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The spotted owl controversy of the 1980’s was a cover for other economic issues in the logging sector. I remember poor quality lumber in the early to middle 1970’s (wane, mold, cupped and twisted, etc) showing up in construction sites. A big problem, as pointed out in the video, was conglomerate take over, financed by the largest New York banks - sustainable outfits, like PALCo (Pacific Lumber Company) in Northern California, which had been family owned and managed for decades, which could have operated for another century, were bought by Texas based Maxxam in a highly leveraged hostile takeover. In order to make financial sense (and pay off their bankers), Maxxam cut through the existing trees like a forest fire. So there was that. Additionally, the large corporate owned stands (Georgia Pacific, Weyerhaeuser, primarily) began being replaced with monoculture lumber tree farms. (I was in college at the time when the forest science department at Oregon State University began growing conifer seedlings in Petrie dishes! Seriously.) These thirty year old trees are grown so quickly that they lack the density of the slower growing trees of yesteryear. By the way, you can find quality lumber, but not at Lowe’s or Home Depot - you have to go to a real lumber yard. Expect to pay quality prices.
I used to haul to Home Depot's distribution center and the selection of lumber that was loaded came from piles that were separate from the rest of the Stacks of Products that were neatly wrapped and looked square. There is a reason the lumber is cheap, the Mills exploited the Timber until the profits were gone in the 1970's. Capitalism appears to be at fault for sponsoring the Greed of Investors who only desire profits at any cost. The thing that made me assume Capitalists were not so smart, was the piles of Veneer I used to notice on Portland Docks, that said "Product of Russia".
I remember a few years ago that on a job I was doing, the building inspector rejected the lumber I was using for a patio roof, I had him sign a small form which came in handy when I returned all the lumber to Home Depot, they didn't want to replace, refund or take back the lumber until I told them about the building inspector and showed the store manager the form that the inspector had signed !, I mentioned that it was possible that the building inspector could do an inspection of the quality of lumber that HD was receiving and could flag them on it !, suffice it to say, I got a complete refund, and they took back all the lumber that I returned!, then after that, got the remaining lumber for the job at a local lumber yard, which had better quality lumber!
Best place to find quality lumber is at your local lumber yard. Expect to pay quality prices, though. I recently needed 2X6 fascia boards; Home Depot had primed boards available, but they were heavy (wet) and were certain to twist and bend if not immediately installed. I went to an independent retailer who had the good stuff - kiln dried, top and bottom edges laminated to straight core timber. Surprisingly light, straight, and stable. Cost me four times as much as the HD stuff, but will last me the life of the roof I just installed. It was a joy to work with, too.
Many, many years ago I was building a rather large deck on weekends. Every Saturday morning I would go to the big box store, pick out a few useable boards and go home to see if I could add anything to the deck. Finally I got sick of that and went to the local lumber yard and ordered all the wood I needed. They delivered it and I was able to use virtually every piece! I agree that all of the political, environmental and population issues mentioned here are important and relevant but part of the problem is the fact that the big box stores are counting on the less informed consumer to buy junk at junk prices.
@@DanielinLaTunathat’s not true at all. I buy from lumber yards as well as big box. Some of the lumber I’ve gotten at HD has been exceptionally good. Next week? Not so much. Big lumber yard, some of the worst precut studs I’ve ever bought. It definitely is timing.
In a nutshell the old timers got here first and they took all the best wood for themselves. I was working on a 200 year old building once and I saw boards 20 feet long and a foot wide that were perfectly clear. Not so much as a pin knot in any of it and the grain was as straight as laser beams. It looked like something from another planet it was so perfect. It was beyond reproach. That kind of wood simply doesn't exist anywhere today. The wood of dreams.
@@DIYwithDave that's the only time and place I ever saw wood like that. It didn't look like it came from this planet. It was impossibly perfect. I had to chainsaw all of it up and throw it down a garbage chute too. We were working on a school and lowering it off the scaffolding simply was not an option. It had to go down contained inside the chute. That was the job. But it had mill stamps on it. That building was 170 years old then and that was over 30 years ago now. It's on the national registry. It held up the cornices of the nun's school in Convent Station. Saint Elizabeth's university. We ripped down the old stuff and replaced it with fiberglass simulations. But that wood underneath was still perfect. That's what they used for nailers. It was nailed to the brick and then the cornices were nailed to it. The rest of the old woodwork was in bad shape. I still have one of the rosettes off of it.
My brother’s experience in Portland Oregon is that the best lumber comes from the salvage yards. Portland requires home demolition to recycle the old growth (and almost always full dimension!) lumber. This stuff is beautiful!
The lower Columbia river on the Oregon/Washington border is lined, both sides, with massive lumber mills. Docked by the mills are huge freighter ships, all with Asian names on the sterns, waiting to be loaded. Asia still gets the select lumber while we get the trash.
Maybe if we were willing to pay for the good stuff it would stay here. When I lived in Japan about 10 years ago I remembered going to a construction supply store and seeing an imported Douglas Fir stud equivalent from British Columbia was about $10 and clear vs $1.99 and decent but with a few knots when I got home. Good stuff is available here - just not at bargain prices.
Pretty good explanation ....I have had lifetime of experience, as a timber worker, timberland owner, sawmill operator, and also as a carpenter on the Pacific coast. I have seen this unfold since the late sixties, and it really makes me sad. You forgot to mention using engineered lumber, which is probably the best option today, if you want to build something straight and true.
Great comment, thank you! You are right that engineered lumber is becoming a huge factor in the future. I just read that they are planning the largest mass timber building in Milwaukee that will be 55 stories! That is crazy. I am definitely going to be making a video on that in the future.
Unfortunatly i cant really use engineered lumber on an outdoor chicken coop without the weather destroying it. As i posted earlier i have spent hours going through 2x4 at home depot to make a quail coop. I gave up, i could not find any worth my money.
@@jonleone777 Maybe you can try a real independent lumber yard. Where I live, in Northern California, the older established independent lumber yards have the best material. They may charge more, but it's worth it. And the will help you load your lumber!
One huge issue that's not mentioned here and people often don't get, is that construction lumber is typically not dried completely. So when it's strapped up on a pallet, the humidity is pretty stable, and they can't move even if they wanted to. You take off 20 boards and put them into a building in a day or two, and properly constructed, and buttoned up, things are very likely to stay stable. But then you got people that will leave them laying around in the yard or driveway in the sun, and in two-three days it looks like a nest of octopuses. When you see the nest of octopuses in a big box store, that's what happens too - people are picking through the open pallet, plucking the decent boards (and I do it too when I need to) and then the crap starts to dry and they turn into the flying spaghetti monster.
I am always surprised how many builders refuse to cover their lumber to protect it from rain and sun, then they are shocked at what happens to it. Sometimes if your board is bowed, just flip it over and leave in the sun for a half hour and it will straighten. Like you said, one side is drying fast and the other remains relatively wet. Flipping it will "stabilize" the board.
I agree places like homedepot and Lowes where you have indoor heated store. You have a certain amount of moisture in that lumber it gets unbanded and dries twist and cups. Your better off buying it from a lumber yard where they have it covered but not heated.
@@bawrytr it’s usually stamped S dry, meaning surface dried! That can mean that the core of the lumber will be around 20% moisture content! Kiln dried should be 7%!
Blaming the spotted owl is misplaced. At the time, Weyerhaeuser and many other large land owners had basically already cut all of their valuable forests. They took old growth trees of immense value and instead of turning them into high value products, just made dimension lumber and paper....the lowest value products from a high value resource. Once they cut all their own lands and much of the national forests, they coveted the remaining resources. Instead of admitting that they mismanaged their resources by having decisions made by accountants in New York (Weyerhaeuser), they blamed the spotted owl for not being able to cut the pitiful amount of old growth remaining. If you take classic corporate America mismanagement, it was Weyerhaeuser and other companies. To give you an idea of how stupid they are, around the time of the spotted owl controversy, Weyerhaeuser was converting the most productive forest land in the world into growing wheat. Their investors never thought of wood or wood products. They think in terms of fiber. They wanted to convert the productive Pacific Northwest forest lands into wheat fields where they could. Having a background and personal knowledge in the matter, I can tell you for certain that the narrative and the reality were not the same.
I remember building a staircase for my boss out of 120 year old reclaimed pine. The boards were 20 feet long, 2” thick and after planing them the grain was unbelievably beautiful. As a woodworker it’s sad that I’ll almost never get to work with something so nice again, but if I have to use lower quality lumber to let the old growth forests bounce back a bit, then that’s ok
Another reason for the poor quality of lumber is the drying and stacking process. Or lack there of. For framing and construction lumber, kiln dried is considered 20% moisture content or less. Also lumber still needs to be stacked and stickered to continue the drying process to have it reach equilibrium. The lumber mills, certainly don't do that as it reduces the volume of lumber they can ship on a semi trailer. Combine all this with the less than ideal trees being milled and get all of the famous big box store warped, bowed, twisted, cupped and curled lumber.
And once the best boards have been picked by others from the store, what is left is the twisted pithy boards with knots and other defects. Yet the computer says there is plenty of stock so there is no need for resupply.
or the store picks them, bundles them and ships them out for delivery to some unsuspecting person. HD dose have a cull lumber program so they are supposed to be picked out, marked down and discarded a few times a week.
