Lumber

[DarisMulkin]

I thought I'd share some pictures of some lumber I bought in the first part of December to frame in a room in my basement. The 2x4's were hand picked for straightness when we bought it. The picture with the piece scabbed on the side bent after it was up. We found it when drywalling and had to cut it to straighten the wall.
In the picture with my toe in it the bottom edge of the 2x4 is on the tile line so you can see how much that 2x4 twisted. The board is light as a feather so I'm guessing it shed its moisture after I bought it. Whatever happened to kiln dried?

Daris

 

[Dan]

The picture shown from the end of the board show growth rings nearly in orientation of what would be considered rift sawn. I'm betting that if you look at the other end of same board you'd find the growth rings closer to plain sawn. This causes different shrinkage values in different directions.

Keep in mind, framing materials are normally kiln dried to a much higher moisture content than you'll find once the material is placed in your controlled interior environment.

 

[highup]

That board's a real tweaker.

 

[DarisMulkin]

That board's a real tweaker.

Can you tweak it straight for me?

Daris

 

[Dan]

Add moisture back to about 15% and see what happens.

 

[Ernesto]

You should kerf all your 2 x 4's Daris.

 

[Darol Wester]

If you ever tried to do any framing and the material was bone dry, you be cussing up a blue streak cause a lot of the nails you drove would split the board. When that stuff still has some moisture in it, the nails go right in, rarely splitting it. That being said, the lumber these days aren't near the quality we had 20 years ago and back. I suppose we've used up most of the really good trees and this is what we've got to contend with now.

That didn't look like doug fir, which is the best in my opinion for framing, though different parts of the country probably use white fir, hemlock or similar. Dan is right, that a lot of it has to do with where it comes from in the tree and how big the tree was.

 

[DennisT]

If you want it straight, use steel.