4 ms·

I'm really curious to know why, in our hyper-industrialized world of today, is lumber so expensive when compared to yesteryear? Is it cost of land on which it g

by zizee 5y ago

I'm really curious to know why, in our hyper-industrialized world of today, is lumber so expensive when compared to yesteryear? Is it cost of land on which it grows? Is it increased demand because of population growth? Increased demand because of new uses? Increased demand because of global markets? Is it because lumbar prices were artificially depressed because the cost of growing new trees was not included (because people were just cutting down what was already there). Maybe it is because land/housing prices have gone up so much, people are just willing to spend more as it is a relative small percentage of the total cost of housing?

brimble 5y ago
My dad, born in toward the end of WWII, has complained for at least the last three decades that it keeps getting harder every year to find usable boards at lumber yards. Tons of them warped, damaged, way too many knots or other problems, and so on, and that's when you are shopping a couple tiers up from the worst stock. I don't know why that is, but that seems to be the trend he's seen over his life. Makes sense, if he came into adulthood about halfway between the unthinkably-nice framing & foundational lumber in that 1910s house, and now, and it was a somewhat continuous process instead of some sudden change.
- zizee 5y ago
  Interesting. This might be explained by the switch from old growth to new growth^. Older trees would be larger, and have more core to work with (I think knots are mostly from the outer layers of the tree). ^ this is pure speculation
  - brimble 5y ago
    That would be my guess for at least part of the reason, too, but it'd only be a guess. I also wouldn't be surprised to find out that tree species plays a role, and that we plant species for harvest that simply produce worse lumber than what used to be widely available (as old growth).
  - irrational 5y ago
    The core (heartwood) is the worst part of the tree. Now the trees are harvested so young that the entire things are junk heartwood.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - mauvehaus 5y ago
      The sapwood is an approximately constant radial dimension over the life of the tree once it gets big enough to form heartwood. Sufficiently old trees are more heartwood by percentage than sapwood. For hardwoods, it's typically the heartwood that's more desirable. Walnut and cherry both have pretty strongly contrasting sapwood that does not match the customer's expectation for the color of those woods, for instance.
  - mauvehaus 5y ago
    It's a little more complex than that. You get branches (which manifest as knots in boards) where there's sunlight that can reach the leaves on the ends of those branches. Trees grown among other trees have to grow up to reach sunlight. The innermost part of the lower trunk might have knots from branches when the tree was young, but once they reach harvestable size, there's a fair amount of clear lumber down low. Trees grown in the open don't have the pressure to grow upwards, and end up with branches down low throughout their lives (from the center all the way through to the bark). As a result, there's very little clear lumber in them. Disclaimer, I'm a furnituremaker, not a forester. The above is somewhat better than pure speculation, but likely misses some important bits.
- byw 5y ago
  My guess is growing use of new growth forests and ever-increasing harvesting of younger trees to squeeze profit.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  The funny thing is that the straight grained radiata pine is sold at a premium imported from Australian and New Zealand plantations when it's an American tree that could be farmed domestically.
RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
We mined the forests, and they've long run dry. The wood used to built those houses was the old growth timber of the western united states. Its basically gone now. As well as the second, third and fourth growth. Wood of sufficient quality to do the things we used to do with it simply doesn't come from industrial forests.
germinalphrase 5y ago
Travel to logging country and you’ll see a lot of photos like this hanging on the walls of stores, bars, etc: https://miro.medium.com/max/2976/1*zUezbWclc1bubBJOS0qiew.jpeg https://miro.medium.com/max/2976/1*zUezbWclc1bubBJOS0qiew.jp... Old growth trees aren’t exactly growing back on a timeline that matters to you and me.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  North america was heavily deforested during the pleistocene which wasn't really all that long ago. You can also find historic pictures of mass clear cutting from the start of the 1900s that are now heavily forested and will eventually produce large mature trees.
irrational 5y ago
My understanding is that the trees no longer exist. We cut down ancient hardwood forests that took hundreds and thousands of years to grow. All of that is gone now except in a few places like national parks and monuments. In its place are tree farms that are harvested after growing for a few years. Instead of cutting down trees that are 4 feet across with beautiful straight grain knot free lumber, we get crap heartwood with knots that bows and warps. To get that beautiful wood again, we would have to plant the forests, let them grow for hundreds of years, then harvest the wood. Well, that's not going to happen, so we end up in the situation we are in of having to use a very poor substitute.
- mauvehaus 5y ago
  This. You buy a 4"x4" post (nominal. Actually 3.5"x3.5") at your local home improvement store and it has wane on all four corners and the pith running down the middle. Translation: it's made from the smallest possible tree you could plausibly saw a 4x4 out of. And the pith (the center of the trunk) running through the middle guarantees that the post will split along the radial plane as it dries. If you go to a better lumber yard, you get better lumber. Except, apparently, for 2x3's. They are universally crap. Source: built a chicken coop with 2x3's and bought from a local outfit because they deliver inexpensively. Everything else was gorgeous compared to the box home improvement store. The 2x3's were pretty much the same.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Heard you should get the largest lumber you can get and rip it down. Like get 2 x 12's and rip down to 2 x 4's. Makes sense that the larger cross-sectional lumber needs to come from a larger cross-sectional tree with few defects. The crap-wood they can turn into 2x4, 2x3....
    - mauvehaus 5y ago
      The risk of doing that is that you might start with a straight 2x12 and end with three crooked 2x4's. Wood can have a fair amount of internal stress in it, and cutting it can release it in ways that cause your boards to warp, twist, or bend.
enra 5y ago
At least in Finland, there has been a trend of forest owners to favor faster growing species or just felling them earlier. Most of the trees won't be good enough for quality lumber so it's just sold at bulk prices to paper mills. With the method you can probably get 2 good harvests in the time of one. If you let the tree grow 100 years instead of 30, you might not still get 3x the price and you would have to wait 70 years more.