Just asked myself the same questions. Great explanation. As a gardener it makes a lot of sense to me. The plants that are raised up too quick under ideal conditions with a lot of fertilizers will not make you happy once you plant them in your garden. Better grow your own with more time. 40 years is really no age for a tree they always told me you need at least three generations of forest workers to grow a tree for the saw mill.
I was building a medical office in Fair Oaks, California in 1984. We were amazed to break open units of doug fir 2×6 to find some #1 structural grade lengths that were suitable for door jambs and interior trim. Tightest vertical knot free grain we had ever rough framed with. 40 years ago. Wow I'm old. So try to by only #1 structural grade at a bonafide lumber supplier. Great video , very well spoken.
When I was a kid, a low quality board, when discovered by the lumber yard, would be cut-up into short lengths, and given away (for free) as "Stickers." Now, pretty much all lumber (at least at the big box stores) is crap.
You did forget/gloss over something major: the major manufacturers no longer own the land. In the late 90's and early 2000's major lumber manufacturers suck as Georgia-Pacific, Louisiana-Pacific, International Paper, etc. all sold their lands. They did this for two reasons: short term stock price and tax advantages called TIMO's and REITS (Timber Management Organizations & Real Estate Investment Trust). These investment structures basically let smaller investors pool money and buy large chunks of timberland utilizing an almost guaranteed return on investment and tax advantages that the large corporations could not qualify for. So all the majors corps sold off their land to investers with dollar signs, but not from the timber; the money is in the land. Basically, how a modern TIMO/REIT works is a group or individual invester will purchase the timberland on borrowed money. They then use timber sales to pay the mortgage and return a set percentage of their investment back to the shareholders. At the end of a term 8-15 years the investors will cash out, either selling their portion to another owner group or flipping it to themselves. Everytime the price of the land goes up and investors are forced to cut harder to pay the finance charges. So how does this tie in with your very through explanation: there is no financial incentive to grow quality timber. It's all about how fast you can get the return on investment, in other words: grow trees as fast as possible, who cares what the wood quality is, it's sold as a commodity by the ton. What this creates is a tree with larger growth rings and more moisture content (my specialty is southern yellow pine). This is called "juvenile wood" and when you try to dry that in a kiln, it is not as dimensionally stable, hence your warps. The big box stores pay absolutely bottom of the barrel prices for lumber and their contracts are for volume and corporations like G-P or L-P who supply them are using more Chip-N-Saw mills to service this segment because they can buy the logs cheaper and there is more of it available at the lower price on the market. It also takes a smaller facility with more automation which also saves money. Just my 2 cents from 25 years of forestry and wood science in the industry.
3 weeks ago, making a ramp for a 500lb electric wheelchair, had the lumber delivered 4 days later, it changed, i thought the workers picked out different lumber than i had picked, some pieces were curved now, ok, no problem, as the work proceeded, the lumber morphed, curved and cracked, I'm talking 4x4's and 2x8's, wow, plus there were hard and soft spots that caused the blades to pull and curve, making it very difficult to make straight cuts, electric planer to the rescue, 😅, everything came out good, but if it were cabinets instead of a ramp with porch, it would have been painful 😮
The real scary part is the fact that houses are still built to the same specs (16" on center etc.) as they were when wood was far stronger. These specs were engineered around the old stronger lumber. The farmed wood, with its two growth rings per inch, is more similar to Styrofoam than wood.
As a framing sub contractor for 20 years I saw plenty of defective lumber. The trick is to use the right board in the right place, there is a place for any board no matter how terrible it is. First of all look at any board before using it, crown it and assess it's usability for what you're doing. Use the best straight long boards to make bottom and top plates and straight studs for full length studs, use lessor boards for cripples, backing, and any other short boards and you can cut out bad knots avoid crowns. Strong but crooked boards make good bracing which end up being used for trimmers and fur downs. It's always been standard quality building practice, even in the 1970's when I started, but maybe more important now than ever.
That's all good, but consider time/labor cost on the worksite sifting through the piles of lumber. Who pays for it?, the client. That's the real issue.😢
Another factor is that people in the forest products industry knew that spotted owls lived all over the place -- in young softwood forests and in hardwood groves -- so people started logging those before those got banned too. And it used to be that they only cut mature trees. Lyndon Johnson wanted more money to run the Vietnam war, so started requiring loggers to cut more and more trees per acre on federal land, until they started requiring clear cutting on federal lands. That is when things really started to go down hill, when the feds started telling the lumber industry how to do their jobs.
The savior in all this is plywood and OSB, which make houses much stronger than houses using higher quality lumber without plywood. On our home we even used plywood on interior walls to boost shear strength. The crawlspace exterior walls are doubled with plywood. The interior grade beams all have plywood shear walls. Homes built today using "inferior" lumber will be around in a hundred years if the contractor did a good job and the homeowner maintains it. In other words, don't sweat it. BTW, look into borate if you are in an area with termites, carpenter ants, or wood boring beetles.
Another factor that comes into it is how boards are stored - I came from an area where land wasn't overly constrained and most wood stores had all their wood (construction, trim, and hardwood / furniture grade softwood) stored flat. I moved to an area where land was more of a premium and construction wood was still stored flat but trim and better pieces were stored on end to save space... making every one of those "better boards" a complete and utter waste due to bowing.
What happened is we as buyers and users gave up quality for getting it now. The big box stores caught on and started selling garbage wood, we complained but nothing happened so they just keep selling garbage wood. Until a majority of us refuse to buy their garbage they will continue.
Western Canada has run out of trees. The 140 year free for all party cutting virgin trees is over. There is a 30 year gap between now and when the second growth come online.
Thank You for talking about the spotted owl vs global marketplace and over harvesting. Lived in the PNW al of my life - remember the protests, saw the massive clearcuts and erosion, and watched the world of consumerism become a global market. Many of the small lumber towns eventually embraced tourism . People now flock to relatively unspoiled outdoor recreational areas . I recently had to buy a few pieces of lumber. I wasn't expecting perfection as it was not a project that required precise lines or needed to be aesthetically pleasing , but was not expecting the garbage offered. There are a couple local lumber yards. Next time.
If you look into the spotted owl thing a bit you'll find Enron was behind it. All the mudslides in California and the blackouts, it was Enron. They were wrapped up in that whole Headwaters thing. Besides being an energy company they were involved with lumber too. That scam they ran was epic. They sold the land to the government for an ungodly sum.
Like most people who use lumber I've noticed how terrible the lumber I'm able to buy is. 4X4 pressure treated fences post I put in two years ago have already rotted and broken, and it wasn't just one but five of them. As much is this is an annoyance and an expense the real problem is I was walking on my back deck a few weeks ago and when I stepped on one of the 2X6's it failed and I went right through! Fortunately I didn't brake any bonds but did bruise my leg badly. I had to go to urgent care and they were concerned that I may have had a blood clot and fortunetly this was not the case. At the urgent care facility they said they are seeing a lot of people who are coming in because they step on a deck and it fails. So the Terrible Quality is having some real consiquences. How many poeple have to get hurt before the lumber companies see that producing quality is cost effective?
This is because they banned the toxic chemicals from pressure treated wood. You can now use pressure treated to build raised beds for a vegetable garden. Of course they don't resist rot as well.
I have been watching Billy Petherick restore a 250 year old Convent in France. I have noticed that the quallity of lumber (studs) is SO much better that we can get here. They are REAL TWO BY FOURS and they are straight. My old farm house that was built at the turn of the last century was built with REAL 2X4s (ruff sawn) and 1X6 planks. Our new house (lost the old one to Hurricane Harvey) was build with 1.5" X 3.25" lumber. It's well built (Hurricane zone 2) but it's just a sad business. Great video BTW. I have found that you can get better lumber at smaller businesses and lumber yards that have been in business for 70 years or more.
I have watched some of those videos. Truly incredible. I love the old architecture of not just the convent, but their house (or castle as it were) and the craftsmanship that went into it. It is hard to beat that old lumber. There really is very little like it anywhere in the US today. I agree. Smaller businesses and lumber yards are the way to go for sure!
Two weeks ago l bought one by eight dog eared redwood fence boards from a local supplier. I needed 100. Told them l was concerned about the amount of sapwood which is white. They said no l cannot sort through their supply. However they said buy 130 boards, sort them at home, bring 30 back for a refund. I did this. I am very satisfied even at the price of $5.50 per board... cringe. I now have a 'redwood fence.
I've used a lot of cull lumber in my projects, since it's WAY cheaper. I've just learned to work with cull lumber like gluing split boards back together, or planing out the twist.
dave, you have a few wires crossed as to why the lumber the lumber in the big box stores is so shitty. it has nothing to do with export restrictions or no old growth being harvested. it's the relabeling of inferior grades of lumber, and then being put out as higher grades. i forget exactly what WWPA has in its grading criteria, but when you pick up something marked "select' and it barely passes muster as 'stud' grade or find small hand plane marks on the boards, you know something is rotten in denmark. there are two reman plants in boise doing just that and i used to work for one of them. it's fraud of the highest order . that's why larger building contractors don't buy their lumber from big box stores
I ordered several hundred SYP 2x4s from the homeless despot and maybe 30 were what I'd call decent. The second I snipped the binding straps they all banana'd on every axis. 16ft long trash. The worst was all bark and hardened sap with almost no wood in it at all; Just a dark craggy mess. Can't believe that was even sold.
