Is there such a thing as a straight board?

[lcm1947]

I wanted to start on my first piece of furniture today which is my daughters coffee table. So since the lumber place that I just recently found and plan to start buying my wood needs from is closed on the weekends and Holiday's I thought I'd go by HD and pick up just what I needed to get started. Well, let me tell you there wasn't a straight pine 1x3 or 1x4 to be found out of dozens and dozens. Anyway so I thought no problem I'll go to Lowe's. They were worst. I hope the lumber place I plan to start doing business with can do better. I assume lumber yards produce better quality boards if not I don't see how you guys can build any kind of furniture. Can I expect really straight boards from a lumber yard/retail place or is there a way you guys work with bowed and crooked boards?

[drumpriest]

If you are purchasing S4S lumber from a yard, it can get pretty good. The yard I have up here will joint, plane and rip the board for you right after you order it, on your way to pick it up. Some are like that, some arn't. A different one up here wants 2 weeks lead time, for instance.

Typically I purchase rougher grade lumber, and have a jointer and planer here in the shop. My reasoning is this...

1. It's cheaper in the long run.
2. Even if I bought S4S, and it WAS straight, odds are that by the time I get around to working it, it'll have gone out of straight due to weather changes.

The best thing to do is joint and plane the stuff right before using it. Ever notice how most furniture is pretty much designed to keep itself straight and square? There are reasons for that.

Pine, btw, isn't known for being a good straight staying lumber. Cherry is one of the best, for instance. It changes from species to species.

[Slik Geek]

I thought I'd go by HD and pick up just what I needed to get started. Well, let me tell you there wasn't a straight pine 1x3 or 1x4 to be found out of dozens and dozens.
Can I expect really straight boards from a lumber yard/retail place or is there a way you guys work with bowed and crooked boards?

What kind of problems were you finding? (ie: bow, cup, crook or twists in the boards?)

Boards with a bow (warp in the face of the board from end to end) are common. A mild bow is often easily tolerated and eliminated in assembly of the piece.

Boards with a cup (a hollow across the face of the board) are fairly common too because most boards are flat sawn, and even worse, many have the pith in the board. I try to avoid these because it is hard to work around. Sometimes, if the pith is way off center, I can rip off that part of the board, leaving me with a narrower, but flat board that is close to rift or quarter sawn. The end result is a more stable board than normal.

Boards with a crook or crown (warped along the edge) need jointing on a table saw or jointer. I usually avoid these because there is usually some "reaction wood" or some harsh defect in them that isn't finished moving. (They already caused the board to warp in a manner that requires the greatest force!)

Boards with a twist might work for carpentry purposes, but I skip past them for wood working.

Generally, when I'm picking out SPF wood (spruce, pine, fir), I don't buy anything narrower than a 1x6. Sometimes, though, I can find a few decent 1x4s. (Anything smaller tends to be junk wood, the stuff that is left over after the mill gets larger pieces out of a log. Sometimes it looks like these loggers are cutting down saplings for lumber). I buy wider boards, then I rip them to my desired size on a table saw. This also lets me achieve a higher grade of wood by cutting around defects that I wasn't able to avoid during shopping.

I've actually had the best success at Home Depot with respect to usable wood. My other choice is Menards, but their "standard" wood is grade 3, where Home Depot is grade 2.

Note: Since the boards are often not really that dry, and they have been tightly packed in a bundle secured by straps, even the straight ones that you might find may not stay that way for long after getting set "free". Carefully stack and "sticker" them when you get them home, putting weight on the stack to help keep your straight boards straight.

Hope this helps. I've managed to successfully use Home Depot's standard "white boards" (as they call them) for a number of woodworking projects. Shopping is the painful part that I despise.

[Knottscott]

Kind of a politically sensitive question isn't it?

The longer the board, the greater the chance of non-linearities. You're defining exactly why I have, use, and love my jointer.

[Pappy]

Where are you planning to buy your lumber? When I can get down there, I like Allen & Allen in San Antonio.

