What to do about curved/ warped 2x4's/ lumber?

[Pilot]

Actual species makes a big difference and what is marketed as species A may really be species B. For example, when I worked in Montana, larch (aka, tamarack) was marketed as DF and thrown in with DF. Actually, most of what was sold as DF was larch. Larch warps and twists & splits very badly, but looks almost exactly like DF, just a little browner heartwood. In our warehouse we had a beam that twisted almost 45 degrees. In the Kalispell area it was hard to find real DF. Locally harvested DF was shipped out. If you wanted wood that would stay straight and true, you bought spruce or pine.

In Oregon, hemlock and true fir (subalpine fir, noble fir, white fir, etc.) are marketed as "hem-fir) and have similar, but maybe not exactly the same, characteristics. Hard to tell the difference by looking at them.

There are many species of pine, they grow all across the country and I suspect there are differences in the wood. It's unlikely they all produce similar wood.

 

[clemsonfor]

Actual species makes a big difference and what is marketed as species A may really be species B. For example, when I worked in Montana, larch (aka, tamarack) was marketed as DF and thrown in with DF. Actually, most of what was sold as DF was larch. Larch warps and twists & splits very badly, but looks almost exactly like DF, just a little browner heartwood. In our warehouse we had a beam that twisted almost 45 degrees. In the Kalispell area it was hard to find real DF. Locally harvested DF was shipped out. If you wanted wood that would stay straight and true, you bought spruce or pine.

In Oregon, hemlock and true fir (subalpine fir, noble fir, white fir, etc.) are marketed as "hem-fir) and have similar, but maybe not exactly the same, characteristics. Hard to tell the difference by looking at them.

There are many species of pine, they grow all across the country and I suspect there are differences in the wood. It's unlikely they all produce similar wood.

As a southern forester i know little about the first species other than that they exist and grow out west and in canada. I prolly could not even identify them now, (could in school). SYP (southern yellw pin) is a group of pine which consitst of loblolly, shortleaf, slash, virginia, longleaf, and your obscures like pond, pitch and table moutain pine. White pine is a different group and all the other pines i cant really speak for as i dont deal with them and not really in the finished product end of things.

-Nate

 

[nickel plate]

When buying any dimensional piece(s) of softwood, look at the unit's end grain on each end of the unit. If you see a majority of bullseyes (center of the tree) walk away or pick out the pieces that are further away from the center of the tree as they will be less reactive to twisting while naturally air drying.

 

[clemsonfor]

Key to not warping is you dont want the Pith (center of the tree) contained in your boards and the tighter and more rings in the end of the board the better the dimentional stability of the wood.

-Nate

Yep like i said 2 pages back. this is the key to demitionaly stable wood.

 

[gauthier]

I generally don't buy lumber from lowes,just to hard to pick it out by yourself,guess its set up for people who just need a couple pieces,but not long ago was at lowes and remembered I needed two sheets of pressure treated plywood,so...go back,find it,and the top sheet was almost bowed double,yanked it off and throwed on floor,next piece was all knotted and missing the knots and bowed,,etc,etc,,had about 10 pieces laying on floor till I got down to where they hadn't restacked from the last person doing this,the two pieces that I did buy were not fit to use about any place,but I was just covering a dog house...

Was getting some looks,nobody offered to help or for that matter tell me to stop yanking plywood off and throwing them in a mess on the floor.

What these places should do is make a discount lumber pile,people would buy the stuff happily if they thought they was saving some money,and people like me would buy more of the good stuff and not make a mess on their floor

 

[schmism]

if its straight when you buy it....

and its not going to be used right away....

stack and sticker it with some weight on top. Addtional time to air dry in such a configuration will ensure it isnt warped when it comes time to use it.

 

[kenmac]

Completed my new deck a while back. The 5 1/4 boards are still moving around. I screwed all the boards down with deck scerws. Some boards have moved so much that, they have broken the screws

 

[radioman]

Lumber seems to have a much wider grain these days, not as dense, and I think that contributes to the warping.

And we have a winner here!

I agree that since we are harvesting faster growing trees, they seems to be less stable then the ones we used to work with.

 

[Mousefield]

I see that you're in Canada. In the US, building codes require a grade stamp on structural building elements made of wood (studs, rafters, beams, trusses, etc.) . There are some county and city inspectors that will allow a variance, but most of these will require that a structural engineer signs off on the use of ungraded lumber.

We, for the most part, have the same up here. We are going have to get permits and inspections starting this September in our rural area called area F. This is being foisted on us by the regional district, most of the directors are from the City of Nanaimo. They will still allow out buildings such as barns to be built with non inspected wood. Sad thing is most of the wood from the band saw mills/property owners own trees are much better than you can buy at the store.

 

[2manyrocks]

That's what I told our county commission when they were looking at adopting a building code. Apparently, they didn't realize that the code meant you'd have to get the building inspector to approve nongraded wood to use in building a barn. Never mind that a full 2x4 piece of nongraded red oak is umpteen times stronger than the stamped and cutdown graded pine/spruce/mystery wood 2 x4--still have to get the inspector to approve it. Matter of fact, I have a load of full dimension 2x6 in the barn I bought from a guy in another county because his inspector wouldn't approve him using it because it wasn't stamped.