@MS-ig7ku spf #2&btr structural framing lumber must be kiln dried to max 19% mc...if not it doesn't make grade. Generally drying warps boards...nevertheless it must be within limits when graded...modern lumber is actually optimal for framing with
They're not transporting green boards that haven't been dried. The weight of a load of lumber would be 30% greater if they did, and would result in higher fuel consumption.
You can still buy KD (,iln dried) lumber. Ya just have shop at the right place. Where live KD is typically dried to 19%, which is ok for a lot of the country, but a good part of the we are drier than that. buy smaller quantities, keep it well stacked and banded an use it as soon as you break the bands.
@MS-ig7ku the lumber must be heat treated to ensure it kills any micro organisms and to set sap... Yes the added weight of wetter wood means that you can't haul as many lifts on a truck in the USA either. I knew of a mill that "tweaked" their moisture content and flipped a rail car while loading it! Lmao
A year ago I ordered a dozen 16' 2x6"s. They showed up looking pretty decent. After sitting here for a while, waiting their turn for use, they warped and the slightest drop or sudden jar caused a few to split. 😢
Lots of the 2x6s I got last year started to warp within days of delivery. The bundles I left banded were a little better,other than the top 2 layers, they warped too. I've got several that could be used as a letter C after a year of being outside.
I had a part in the video that I cut out that talked about wood moisture and storing lumber. Long story short, framing lumber is dried to around 15% moisutre content when it is palced in a home it dries to around 8-9%. If the change is gradual and the wood is of a higher quality then the change will be minimal, but if it is drastic and the wood is terrible then you are going to see a lot of problems.
I’ve been a carpenter for over 50 years. When I started out lumber was way better! Now most people ( even some carpenters) don’t read the stamp on most lumber. We are now cutting trees much to young, and forcing them to grow faster (fertilizer) . Those massive trees are literally gone! Don’t blame an owl for this! That’s just a miss direction! There’s much much more to this, I could write a book on why! I suggest reading the book; finding the mother tree, or the hidden life of trees!
As a guy who did maintenance engineering at pulp and paper mills that made all sorts of paper... I can confirm what this guy is saying. I remember on my first day being told that only the biggest and highest quality lumber gets made into pulp and paper. I was shocked and I think I said something like... "you mean we're wiping our butts with the best wood?"
The worst boards being sold is from Menards Home Improvement stores. These stores are located in the upper central Midwest and sell the worst boards that make Lowes Lumber look twice as good.
most people don’t know about the HUGE amount of wood that was burned to make charcoal , not just for smelting steel but for making gunpowder, ships used to carry huge amounts of gunpowder for training the gun crews. A LOT of wood was used up for charcoal, and doubtless much of it was considered poor quality lumber back then but nowadays would be considered top notch grade one stuff!!!
I am an artist. My needs for wood aren't to frame a house- but to make cradles for my panels. I cut the wood into 1/2"x1/2" strips. I found that wood quality began to decline significantly in the 90's. Today, it far far worse than the 90's. So much so, I don't buy wood at all, I go dumpster diving around construction site after the framing stage- I can get about 20 or 30 decently straight board out of a development. There is no way I am paying for how crappy things are at big box stores today, when I can get the same (or better) quality out of a dumpster!
Whenever I am at these stores, and have a few minutes, I check for good lengths so that I can keep a good inventory at home. I can then stack and dry them as I want. Some store pallets/batches are so bad that I just walk away.
I don't just notice a difference between really old wood and today's lumber. I had to repair a fence because a tree fell. That fence was built in 2012 and the lumber was so much better I thought about using the undamaged pieces to rebuild because the lumber was of such higher quality.
I have several exposed stud walls and other construction from about 15 to 20 years ago, and every 2x4 is nearly perfect. I have to reject over half the crap lumber in the big box stores. But it was a problem even 30 years ago, when I made a contractor replace a roof joist 2x8 he had installed that had a massive knot and was cracked for over half its width.
Lumber is roughly 19% water by the time it is banded and wrapped at the mill. Between then and Home Depot it loses moisture and warps and shrinks. To be dimensionally stable it would have to be dried to 7% before being flattened and planed at the mill and stacked, banded, wrapped and shipped. This takes time, knowledge and costs more. I know. I am a stair builder with 44+ years experience.
Another factor is that regulations allow mills to include a percentage of "questionable" pieces in each lift. Because its allowed, mills deliberately make sure theres at least that percentage in each lift. Its all about profits, not quality.
@gabrielback5615 froto...that's not true as the 3rd party accrediting association does random grade checks...at least in my experience in Canadian mills OLMA & NLGA...and like I said elsewhere if there are producers shipping substandard materials then they need to be reported...its a big deal for a mill as they could lose their license...the 3rd party is supposed to hold them accountable. I'm not sure how many graders actually exist anymore as we now have the technology to grade via computer systems
@@RobertMclaren68 In our town there are two mills and 2 more less than an hr away. I know many of the employees who do and have worked in these mills. I am a carpenter and have been for over 40 yrs, building with materials these mills supply. I stand by my word, it is true.
@gabrielback5615 I used to work in 2 different mills and have personally graded millions of board feet of Canadian softwood lumber. I also am a cabinet/furniture maker & architectural woodworker and operate my own sawmill...I don't call myself a rough carpenter although I have been on a framing crew for a time also. Anyway in all my years grading lumber I have never heard of a company deliberately including or adding back in a maximum number of provisional pieces. In fact never did a company manager even once try to pressure me into upgrading anything....we were union employees paid by the hour and there was never any personal incentive to do anything other than to grade each piece properly according to its individual characteristics and I took pride in doing so. Now having said that it may be possible that companies may actually do that now since the grading process is fully automated...but I would still highly doubt it and its only a few boards per lift that are allowed to be debatable anyway...it is just too much of a risk and hassle for the mills if the 3rd party authority found out that they were consistently failing to meet grade requirements. Like I said elsewhere if this in fact taking place then people need to speak up and make a claim with the particular licensing authority as they will not tolerate such practices.
Small lumber mill owners craved profits and growth as well but there was more competition then that curbed their ability to charge more. Competition is good for the consumer.
The spotted owl was not the problem, the obvious problem was the impending destruction of old growth forests, which you highlight. The owl was just a useful legal means to save the old trees.
A couple of other tips. Purchase lumber that originates from a drier climate. Look for lumber from Idaho / Montana or Eastern Washington / Oregon. Western, coastal wood will be fast growth. Also, choose a better species. Douglas Fir will produce better lumber than the lowest cost whitewoods like Hemlock. Also, don't buy your materials and then stack them around a long time before using.
I think if you want to look at the root of the problem(pun) you need to start at the beginning of the lumber process. A hundred years ago lumber companies could pick and choose the trees they cut. Now especially in Canada forest sections are typically on mountainous slopes. These trees fight gravity trying to pull them off the slope. The grain in these trees spiral to counteract the slope. When the tree is cut into boards that internal force is released causing them to twist and spiral. If you want straight lumber start with a tree that’s on level ground.. Also if you want straight lumber go to a wholesaler they resort and regrade lumber sent from the mill
@KenLayfield I've never heard of anyone resorting/regrading framing lumber I wouldn't think the profit margin would make that feasible...mills must grade within set parameters or they can lose their license and no mills I know of intentionally misgrade anything
@KenLayfield I've graded millions of fbm and I never didn't try to follow the rules...you're allowed a certain amount of wane on each piece...up to half the thickness max for a pecent of length...sorry this things deleting my comments so I can't reply directly to people
Whenever I can, I use engineered lumber such LVL or LSLs. I work on high end custom homes that have to be perfect. If I have to use regular lumber, I go around, pre drywall, and power plane all the bumps and crowns. I'd rather have a concave wall that the mudders can fill than a big protrusion that is big headache to deal with .
We are cutting trees too young or small just to meet lumber demands plain and simple. Years ago I watched an old freight house being torn down and inside for support beams were clear 12 x 24 x 20 foot beams. Not to mention all the other lumber inside. But it all wound up in the landfill because of our throw away society , unfortunately it was faster and easier to just destroy the building than try to salvage all of that lumber.
Hi Dave, I’m in remodeling on the coast in SC. I’ve had the opposite experience over the past 3 years here with 2x4. It’s very common to come across some very heavy ones with ridiculously tight grain. Some of them felt as like old heart pine. No idea why. This was at its peak during the lumber price balloon. I still have some of them from that time. I doubt it’ll last but I’ll enjoy it while it does.
Two years ago I bought a 2x12 board at Home Depot for a project. I had to go through a lot of boards to find one I thought was acceptable. But when I went to build the project it was too warped for the intended use. It was quite big and not worth the trouble of returning it, so I said what can I do with this inferior board? I made it into a stair for our deck and it works great. I should have done that years earlier.
I saw a poplar board at HD yesterday where on the bottom half of the board, the grain was skewed at like 20 degrees to the left going off one edge then off the other. On the top half of the board the grain was going on the board from the left then skewed 20 degrees to the board going across the board and off the other edge. It was clearly cut out of a banana shaped log.
i went to lowes a while back to get some 2x12 boards to make closet shelves out of. i looked through every board they had...probably 40 boards just to find 4 that were in reasonable shape....though they weren't even perfect but at least they were semi-straight and only had a few small knots in them.
That is so true. I want to make the world better for my kids and (yet unborn) grandkids. It is sometimes sad to think that there are many out there who have no interest in that.