by zizee 5y ago

brimble 5y ago

My dad, born in toward the end of WWII, has complained for at least the last three decades that it keeps getting harder every year to find usable boards at lumber yards. Tons of them warped, damaged, way too many knots or other problems, and so on, and that's when you are shopping a couple tiers up from the worst stock. I don't know why that is, but that seems to be the trend he's seen over his life. Makes sense, if he came into adulthood about halfway between the unthinkably-nice framing & foundational lumber in that 1910s house, and now, and it was a somewhat continuous process instead of some sudden change.

zizee 5y ago
Interesting. This might be explained by the switch from old growth to new growth^. Older trees would be larger, and have more core to work with (I think knots are mostly from the outer layers of the tree). ^ this is pure speculation
- brimble 5y ago
  That would be my guess for at least part of the reason, too, but it'd only be a guess. I also wouldn't be surprised to find out that tree species plays a role, and that we plant species for harvest that simply produce worse lumber than what used to be widely available (as old growth).
- irrational 5y ago
  The core (heartwood) is the worst part of the tree. Now the trees are harvested so young that the entire things are junk heartwood.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mauvehaus 5y ago
    The sapwood is an approximately constant radial dimension over the life of the tree once it gets big enough to form heartwood. Sufficiently old trees are more heartwood by percentage than sapwood. For hardwoods, it's typically the heartwood that's more desirable. Walnut and cherry both have pretty strongly contrasting sapwood that does not match the customer's expectation for the color of those woods, for instance.
- mauvehaus 5y ago
  It's a little more complex than that. You get branches (which manifest as knots in boards) where there's sunlight that can reach the leaves on the ends of those branches. Trees grown among other trees have to grow up to reach sunlight. The innermost part of the lower trunk might have knots from branches when the tree was young, but once they reach harvestable size, there's a fair amount of clear lumber down low. Trees grown in the open don't have the pressure to grow upwards, and end up with branches down low throughout their lives (from the center all the way through to the bark). As a result, there's very little clear lumber in them. Disclaimer, I'm a furnituremaker, not a forester. The above is somewhat better than pure speculation, but likely misses some important bits.
byw 5y ago
My guess is growing use of new growth forests and ever-increasing harvesting of younger trees to squeeze profit.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
The funny thing is that the straight grained radiata pine is sold at a premium imported from Australian and New Zealand plantations when it's an American tree that could be farmed domestically.

RosanaAnaDana 5y ago

We mined the forests, and they've long run dry. The wood used to built those houses was the old growth timber of the western united states. Its basically gone now. As well as the second, third and fourth growth. Wood of sufficient quality to do the things we used to do with it simply doesn't come from industrial forests.

germinalphrase 5y ago

Travel to logging country and you’ll see a lot of photos like this hanging on the walls of stores, bars, etc: https://miro.medium.com/max/2976/1*zUezbWclc1bubBJOS0qiew.jpeg https://miro.medium.com/max/2976/1*zUezbWclc1bubBJOS0qiew.jp... Old growth trees aren’t exactly growing back on a timeline that matters to you and me.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
North america was heavily deforested during the pleistocene which wasn't really all that long ago. You can also find historic pictures of mass clear cutting from the start of the 1900s that are now heavily forested and will eventually produce large mature trees.

irrational 5y ago

My understanding is that the trees no longer exist. We cut down ancient hardwood forests that took hundreds and thousands of years to grow. All of that is gone now except in a few places like national parks and monuments. In its place are tree farms that are harvested after growing for a few years. Instead of cutting down trees that are 4 feet across with beautiful straight grain knot free lumber, we get crap heartwood with knots that bows and warps. To get that beautiful wood again, we would have to plant the forests, let them grow for hundreds of years, then harvest the wood. Well, that's not going to happen, so we end up in the situation we are in of having to use a very poor substitute.

mauvehaus 5y ago
This. You buy a 4"x4" post (nominal. Actually 3.5"x3.5") at your local home improvement store and it has wane on all four corners and the pith running down the middle. Translation: it's made from the smallest possible tree you could plausibly saw a 4x4 out of. And the pith (the center of the trunk) running through the middle guarantees that the post will split along the radial plane as it dries. If you go to a better lumber yard, you get better lumber. Except, apparently, for 2x3's. They are universally crap. Source: built a chicken coop with 2x3's and bought from a local outfit because they deliver inexpensively. Everything else was gorgeous compared to the box home improvement store. The 2x3's were pretty much the same.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Heard you should get the largest lumber you can get and rip it down. Like get 2 x 12's and rip down to 2 x 4's. Makes sense that the larger cross-sectional lumber needs to come from a larger cross-sectional tree with few defects. The crap-wood they can turn into 2x4, 2x3....
  - mauvehaus 5y ago
    The risk of doing that is that you might start with a straight 2x12 and end with three crooked 2x4's. Wood can have a fair amount of internal stress in it, and cutting it can release it in ways that cause your boards to warp, twist, or bend.

enra 5y ago

At least in Finland, there has been a trend of forest owners to favor faster growing species or just felling them earlier. Most of the trees won't be good enough for quality lumber so it's just sold at bulk prices to paper mills. With the method you can probably get 2 good harvests in the time of one. If you let the tree grow 100 years instead of 30, you might not still get 3x the price and you would have to wait 70 years more.