Hogan has sold out to the company that bought the northern part of the Paxton stores. My understanding is they will now handle rough cut or skip planed stock in the store when they reopen under the new management but I'm not positive about that.

[lcm1947]

Slik Geek, mostly the boards were bowed. I guess by cutting the boards down to the lengths I need that would give me what I need but what a waste of money. Maybe I could explain since only half the board is any good they should only charge me half the price. But even getting cheaper prices at this new wood yard I found it would still be a waste of money if the entire board wasn't usable. Is this what you guys have to go through on each piece of furniture you make? Man, I hope not.


Quote:
The best thing to do is joint and plane the stuff right before using it. Ever notice how most furniture is pretty much designed to keep itself straight and square? There are reasons for that.

Sorry Drumpriest but what do you mean by the sentence " There are reasons for that "? What reasons? Good idea about calling them ahead to see if they would cut and have the wood ready for me. Course then like you say by the time I get around to using it it may go weird on me I'm afraid. That's why being able to pick up just what I was planning on working in a short period of time was so appealing. This is starting to sound like a job.

Dustmight I understand now ( thanks to all on this forum ) where a jointer and planer comes in but this kind of bowing sure wouldn't be taken out with either of these machines. I want to resolve being able to find workable s4s wood before even thinking about the the little subtle changes these machines do. I know these machines are helpful in fine toning a board but right now that's the least of my worries.

Hey Pappy, the place I found is "Fine Lumber & Plywood Inc. Their number is 512-836-8990 and located at 9407 Brown Lane, Austin, 78754. Just off Cameron Rd. which crosses Research Blvd or 183 as it's called.

I do want to thank you guys for your help. I really appreciate your efforts as I'm just dumbfounded right at the moment on what direction to go now. I guess it's all up to what the wood yard can do for me.

[LCHIEN]

What the box stores have in the way of straight wood depends upon the point at which you catch them.

Think about it this way, I and I'm sure most other users pick thru the lumber carefully selecting the striaght and flat pieces, leaving the pieces behind with warp, wanes, curl, twist, checking, cupping, splitting etc. behind. After a while the stock is picked through and that's all that's left (and it may start out at 20% of the original load) when another load is placed on the shelves there's good picking again but after a while the first bad 20% is left and now the new good boards are gone and there's another 20% bad boards doubling what was there before.

After a few loads the filtering process goes on and there's nothing but bad boards left and the few good boards are hard to find. At that point there's so many boards on the shelf that the computer never flags ordering more and the same 90% bad boards are all that remain for a really long time.

No one really notices how movement of wood has dropped to a low point. I guess at some point, perhaps driven by customer complaints, the manager realizes that all the wood is bad, tosses it and orders a new load.
Perhaps an astute manager culls the racks before putting out a new load, but I think those managers are few and far between.

So you can see how they get or tend to accumlate racks full of bad boards.

What I do, when I see they have fresh material with lots of good boards, I make sure I buy some extras to have on hand for general purpose projects. Another trick is, to resize the lumber. That is, if you need 1x2, they're all bad and all they have are good 1x4, buy a lot of 1x4 and rip them down.

[maxparot]

I was taught you have to allow for all kinds of variances in woodworking. After all if it were perfect it wouldn't be called wood.

Even when purchasing from well respected lumber yards you are going to come across lots of wood with warps, bends, bows and crowns sometimes even all at once. That is why many of us have the tools to straighten, flatten and square the lumber we bring home.

[LCHIEN]

Mac, maybe I didn't answer the right question.
I suggested some days you can get better boards at the box stores.
Your real question was, with lumber yard wood will you have to go thru cleaning up of the wood as well.
I think the answer is yes, if you really want full cntrol over the project.
I suppose you can get them to plane to thickness and you can rip to width, but unless the wood is absolutely perfect, you may well have to work around knots and lesser but still important blemishes and defects.
You will need to buy a signicficant amount of extra wood (amount depending upon how rough your orignal wood is to begin with) to make sure that you can work around these blemishes and make them fit.

Not what you want to hear but thats part of the process.