The new young generation does not value trees and view them as a hazard that are best removed.. My neighbor down the block removed 30 trees from their property the first year they owned it. I had a customer who's neighboring property was sold, the 30 something's that bought it, the first thing they did was remove the 40 year old pine trees lining the rear of their property, saying they were a hazard to their home. Those pines were there for my entire life up to that point. They also shielded the property from the 3 story medical building behind them.
And great societies fail when the older generations reap all benefits for themselves in the short term while pushing all debts and long term problems onto the younger generations. AKA "F* you, got mine!"
Have 2×4 dimensional lumber from 50 yrs ago found in barn. Tight grain, smooth, and straight. Each had an inspection stamp with info and inspector. Nothing like junk at HD
I've gone to my local hardware/lumber yard for wood only to find it to be almost as bad as the big box store for a lot more money. I know they don't have the buying power of a place like Home Depot, but in the current economy, I have to stretch my remodeling dollars any way I can. I've moved away from solid wood to plywood with hardwood edge banding. Not my preference, but works out to be less expensive in the long run. Also, I have to 're-face' most of the boards I choose for framing- a pita really.
i am a sawyer. have been 40 year's. what he says is true.. and the funny part? if i cut wood from the same trees i sell to big companies. i cant use mine its not graded.... but but but.... if the house you had built with that commercial lumber falls down. the inspector is not liable anyway... trust me i know the difference between a good board and a bad one
The lumber I work with is always moldy, always has some kind of wane and is usually bent or bowed at least. Also there's dimensional differences sometimes between boards. I'll throw a plate down and go to put the studs in and it turns out the plate is 5⅝ and the stud is 5⅜.
Last time I went to HD, 2x4s were all junk I pulled about 30 and could not get not even one good board, so I went ahead and picked up few 2x8s and cut myself a bunch of 2x4s and it was better, cost me more but saved me the time and time is money.
Most framing lumber sold at the big box stores is junk, however, there is still good quality lumber being produced from new second growth timber stands. It's just that the lower quality lumber being sold is generally sawn from the smaller diameter logs from the upper park of the tree. The butt logs are still producing good lumber, but you just don't see it in the big box stores. It is true what you are saying about the mills now favoring, or limited to smaller diameter logs. However these mill still except logs of about 22 inches diameter. These larger logs produce good lumber. If you look at the end grain on a particular board, you can fairly easily approximate the diameter of the log it was cut from, and yes, lots of it is being cut from logs as small as 4 to 6 inches in diameter; junk imo.
I live near the Canadian border. You can go to a lumber store in Canadian and the quality is significantly better. Who blocked imports from Canadian? I remember the price going up at that time. Let's pretend that's no true.
A year ago I needed to build a temporary cover for a trailer. This was to be a quick and dirty job so wasn't looking for high grade but... 2x3's that literally looked like those one-use drain cleaners with the spines. Most of the growth rings that were cut across the length of the board had split to giant slivers. Had to wear gloves to work with them. I was looking for the cheapest I could find and sure found it.
Happened to me recently. Bought would with a serious bow despite it looking decent in the shop. Very frustrating. Amusing segue from "what I can do about it" to "jointer" on the main titles : ) That said, this is part of the reason I want my own workshop!
I’m not arguing against the points you made because I agree with them but since the lockdowns I’m sure we all can agree lumber quality has taken a noise drive.
I find the best boards I can at the lumber store. I buy more than I need because by the day I use them alot are warped. I never buy boards the day I am going to use them. I alow a few days to see which boards warp. I use the best ones and return the bad ones. An extra trip to the lumber yard but I get a much better build.
Lumber in the box stores is balsa filled with knots and hunks missing, and plenty of splits. This trash is mainly grown on vast southern forest farms, as rapidly as possible. Want good lumber, go to an Amish sawmill. They get small holdings off land owners and tree surgeons. much better lumber and lots of hardwoods.
Wood optimizors went into our northern britsh columbia saw mills in the early eighties. Our spruce species in the far north grows much slower so the growth rings are very tight which makes for good quantity lumber. We never here about the quality discussion from America it is always about tarifs instead. I wish someone would do a comparison with our northern wood for comparison. Instead of just talking about tarrifs.
Not every job requires perfect boards , pigs dig through the piles demanding perfection , if you want great lumber find a place that sells that and get ready to pay more.
I think your right on how lumber looks in stores like home depot. But the thing you never brought up. Is there us a grade standard that has to meet for each board. Like in Douglas fir the top grade is called select structural. It has to meet certain criteria. Slope if grain is 1 in 12. The knit displacement is 1/5th wane is a 1/4 displacement. When stores buy lumber could be called 2 and better which means all the boards in that unit has to meet the grade specks of at least 2 and better. I did think lumber mills to push the amount of the lower grades allowed in that particular grade. And because of smaller logs going through the sawmill you will get more wane. Then use to.
Excellent video. Very informative. So what happens to the really crappy pieces of lumber at the big box stores? Do they get sold to contractors as part of large batches, or do they get scrapped?
Thanks! I'm Glad you liked it. Usually, they sell it. Either people buy it or they just shove it in with bulk orders. For the really terrible wood, they will throw it in a cull pile and sell it at a deep discount.
I am a carpenter and cabinetmaker by trade, there is quality lumber out there its just not sold at your local big box store . Think locally own lumber yards and hardwood dealers
I think almost all of today's lumber comes from small new growth trees. That's why the grain in 2x4's is so curved and looks like 1/2 of a tree. I built a cedar fence many years ago with real real 1x8 (1 1/4 thick x 8 1/24 wide) cedar pickets. The pickets, fence posts and 2x4s where knot free and straight.
If, like me, you've grown up a Midwest Laker, you know the softwoods and hardwoods are inexhaustible. The lumber industry in the Midwestern and Eastern US and Canada were dominant only a short century ago, and like the ship building docs, industries, mines, and even agriculture, it's been inexplicably shut down. Resources are more easy to control, and price-gauge, when they are perceived as being more scarce. This is a big part of the reason you can't find good lumber... power and control. If you think you've a better reason, ask why the US government--hand in hand with industry--passed Free Trade Acts, literally forcing value abroad where there was none and tanking values here where there was abundance. Ask why even so many Midwestern industries were moved to the US west coast, where there are less natural resources, harbors, and access to raw materials. It just made everything manufactured more scarce, i.e., more expensive. You cannot easily find good lumber because those who stand to benefit from its perceived scarcity want it that way.
There are two reasons for construction lumber quality issues. One: the lumber grader is sleeping on the job. Two: the mill owners only care about dollars of shipments. I guarantee there are smaller mills that would pay a better price than pulp prices for those oversized sawlogs.
Before you go buy 2x or 4x material at big box retail just call your local lumber yard. Oftentimes they will have competitive prices with vastly superior quality. The extra time spent driving to a lumber retailer is far better than the big box stores.
Your commentary about the quality of the lumber going downhill makes sense when I see where you are shopping. Go to your local lumberyard to find the good stuff.
Aside from the corporate problem, the spotted owl is a lie. It's just a color variant of the barred owl, less common because it's a recessive gene and also more visible to predators.
We filled out the #2 and stud grades... and made them more available to end-users (partly because they don't know better). You can still get structural grade lumber if you want yesteryear clarity.
Thank you for the information. 14:04 Yes, a real lumber yard is more likely to have better quality wood. No guarantees, though. You still have to check. Another possibility is a local mill. If there is a saw mill in your area, see whether they cut construction lumber. Many only cut hardwoods.
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The spotted owl controversy of the 1980’s was a cover for other economic issues in the logging sector.
I remember poor quality lumber in the early to middle 1970’s (wane, mold, cupped and twisted, etc) showing up in construction sites.
A big problem, as pointed out in the video, was conglomerate take over, financed by the largest New York banks - sustainable outfits, like PALCo (Pacific Lumber Company) in Northern California, which had been family owned and managed for decades, which could have operated for another century, were bought by Texas based Maxxam in a highly leveraged hostile takeover. In order to make financial sense (and pay off their bankers), Maxxam cut through the existing trees like a forest fire. So there was that.
Additionally, the large corporate owned stands (Georgia Pacific, Weyerhaeuser, primarily) began being replaced with monoculture lumber tree farms. (I was in college at the time when the forest science department at Oregon State University began growing conifer seedlings in Petrie dishes! Seriously.)
These thirty year old trees are grown so quickly that they lack the density of the slower growing trees of yesteryear.
By the way, you can find quality lumber, but not at Lowe’s or Home Depot - you have to go to a real lumber yard. Expect to pay quality prices.
I used to haul to Home Depot's distribution center and the selection of lumber that was loaded came from piles that were separate from the rest of the Stacks of Products that were neatly wrapped and looked square.
There is a reason the lumber is cheap, the Mills exploited the Timber until the profits were gone in the 1970's. Capitalism appears to be at fault for sponsoring the Greed of Investors who only desire profits at any cost.
The thing that made me assume Capitalists were not so smart, was the piles of Veneer I used to notice on Portland Docks, that said "Product of Russia".
I remember a few years ago that on a job I was doing, the building inspector rejected the lumber I was using for a patio roof, I had him sign a small form which came in handy when I returned all the lumber to Home Depot, they didn't want to replace, refund or take back the lumber until I told them about the building inspector and showed the store manager the form that the inspector had signed !, I mentioned that it was possible that the building inspector could do an inspection of the quality of lumber that HD was receiving and could flag them on it !, suffice it to say, I got a complete refund, and they took back all the lumber that I returned!, then after that, got the remaining lumber for the job at a local lumber yard, which had better quality lumber!
