4 ms·
If you move a few bays over from the unnamed or explicitly listed as “whitewood” (usually a poplar) 2 x 4 to actual pine/fir/spruce, the quality returns. Recent
by Moto7451 3y ago
If you move a few bays over from the unnamed or explicitly listed as “whitewood” (usually a poplar) 2 x 4 to actual pine/fir/spruce, the quality returns. Recently they cost only two more dollars. Whitewood is fine for supporting most hobby loads. It’s not meant to build a house. It will happily act as a French Cleat, frame some shelving, or serve as a jig.
Buying from lumber yards also matters due to grading and various standards builders have to abide by that weekend warriors do not.
- eropple 3y agoI'm pretty sure, in the USA at least, whitewood is just ungraded hem-fir and SPF, not poplar. There's a joke that an ungraded bolt is guaranteed to catch a magnet and sink to the bottom of a bathtub. "Whitewood" is that, but wood.
- vGPU 3y agoAny chance you could translate that joke into HN-speak?
- jstanley 3y agoI think it means it's not guaranteed to do anything more than be magnetic and denser than water, but I also thought the wording was confusing.
- usrusr 3y agoThanks, worth the explanation! Would have been self-explanatory with something like "little more that" added, but having it right in there would ruin the joke, as integrated explanations tend to.
- eropple 3y agohttps://www.aftfasteners.com/grades-of-bolts-bolt-grade-markings-bolt-strength-chart/ https://www.aftfasteners.com/grades-of-bolts-bolt-grade-mark... Think of all the things this chart promises. Then assume none of them.
- jacquesm 3y agoThat's hilarious. I wouldn't been too confident about the magnetic properties though... ;)
- eropple 3y agoYou'd think, but iron is really cheap. :D
- genocidicbunny 3y agoIt's the same experience here for those kinds as well. Part of the problem is that I'm on the US west coast, so most of the wood in our stores is probably somewhere from the PNW and thus from more or less the same lumber companies no matter the kind.
- eropple 3y agoI'm in New England and my Lowe's stocks white fir from Idaho, so I dunno what to tell you. ;)
- genocidicbunny 3y agoIt would be amusing to me if because of the additional transport time, you end up getting dryer wood than we do.
- eropple 3y agoIt certainly might be the case, or you might not even be getting the same stuff - I did some looking around and apparently people in British Columbia are having trouble getting local Douglas fir because it's all getting shipped out east.
- dfc 3y agoWhat area are you from? I have never seen or heard of a big box store selling 2× poplar. I am also surprised to hear that the poplar 2×s are cheaper than pine. For hobbyist woodworking I think poplar is preferable to pine everyday.
- eropple 3y agoI think it depends on what you want whether poplar or pine are better, tbh. Poplar's very stable, it's great if you want to paint it, and it does take some machining (chiefly routing) a little nicer, but I personally really like the grain of pines and firs quite a lot compared to the weird greens/purples of conventionally available poplars. Both are soft enough that you can't really beat them up.
- dfc 3y agoI'm not buying pine or poplar for the appearance.
- eropple 3y agoI do! Helps that I live an hour from an EWP sawmill.
- dfc 3y agoDo you have a picture of the pine grain you find appealing? It sounds so crazy to me I feel like I am missing something.
- eropple 3y agoSo I mean, I'm from New England, and maybe this is just a cultural thing, but I think that well-treated pine looks really nice - a golden hue from an oil-based finish, plus pretty brown knots. I don't love the table design here, live edge isn't my thing, but this wood looks great to me: https://cswoods.com/products/eastern-white-pine-dining-table-2047 https://cswoods.com/products/eastern-white-pine-dining-table... But you can get nice grain out of other softwoods, too. Because it's very easy to get hold of here, I use white fir sometimes in furniture. Not "fine" furniture, but simple house stuff. This tabletop was actually the first thing I ever did in my shop and while it hasn't held up amazingly (my breadboards popped and I haven't fixed them yet) I quite like it for what it is as a learner messing around, more or less, and the sap intrusion along the breadboard still makes me happy when I see it: https://i.imgur.com/nipUhLs.jpg https://i.imgur.com/nipUhLs.jpg