[drumpriest]

What I mean mac is that wood moves seasonally. It is very possible to create a piece of furniture that cannot remain intact. Like balancing veneers, it is done so that the faces of the board will react to moisture in similar fashions. If not done, the board will likely warp. You can design yourself a piece that is out of balance with itself, and over time bad things will happen.

Another example is screwing down a table top, this will cause problems over time, as the top will expand in ways that the base will not, and your piece will tear itself apart. Most of my parent's house is done in pine tongue and groove panelling for wainscoat, and there are areas where the allowed floating gap was insufficient, and the wall is splitting apart.

Now, specifically about stock prep, once you joint a board, you have relieve internal stresses that may in fact cause it to become less straight. This doesn't always happen, of course, but it can, and sometimes over time. So that if you joint a board, it may be straight today, but wait a month, and I bet you have to rejoint the board before it would make a good glue-up.

[lcm1947]

Hey thanks guys. These last two replies really got to my question whether I was clear enough or not in my actual wording you managed to answer what I was trying to get across. Boy, this woodworking hobby is heading in a direction I hadn't anticipated. Not necessary bad but unexpected. I am taking today off ( yeah, I know ) and am minutes away from driving down to this wood place to check it out more. I hope to learn more about what all services and prices they provide and to see if I can phone order and pick up. That would be great if they do. Again thanks guys that helped a lot. I have further questions but have to run so hopefully I'll be able to ask some more questions tonight if you guys are not too sick of answering my questions already.

[LCHIEN]

Hey thanks guys. These last two replies really got to my question whether I was clear enough or not in my actual wording you managed to answer what I was trying to get across. Boy, this woodworking hobby is heading in a direction I hadn't anticipated. Not necessary bad but unexpected. I am taking today off ( yeah, I know ) and am minutes away from driving down to this wood place to check it out more. I hope to learn more about what all services and prices they provide and to see if I can phone order and pick up. That would be great if they do. Again thanks guys that helped a lot. I have further questions but have to run so hopefully I'll be able to ask some more questions tonight if you guys are not too sick of answering my questions already.

Phone ordering would not seem to be the best way to pick wood.
You want to check the flatness of the boards and also see what widths and lengths you might get so as to revise your amount up or down accordingly.

I'm sure the wood-only hardwood suppliers are better, but can you imagine the tempatation of Lowes or HD if you called and ordered wood sight-unseen delivered? You'd get the stuff no one else wanted... And by now you've seen what that is.

[jackellis]

I've run into the same frustrating problem. I built a rather nice-looking sofa table in a woodworking class and because I did not finish it immediately, the base warped just enough that it won't sit flat on the floor.

I jointed and planed frame parts from some kiln-dried Ash to make sliding drawers for our kitchen and found the pieces had become slightly warped after sitting for a couple of days. This after they'd been jointed and planed repeatedly to fix substantial movement from the initial machining.

I bought some (really crappy, really cheap) plywood and watched it bow significantly with the onset of winter weather.

Make sure you hand-pick every board. And then expect to do a lot of cutting, jointing and planing.
You want to start with the stra

[lcm1947]

Oh Jackellis, did you have to say that. I'm beginning to see that this is an ongoing problem but man that sucks. Loring, I know you are right and I had thought about that so was intending to talk with them and explain what I was planning on building with the wood and get an assurance that I would buy only straight stuff. They may tell me to go shop Lowe's but I'll at least try. If not then I'll simply go in and pick it myself. I just got back from Lowe's and talked with the manager and got an agreement that I could pick out the bowed. cracked etc boards and they would only charge half price. This may be my answer to this problem. I don't buy much at a time anyway and if I could buy an 8' board and get a good straight 48"'s out of it, it might be worth it. I plan on asking at Home Depot too although they don't ever seem as friendly as Lowe's does.

[sacherjj]

I guess I have to give some kudos to the management at our local HD. You will occasionally find the lumber carts full of some type of stock and marked down 50-90%. These are the worst of the lot that have been not purchased for quite a while. Sometimes you can get decent wood that is worth the price, even after burning up half of it. Although, for serious projects, I'm usually much better off heading for my local hardwood dealer, even for pine.