That is a great story, thanks for sharing!
Best place to find quality lumber is at your local lumber yard. Expect to pay quality prices, though.
I recently needed 2X6 fascia boards; Home Depot had primed boards available, but they were heavy (wet) and were certain to twist and bend if not immediately installed.
I went to an independent retailer who had the good stuff - kiln dried, top and bottom edges laminated to straight core timber. Surprisingly light, straight, and stable. Cost me four times as much as the HD stuff, but will last me the life of the roof I just installed. It was a joy to work with, too.
Excellent !👍
Many, many years ago I was building a rather large deck on weekends. Every Saturday morning I would go to the big box store, pick out a few useable boards and go home to see if I could add anything to the deck. Finally I got sick of that and went to the local lumber yard and ordered all the wood I needed. They delivered it and I was able to use virtually every piece!
I agree that all of the political, environmental and population issues mentioned here are important and relevant but part of the problem is the fact that the big box stores are counting on the less informed consumer to buy junk at junk prices.
@@DanielinLaTunathat’s not true at all. I buy from lumber yards as well as big box. Some of the lumber I’ve gotten at HD has been exceptionally good. Next week? Not so much. Big lumber yard, some of the worst precut studs I’ve ever bought. It definitely is timing.
In a nutshell the old timers got here first and they took all the best wood for themselves. I was working on a 200 year old building once and I saw boards 20 feet long and a foot wide that were perfectly clear. Not so much as a pin knot in any of it and the grain was as straight as laser beams. It looked like something from another planet it was so perfect. It was beyond reproach. That kind of wood simply doesn't exist anywhere today. The wood of dreams.
That is amazing. I have never seen wood like that.
@@DIYwithDave that's the only time and place I ever saw wood like that. It didn't look like it came from this planet. It was impossibly perfect. I had to chainsaw all of it up and throw it down a garbage chute too. We were working on a school and lowering it off the scaffolding simply was not an option. It had to go down contained inside the chute. That was the job. But it had mill stamps on it. That building was 170 years old then and that was over 30 years ago now. It's on the national registry. It held up the cornices of the nun's school in Convent Station. Saint Elizabeth's university. We ripped down the old stuff and replaced it with fiberglass simulations. But that wood underneath was still perfect. That's what they used for nailers. It was nailed to the brick and then the cornices were nailed to it. The rest of the old woodwork was in bad shape. I still have one of the rosettes off of it.
My brother’s experience in Portland Oregon is that the best lumber comes from the salvage yards. Portland requires home demolition to recycle the old growth (and almost always full dimension!) lumber. This stuff is beautiful!
@@DanielinLaTuna you can't use salvage wood in new construction though. I'm not sure it could be graded due to its age.
There's 40' long by 20"x20" white oak beams in the 150 year old barn on my farm in Southern Indiana.
The lower Columbia river on the Oregon/Washington border is lined, both sides, with massive lumber mills. Docked by the mills are huge freighter ships, all with Asian names on the sterns, waiting to be loaded. Asia still gets the select lumber while we get the trash.
Maybe if we were willing to pay for the good stuff it would stay here. When I lived in Japan about 10 years ago I remembered going to a construction supply store and seeing an imported Douglas Fir stud equivalent from British Columbia was about $10 and clear vs $1.99 and decent but with a few knots when I got home. Good stuff is available here - just not at bargain prices.
Pretty good explanation ....I have had lifetime of experience, as a timber worker, timberland owner, sawmill operator, and also as a carpenter on the Pacific coast. I have seen this unfold since the late sixties, and it really makes me sad. You forgot to mention using engineered lumber, which is probably the best option today, if you want to build something straight and true.
Great comment, thank you! You are right that engineered lumber is becoming a huge factor in the future. I just read that they are planning the largest mass timber building in Milwaukee that will be 55 stories! That is crazy. I am definitely going to be making a video on that in the future.
Unfortunatly i cant really use engineered lumber on an outdoor chicken coop without the weather destroying it. As i posted earlier i have spent hours going through 2x4 at home depot to make a quail coop. I gave up, i could not find any worth my money.
@@jonleone777 Maybe you can try a real independent lumber yard. Where I live, in Northern California, the older established independent lumber yards have the best material. They may charge more, but it's worth it. And the will help you load your lumber!
One huge issue that's not mentioned here and people often don't get, is that construction lumber is typically not dried completely. So when it's strapped up on a pallet, the humidity is pretty stable, and they can't move even if they wanted to. You take off 20 boards and put them into a building in a day or two, and properly constructed, and buttoned up, things are very likely to stay stable. But then you got people that will leave them laying around in the yard or driveway in the sun, and in two-three days it looks like a nest of octopuses. When you see the nest of octopuses in a big box store, that's what happens too - people are picking through the open pallet, plucking the decent boards (and I do it too when I need to) and then the crap starts to dry and they turn into the flying spaghetti monster.
@bawrytr yes exactly...its intended to be quickly framed sheathed and forgotten about...
I am always surprised how many builders refuse to cover their lumber to protect it from rain and sun, then they are shocked at what happens to it. Sometimes if your board is bowed, just flip it over and leave in the sun for a half hour and it will straighten. Like you said, one side is drying fast and the other remains relatively wet. Flipping it will "stabilize" the board.
I agree places like homedepot and Lowes where you have indoor heated store. You have a certain amount of moisture in that lumber it gets unbanded and dries twist and cups. Your better off buying it from a lumber yard where they have it covered but not heated.
True. Heavier boards are often wetter. I avoid those even if they look straight (at the moment)
@@bawrytr it’s usually stamped S dry, meaning surface dried! That can mean that the core of the lumber will be around 20% moisture content! Kiln dried should be 7%!
Blaming the spotted owl is misplaced. At the time, Weyerhaeuser and many other large land owners had basically already cut all of their valuable forests. They took old growth trees of immense value and instead of turning them into high value products, just made dimension lumber and paper....the lowest value products from a high value resource. Once they cut all their own lands and much of the national forests, they coveted the remaining resources. Instead of admitting that they mismanaged their resources by having decisions made by accountants in New York (Weyerhaeuser), they blamed the spotted owl for not being able to cut the pitiful amount of old growth remaining. If you take classic corporate America mismanagement, it was Weyerhaeuser and other companies. To give you an idea of how stupid they are, around the time of the spotted owl controversy, Weyerhaeuser was converting the most productive forest land in the world into growing wheat. Their investors never thought of wood or wood products. They think in terms of fiber. They wanted to convert the productive Pacific Northwest forest lands into wheat fields where they could. Having a background and personal knowledge in the matter, I can tell you for certain that the narrative and the reality were not the same.
You can't grow wheat on a mountain in the northwest. Put down the doobie.
I remember building a staircase for my boss out of 120 year old reclaimed pine. The boards were 20 feet long, 2” thick and after planing them the grain was unbelievably beautiful. As a woodworker it’s sad that I’ll almost never get to work with something so nice again, but if I have to use lower quality lumber to let the old growth forests bounce back a bit, then that’s ok
Another reason for the poor quality of lumber is the drying and stacking process. Or lack there of. For framing and construction lumber, kiln dried is considered 20% moisture content or less. Also lumber still needs to be stacked and stickered to continue the drying process to have it reach equilibrium. The lumber mills, certainly don't do that as it reduces the volume of lumber they can ship on a semi trailer. Combine all this with the less than ideal trees being milled and get all of the famous big box store warped, bowed, twisted, cupped and curled lumber.
And once the best boards have been picked by others from the store, what is left is the twisted pithy boards with knots and other defects.
Yet the computer says there is plenty of stock so there is no need for resupply.
or the store picks them, bundles them and ships them out for delivery to some unsuspecting person. HD dose have a cull lumber program so they are supposed to be picked out, marked down and discarded a few times a week.
Just asked myself the same questions. Great explanation. As a gardener it makes a lot of sense to me. The plants that are raised up too quick under ideal conditions with a lot of fertilizers will not make you happy once you plant them in your garden. Better grow your own with more time. 40 years is really no age for a tree they always told me you need at least three generations of forest workers to grow a tree for the saw mill.
I was building a medical office in Fair Oaks, California in 1984. We were amazed to break open units of doug fir 2×6 to find some #1 structural grade lengths that were suitable for door jambs and interior trim. Tightest vertical knot free grain we had ever rough framed with. 40 years ago. Wow I'm old. So try to by only #1 structural grade at a bonafide lumber supplier. Great video , very well spoken.
When I was a kid, a low quality board, when discovered by the lumber yard, would be cut-up into short lengths, and given away (for free) as "Stickers." Now, pretty much all lumber (at least at the big box stores) is crap.
You did forget/gloss over something major: the major manufacturers no longer own the land. In the late 90's and early 2000's major lumber manufacturers suck as Georgia-Pacific, Louisiana-Pacific, International Paper, etc. all sold their lands. They did this for two reasons: short term stock price and tax advantages called TIMO's and REITS (Timber Management Organizations & Real Estate Investment Trust). These investment structures basically let smaller investors pool money and buy large chunks of timberland utilizing an almost guaranteed return on investment and tax advantages that the large corporations could not qualify for. So all the majors corps sold off their land to investers with dollar signs, but not from the timber; the money is in the land. Basically, how a modern TIMO/REIT works is a group or individual invester will purchase the timberland on borrowed money. They then use timber sales to pay the mortgage and return a set percentage of their investment back to the shareholders. At the end of a term 8-15 years the investors will cash out, either selling their portion to another owner group or flipping it to themselves. Everytime the price of the land goes up and investors are forced to cut harder to pay the finance charges.
So how does this tie in with your very through explanation: there is no financial incentive to grow quality timber. It's all about how fast you can get the return on investment, in other words: grow trees as fast as possible, who cares what the wood quality is, it's sold as a commodity by the ton. What this creates is a tree with larger growth rings and more moisture content (my specialty is southern yellow pine). This is called "juvenile wood" and when you try to dry that in a kiln, it is not as dimensionally stable, hence your warps. The big box stores pay absolutely bottom of the barrel prices for lumber and their contracts are for volume and corporations like G-P or L-P who supply them are using more Chip-N-Saw mills to service this segment because they can buy the logs cheaper and there is more of it available at the lower price on the market. It also takes a smaller facility with more automation which also saves money. Just my 2 cents from 25 years of forestry and wood science in the industry.
Typical financial Ponzi scheme.
Great post, thanks for your viewpoint.
Greed per usual.
All lumber at Lowe’s and Home Depot is complete garbage!
If you hunt you can find a few good ones, but it is hard. It is best to go to a lumber yard selling higher quality wood.
Lowes fir 2x4s are the best bet, in my area. I go to Plywood Company of Fort Worth for sheet goods and rough lumber.
It’s pretty much everywhere!
3 weeks ago, making a ramp for a 500lb electric wheelchair, had the lumber delivered 4 days later, it changed, i thought the workers picked out different lumber than i had picked, some pieces were curved now, ok, no problem, as the work proceeded, the lumber morphed, curved and cracked, I'm talking 4x4's and 2x8's, wow, plus there were hard and soft spots that caused the blades to pull and curve, making it very difficult to make straight cuts, electric planer to the rescue, 😅, everything came out good, but if it were cabinets instead of a ramp with porch, it would have been painful 😮
The real scary part is the fact that houses are still built to the same specs (16" on center etc.) as they were when wood was far stronger. These specs were engineered around the old stronger lumber.
The farmed wood, with its two growth rings per inch, is more similar to Styrofoam than wood.
You know what they say about a straight board in a lumberyard, "It hasn't decided yet".
As a framing sub contractor for 20 years I saw plenty of defective lumber. The trick is to use the right board in the right place, there is a place for any board no matter how terrible it is. First of all look at any board before using it, crown it and assess it's usability for what you're doing. Use the best straight long boards to make bottom and top plates and straight studs for full length studs, use lessor boards for cripples, backing, and any other short boards and you can cut out bad knots avoid crowns. Strong but crooked boards make good bracing which end up being used for trimmers and fur downs. It's always been standard quality building practice, even in the 1970's when I started, but maybe more important now than ever.
That's all good, but consider time/labor cost on the worksite sifting through the piles of lumber. Who pays for it?, the client. That's the real issue.😢
You obviously trained with experienced crews. Everything you said was spot on.
Another old homebuilder opinion
Cheers
Another factor is that people in the forest products industry knew that spotted owls lived all over the place -- in young softwood forests and in hardwood groves -- so people started logging those before those got banned too.
And it used to be that they only cut mature trees. Lyndon Johnson wanted more money to run the Vietnam war, so started requiring loggers to cut more and more trees per acre on federal land, until they started requiring clear cutting on federal lands. That is when things really started to go down hill, when the feds started telling the lumber industry how to do their jobs.
The savior in all this is plywood and OSB, which make houses much stronger than houses using higher quality lumber without plywood. On our home we even used plywood on interior walls to boost shear strength. The crawlspace exterior walls are doubled with plywood. The interior grade beams all have plywood shear walls. Homes built today using "inferior" lumber will be around in a hundred years if the contractor did a good job and the homeowner maintains it. In other words, don't sweat it. BTW, look into borate if you are in an area with termites, carpenter ants, or wood boring beetles.
Another factor that comes into it is how boards are stored - I came from an area where land wasn't overly constrained and most wood stores had all their wood (construction, trim, and hardwood / furniture grade softwood) stored flat. I moved to an area where land was more of a premium and construction wood was still stored flat but trim and better pieces were stored on end to save space... making every one of those "better boards" a complete and utter waste due to bowing.
What happened is we as buyers and users gave up quality for getting it now. The big box stores caught on and started selling garbage wood, we complained but nothing happened so they just keep selling garbage wood. Until a majority of us refuse to buy their garbage they will continue.
Western Canada has run out of trees. The 140 year free for all party cutting virgin trees is over. There is a 30 year gap between now and when the second growth come online.
Don’t buy lumber from Home Depot or Lowe’s. Go to a lumberyard and support them.
Thank You for talking about the spotted owl vs global marketplace and over harvesting.
Lived in the PNW al of my life - remember the protests, saw the massive clearcuts and erosion, and watched the world of consumerism become a global market. Many of the small lumber towns eventually embraced tourism . People now flock to relatively unspoiled outdoor recreational areas .
I recently had to buy a few pieces of lumber. I wasn't expecting perfection as it was not a project that required precise lines or needed to be aesthetically pleasing , but was not expecting the garbage offered.
There are a couple local lumber yards. Next time.
Great comment, thanks for Sharing!
If you look into the spotted owl thing a bit you'll find Enron was behind it. All the mudslides in California and the blackouts, it was Enron. They were wrapped up in that whole Headwaters thing. Besides being an energy company they were involved with lumber too. That scam they ran was epic. They sold the land to the government for an ungodly sum.
Like most people who use lumber I've noticed how terrible the lumber I'm able to buy is. 4X4 pressure treated fences post I put in two years ago have already rotted and broken, and it wasn't just one but five of them. As much is this is an annoyance and an expense the real problem is I was walking on my back deck a few weeks ago and when I stepped on one of the 2X6's it failed and I went right through! Fortunately I didn't brake any bonds but did bruise my leg badly. I had to go to urgent care and they were concerned that I may have had a blood clot and fortunetly this was not the case. At the urgent care facility they said they are seeing a lot of people who are coming in because they step on a deck and it fails. So the Terrible Quality is having some real consiquences. How many poeple have to get hurt before the lumber companies see that producing quality is cost effective?
This is because they banned the toxic chemicals from pressure treated wood. You can now use pressure treated to build raised beds for a vegetable garden. Of course they don't resist rot as well.
I have been watching Billy Petherick restore a 250 year old Convent in France. I have noticed that the quallity of lumber (studs) is SO much better that we can get here. They are REAL TWO BY FOURS and they are straight. My old farm house that was built at the turn of the last century was built with REAL 2X4s (ruff sawn) and 1X6 planks. Our new house (lost the old one to Hurricane Harvey) was build with 1.5" X 3.25" lumber. It's well built (Hurricane zone 2) but it's just a sad business. Great video BTW. I have found that you can get better lumber at smaller businesses and lumber yards that have been in business for 70 years or more.
I have watched some of those videos. Truly incredible. I love the old architecture of not just the convent, but their house (or castle as it were) and the craftsmanship that went into it. It is hard to beat that old lumber. There really is very little like it anywhere in the US today.
I agree. Smaller businesses and lumber yards are the way to go for sure!
Yes thats for sure another good one is Escape to rural France the floor joists are twice the size of ours.
@ Ryan’s $15,000.00 home in rurrrrraaaallll Fraaaaaancee. Yes, I follow him also.
@@TexasScout Those are very good shows fun to see every day.
Two weeks ago l bought one by eight dog eared redwood fence boards from a local supplier. I needed 100. Told them l was concerned about the amount of sapwood which is white. They said no l cannot sort through their supply. However they said buy 130 boards, sort them at home, bring 30 back for a refund. I did this. I am very satisfied even at the price of
$5.50 per board... cringe. I now have a 'redwood fence.
I've used a lot of cull lumber in my projects, since it's WAY cheaper. I've just learned to work with cull lumber like gluing split boards back together, or planing out the twist.
That's great! It all depends upon your application and how much work you are willing to do.
dave, you have a few wires crossed as to why the lumber the lumber in the big box stores is so shitty. it has nothing to do with export restrictions or no old growth being harvested. it's the relabeling of inferior grades of lumber, and then being put out as higher grades. i forget exactly what WWPA has in its grading criteria, but when you pick up something marked "select' and it barely passes muster as 'stud' grade or find small hand plane marks on the boards, you know something is rotten in denmark.
there are two reman plants in boise doing just that and i used to work for one of them. it's fraud of the highest order . that's why larger building contractors don't buy their lumber from big box stores
I imagine the new tariffs will make everything better… snark
I ordered several hundred SYP 2x4s from the homeless despot and maybe 30 were what I'd call decent. The second I snipped the binding straps they all banana'd on every axis. 16ft long trash.
The worst was all bark and hardened sap with almost no wood in it at all; Just a dark craggy mess. Can't believe that was even sold.
It is crazy what they get away with, isn't it! homeless despot...😂
@@Mizzelphug Canadian spf is better try that instead
Now ask yourself how did that get graded as #2? They allow this grading Ponzi scheme to continue then FORCE you to buy it when you build.
They don't dry the wood anymore, framing used to be kilm dried that gave you harder and straighter lumber.
@MS-ig7ku spf #2&btr structural framing lumber must be kiln dried to max 19% mc...if not it doesn't make grade. Generally drying warps boards...nevertheless it must be within limits when graded...modern lumber is actually optimal for framing with
They're not transporting green boards that haven't been dried. The weight of a load of lumber would be 30% greater if they did, and would result in higher fuel consumption.
You can still buy KD (,iln dried) lumber. Ya just have shop at the right place. Where live KD is typically dried to 19%, which is ok for a lot of the country, but a good part of the we are drier than that. buy smaller quantities, keep it well stacked and banded an use it as soon as you break the bands.
@MS-ig7ku the lumber must be heat treated to ensure it kills any micro organisms and to set sap...
Yes the added weight of wetter wood means that you can't haul as many lifts on a truck in the USA either. I knew of a mill that "tweaked" their moisture content and flipped a rail car while loading it! Lmao
And when I was a kid kiln dried was regarded as inferior timber (rightly so).
A year ago I ordered a dozen 16' 2x6"s. They showed up looking pretty decent. After sitting here for a while, waiting their turn for use, they warped and the slightest drop or sudden jar caused a few to split. 😢
Lots of the 2x6s I got last year started to warp within days of delivery. The bundles I left banded were a little better,other than the top 2 layers, they warped too.
I've got several that could be used as a letter C after a year of being outside.
I had a part in the video that I cut out that talked about wood moisture and storing lumber. Long story short, framing lumber is dried to around 15% moisutre content when it is palced in a home it dries to around 8-9%. If the change is gradual and the wood is of a higher quality then the change will be minimal, but if it is drastic and the wood is terrible then you are going to see a lot of problems.
I’ve been a carpenter for over 50 years. When I started out lumber was way better! Now most people ( even some carpenters) don’t read the stamp on most lumber. We are now cutting trees much to young, and forcing them to grow faster (fertilizer) . Those massive trees are literally gone! Don’t blame an owl for this! That’s just a miss direction! There’s much much more to this, I could write a book on why! I suggest reading the book; finding the mother tree, or the hidden life of trees!
As a guy who did maintenance engineering at pulp and paper mills that made all sorts of paper... I can confirm what this guy is saying. I remember on my first day being told that only the biggest and highest quality lumber gets made into pulp and paper. I was shocked and I think I said something like... "you mean we're wiping our butts with the best wood?"
The worst boards being sold is from Menards Home Improvement stores. These stores are located in the upper central Midwest and sell the worst boards that make Lowes Lumber look twice as good.
most people don’t know about the HUGE amount of wood that was burned to make charcoal , not just for smelting steel but for making gunpowder, ships used to carry huge amounts of gunpowder for training the gun crews. A LOT of wood was used up for charcoal, and doubtless much of it was considered poor quality lumber back then but nowadays would be considered top notch grade one stuff!!!
I am an artist. My needs for wood aren't to frame a house- but to make cradles for my panels. I cut the wood into 1/2"x1/2" strips. I found that wood quality began to decline significantly in the 90's. Today, it far far worse than the 90's. So much so, I don't buy wood at all, I go dumpster diving around construction site after the framing stage- I can get about 20 or 30 decently straight board out of a development. There is no way I am paying for how crappy things are at big box stores today, when I can get the same (or better) quality out of a dumpster!
I saved a 2x4 stud from a 1950s house that I remodeled. I bet it weights twice than todays 2x4s.
my house was built in the 50s. the 2x4's are huge and a dark brown color not light brown like today's wood.
I just bought some pressure treated plywood to repair my deck at Home Depot. The quality was terrible but still paid a premium for it!!!!
I'm shocked that the big trees get turned into pulp. Whata shame
Whenever I am at these stores, and have a few minutes, I check for good lengths so that I can keep a good inventory at home. I can then stack and dry them as I want. Some store pallets/batches are so bad that I just walk away.
I don't just notice a difference between really old wood and today's lumber. I had to repair a fence because a tree fell. That fence was built in 2012 and the lumber was so much better I thought about using the undamaged pieces to rebuild because the lumber was of such higher quality.
I have several exposed stud walls and other construction from about 15 to 20 years ago, and every 2x4 is nearly perfect. I have to reject over half the crap lumber in the big box stores. But it was a problem even 30 years ago, when I made a contractor replace a roof joist 2x8 he had installed that had a massive knot and was cracked for over half its width.
Lumber is roughly 19% water by the time it is banded and wrapped at the mill. Between then and Home Depot it loses moisture and warps and shrinks. To be dimensionally stable it would have to be dried to 7% before being flattened and planed at the mill and stacked, banded, wrapped and shipped. This takes time, knowledge and costs more. I know. I am a stair builder with 44+ years experience.
Another factor is that regulations allow mills to include a percentage of "questionable" pieces in each lift. Because its allowed, mills deliberately make sure theres at least that percentage in each lift. Its all about profits, not quality.
@gabrielback5615 it's only a tiny percent of questionable...and I've never seen a mill intentionally add them in...(like chaff in the grain industry)
True and no one holds the lumber graders accountable as they work for the mills.
@gabrielback5615 froto...that's not true as the 3rd party accrediting association does random grade checks...at least in my experience in Canadian mills OLMA & NLGA...and like I said elsewhere if there are producers shipping substandard materials then they need to be reported...its a big deal for a mill as they could lose their license...the 3rd party is supposed to hold them accountable.
I'm not sure how many graders actually exist anymore as we now have the technology to grade via computer systems
@@RobertMclaren68 In our town there are two mills and 2 more less than an hr away. I know many of the employees who do and have worked in these mills. I am a carpenter and have been for over 40 yrs, building with materials these mills supply. I stand by my word, it is true.
@gabrielback5615 I used to work in 2 different mills and have personally graded millions of board feet of Canadian softwood lumber. I also am a cabinet/furniture maker & architectural woodworker and operate my own sawmill...I don't call myself a rough carpenter although I have been on a framing crew for a time also. Anyway in all my years grading lumber I have never heard of a company deliberately including or adding back in a maximum number of provisional pieces. In fact never did a company manager even once try to pressure me into upgrading anything....we were union employees paid by the hour and there was never any personal incentive to do anything other than to grade each piece properly according to its individual characteristics and I took pride in doing so. Now having said that it may be possible that companies may actually do that now since the grading process is fully automated...but I would still highly doubt it and its only a few boards per lift that are allowed to be debatable anyway...it is just too much of a risk and hassle for the mills if the 3rd party authority found out that they were consistently failing to meet grade requirements. Like I said elsewhere if this in fact taking place then people need to speak up and make a claim with the particular licensing authority as they will not tolerate such practices.
Small lumber mill owners craved profits and growth as well but there was more competition then that curbed their ability to charge more. Competition is good for the consumer.
I go to a local Mill that cuts grades its own Lumber and have rarely seen problems with any of the boards Go Local if you can
The spotted owl was not the problem, the obvious problem was the impending destruction of old growth forests, which you highlight. The owl was just a useful legal means to save the old trees.
I was able to make a completely knot-free-arrow-straight.....toothpick, yes an entire 'one', out of a HD 2 x 4. I've never been more proud!
A couple of other tips. Purchase lumber that originates from a drier climate. Look for lumber from Idaho / Montana or Eastern Washington / Oregon. Western, coastal wood will be fast growth. Also, choose a better species. Douglas Fir will produce better lumber than the lowest cost whitewoods like Hemlock. Also, don't buy your materials and then stack them around a long time before using.
I think if you want to look at the root of the problem(pun) you need to start at the beginning of the lumber process. A hundred years ago lumber companies could pick and choose the trees they cut. Now especially in Canada forest sections are typically on mountainous slopes. These trees fight gravity trying to pull them off the slope. The grain in these trees spiral to counteract the slope. When the tree is cut into boards that internal force is released causing them to twist and spiral.
If you want straight lumber start with a tree that’s on level ground..
Also if you want straight lumber go to a wholesaler they resort and regrade lumber sent from the mill
@KenLayfield I've never heard of anyone resorting/regrading framing lumber I wouldn't think the profit margin would make that feasible...mills must grade within set parameters or they can lose their license and no mills I know of intentionally misgrade anything
@@RobertMclaren68 But when they grade they do not follow the rules. #2 should have no bark and no loose knots, but they always do.
@KenLayfield I've graded millions of fbm and I never didn't try to follow the rules...you're allowed a certain amount of wane on each piece...up to half the thickness max for a pecent of length...sorry this things deleting my comments so I can't reply directly to people
Whenever I can, I use engineered lumber such LVL or LSLs. I work on high end custom homes that have to be perfect. If I have to use regular lumber, I go around, pre drywall, and power plane all the bumps and crowns. I'd rather have a concave wall that the mudders can fill than a big protrusion that is big headache to deal with .
We are cutting trees too young or small just to meet lumber demands plain and simple. Years ago I watched an old freight house being torn down and inside for support beams were clear 12 x 24 x 20 foot beams. Not to mention all the other lumber inside. But it all wound up in the landfill because of our throw away society , unfortunately it was faster and easier to just destroy the building than try to salvage all of that lumber.
I understand the desire for quality lumber, but I also want a planet I can live on. Hope we can work something out.
Hi Dave, I’m in remodeling on the coast in SC. I’ve had the opposite experience over the past 3 years here with 2x4. It’s very common to come across some very heavy ones with ridiculously tight grain. Some of them felt as like old heart pine. No idea why. This was at its peak during the lumber price balloon. I still have some of them from that time. I doubt it’ll last but I’ll enjoy it while it does.
Two years ago I bought a 2x12 board at Home Depot for a project. I had to go through a lot of boards to find one I thought was acceptable. But when I went to build the project it was too warped for the intended use. It was quite big and not worth the trouble of returning it, so I said what can I do with this inferior board? I made it into a stair for our deck and it works great. I should have done that years earlier.
I saw a poplar board at HD yesterday where on the bottom half of the board, the grain was skewed at like 20 degrees to the left going off one edge then off the other. On the top half of the board the grain was going on the board from the left then skewed 20 degrees to the board going across the board and off the other edge. It was clearly cut out of a banana shaped log.
👏👏👏As always, you assembled and presented the information very well. Great editing. Thank you.
i went to lowes a while back to get some 2x12 boards to make closet shelves out of. i looked through every board they had...probably 40 boards just to find 4 that were in reasonable shape....though they weren't even perfect but at least they were semi-straight and only had a few small knots in them.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”
That is so true. I want to make the world better for my kids and (yet unborn) grandkids. It is sometimes sad to think that there are many out there who have no interest in that.
The new young generation does not value trees and view them as a hazard that are best removed.. My neighbor down the block removed 30 trees from their property the first year they owned it. I had a customer who's neighboring property was sold, the 30 something's that bought it, the first thing they did was remove the 40 year old pine trees lining the rear of their property, saying they were a hazard to their home. Those pines were there for my entire life up to that point. They also shielded the property from the 3 story medical building behind them.
And great societies fail when the older generations reap all benefits for themselves in the short term while pushing all debts and long term problems onto the younger generations.
AKA "F* you, got mine!"
Have 2×4 dimensional lumber from 50 yrs ago found in barn. Tight grain, smooth, and straight. Each had an inspection stamp with info and inspector. Nothing like junk at HD
I've gone to my local hardware/lumber yard for wood only to find it to be almost as bad as the big box store for a lot more money. I know they don't have the buying power of a place like Home Depot, but in the current economy, I have to stretch my remodeling dollars any way I can. I've moved away from solid wood to plywood with hardwood edge banding. Not my preference, but works out to be less expensive in the long run. Also, I have to 're-face' most of the boards I choose for framing- a pita really.
i am a sawyer. have been 40 year's. what he says is true.. and the funny part? if i cut wood from the same trees i sell to big companies. i cant use mine its not graded.... but but but.... if the house you had built with that commercial lumber falls down. the inspector is not liable anyway... trust me i know the difference between a good board and a bad one
The lumber I work with is always moldy, always has some kind of wane and is usually bent or bowed at least. Also there's dimensional differences sometimes between boards. I'll throw a plate down and go to put the studs in and it turns out the plate is 5⅝ and the stud is 5⅜.
Last time I went to HD, 2x4s were all junk I pulled about 30 and could not get not even one good board, so I went ahead and picked up few 2x8s and cut myself a bunch of 2x4s and it was better, cost me more but saved me the time and time is money.
Most framing lumber sold at the big box stores is junk, however, there is still good quality lumber being produced from new second growth timber stands. It's just that the lower quality lumber being sold is generally sawn from the smaller diameter logs from the upper park of the tree. The butt logs are still producing good lumber, but you just don't see it in the big box stores.
It is true what you are saying about the mills now favoring, or limited to smaller diameter logs. However these mill still except logs of about 22 inches diameter. These larger logs produce good lumber. If you look at the end grain on a particular board, you can fairly easily approximate the diameter of the log it was cut from, and yes, lots of it is being cut from logs as small as 4 to 6 inches in diameter; junk imo.
I live near the Canadian border. You can go to a lumber store in Canadian and the quality is significantly better. Who blocked imports from Canadian? I remember the price going up at that time. Let's pretend that's no true.
@Kikilang60 yes northern spf is better than syp for sure....the southern lobbyists don't like the imports obviously
A year ago I needed to build a temporary cover for a trailer. This was to be a quick and dirty job so wasn't looking for high grade but... 2x3's that literally looked like those one-use drain cleaners with the spines. Most of the growth rings that were cut across the length of the board had split to giant slivers. Had to wear gloves to work with them. I was looking for the cheapest I could find and sure found it.
Happened to me recently. Bought would with a serious bow despite it looking decent in the shop. Very frustrating.
Amusing segue from "what I can do about it" to "jointer" on the main titles : )
That said, this is part of the reason I want my own workshop!
I’m not arguing against the points you made because I agree with them but since the lockdowns I’m sure we all can agree lumber quality has taken a noise drive.
Genetic modification of pine in the southeast to increase growth rate is also affecting overall quality as this results in less tight rings.
I find the best boards I can at the lumber store. I buy more than I need because by the day I use them alot are warped. I never buy boards the day I am going to use them. I alow a few days to see which boards warp. I use the best ones and return the bad ones. An extra trip to the lumber yard but I get a much better build.
Lumber in the box stores is balsa filled with knots and hunks missing, and plenty of splits. This trash is mainly grown on vast southern forest farms, as rapidly as possible. Want good lumber, go to an Amish sawmill. They get small holdings off land owners and tree surgeons. much better lumber and lots of hardwoods.
Wood optimizors went into our northern britsh columbia saw mills in the early eighties. Our spruce species in the far north grows much slower so the growth rings are very tight which makes for good quantity lumber. We never here about the quality discussion from America it is always about tarifs instead. I wish someone would do a comparison with our northern wood for comparison. Instead of just talking about tarrifs.
Not every job requires perfect boards , pigs dig through the piles demanding perfection , if you want great lumber find a place that sells that and get ready to pay more.
I think your right on how lumber looks in stores like home depot. But the thing you never brought up. Is there us a grade standard that has to meet for each board. Like in Douglas fir the top grade is called select structural. It has to meet certain criteria. Slope if grain is 1 in 12. The knit displacement is 1/5th wane is a 1/4 displacement. When stores buy lumber could be called 2 and better which means all the boards in that unit has to meet the grade specks of at least 2 and better. I did think lumber mills to push the amount of the lower grades allowed in that particular grade. And because of smaller logs going through the sawmill you will get more wane. Then use to.
Excellent video. Very informative. So what happens to the really crappy pieces of lumber at the big box stores? Do they get sold to contractors as part of large batches, or do they get scrapped?
Thanks! I'm Glad you liked it. Usually, they sell it. Either people buy it or they just shove it in with bulk orders. For the really terrible wood, they will throw it in a cull pile and sell it at a deep discount.
Interesting share. Spot on. Very difficult to get quality straight and strength boards, have to pick through a lot of stock to get decent quality
Most excellent information about lumber with a pinch of history
I am a carpenter and cabinetmaker by trade, there is quality lumber out there its just not sold at your local big box store . Think locally own lumber yards and hardwood dealers
I think almost all of today's lumber comes from small new growth trees. That's why the grain in 2x4's is so curved and looks like 1/2 of a tree. I built a cedar fence many years ago with real real 1x8 (1 1/4 thick x 8 1/24 wide) cedar pickets. The pickets, fence posts and 2x4s where knot free and straight.
i would like to learn more about the conservation reserve program, where farmers are turning farmland into forests. do you have a video on that topic
As always Dave, thanks for your insight. Appreciate You
If, like me, you've grown up a Midwest Laker, you know the softwoods and hardwoods are inexhaustible. The lumber industry in the Midwestern and Eastern US and Canada were dominant only a short century ago, and like the ship building docs, industries, mines, and even agriculture, it's been inexplicably shut down. Resources are more easy to control, and price-gauge, when they are perceived as being more scarce. This is a big part of the reason you can't find good lumber... power and control. If you think you've a better reason, ask why the US government--hand in hand with industry--passed Free Trade Acts, literally forcing value abroad where there was none and tanking values here where there was abundance. Ask why even so many Midwestern industries were moved to the US west coast, where there are less natural resources, harbors, and access to raw materials. It just made everything manufactured more scarce, i.e., more expensive. You cannot easily find good lumber because those who stand to benefit from its perceived scarcity want it that way.
There are two reasons for construction lumber quality issues. One: the lumber grader is sleeping on the job. Two: the mill owners only care about dollars of shipments.
I guarantee there are smaller mills that would pay a better price than pulp prices for those oversized sawlogs.
Computers grade the lumber now...
Overall pretty darn good video! What part of the country do you live in?
Curious. How old is the "old" board shown? 70s, 50s, earlier? Thanks
Excellent summary. Trees are grown just pigs and poultry
similar to the poultry industry, speed, efficiency and profits are the only things that matter
Before you go buy 2x or 4x material at big box retail just call your local lumber yard. Oftentimes they will have competitive prices with vastly superior quality. The extra time spent driving to a lumber retailer is far better than the big box stores.
Your commentary about the quality of the lumber going downhill makes sense when I see where you are shopping. Go to your local lumberyard to find the good stuff.
Aside from the corporate problem, the spotted owl is a lie. It's just a color variant of the barred owl, less common because it's a recessive gene and also more visible to predators.
We filled out the #2 and stud grades... and made them more available to end-users (partly because they don't know better). You can still get structural grade lumber if you want yesteryear clarity.
That worst board you showed was custom cut to be a canoe gunwale.
Thank you for the information.
14:04 Yes, a real lumber yard is more likely to have better quality wood. No guarantees, though. You still have to check.
Another possibility is a local mill. If there is a saw mill in your area, see whether they cut construction lumber. Many only cut hardwoods.
Dude, love this vid! Very informative!!!!
Glad you liked it!