Picking and Reading Your Lumber at Macey's or the Lumberyard
module: tools, stock, and why we're doing this
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ok. we've talked tools. now we need wood, and this is the lesson that saves you money the rest of this course, so pay attention here.
most of you are going to end up buying stock at a home center. that's fine. that's what i do for probably 80% of my projects. you don't need a fancy lumberyard membership to build good furniture. but you do need to know what you're looking at when you walk down that aisle, because the store is not going to sort it for you.
the boards are lying to you (a little)
first thing: a "2x4" is not 2 inches by 4 inches. it's about an inch and a half by three and a half. a "1x6" is more like three quarters by five and a half. this trips people up constantly and then their measurements are off for the whole project. i've watched it happen. so when a plan calls for a 1x4, go find the actual dimension with a tape measure, don't trust the label. measure everything, trust nothing, including the sign hanging above the bin.
what to actually look for
here's what i do, every single time, before a board goes in the cart.
sight down the length of it. hold one end up near your eye and look down the board like you're aiming a rifle. you're checking for three things — bow (curves along the flat face), twist (corners not in the same plane, like the board's trying to wring itself out), and cup (the face curls up at the edges like a canoe). a little bit of any of these you can work with. a lot, put it back.
check the ends. cracks running into the board from the end are called checking. small ones, an inch or two, you can usually cut past. long splits, skip the board.
look at the grain, not just the color. tight, straight grain lines are more stable and usually easier to work with than wide, wild grain. for furniture parts, especially legs and anything load-bearing, i want straighter grain. wild grain looks nice on a tabletop sometimes, i'll give it that.
knots are fine until they're not. a small tight knot, no big deal, it'll even look nice. a knot near the edge of a board, or a big loose one that looks like it might fall out and leave a hole, that's a problem spot. plan your cuts to work around it or avoid that board.
pick pine for practice, hardwood when it matters. pine is cheap, it's soft, it's forgiving to cut and drill. that's exactly why we practice on it. for a piece you actually want to last, poplar or oak from the yard is worth the extra cost, but there's no shame in a pine build. i've still got pine furniture in my house that's ten years old and fine.
a word on moisture
this one's easy to forget. wood moves. it shrinks and swells with humidity, and up here with our dry air, kiln-dried lumber that's been sitting in a store is usually pretty stable by the time you get it home. but if a board feels heavy for its size or damp to the touch, set it aside. it's going to keep drying out after you build with it, and that means shrinking, and that means gaps in your joints down the road.
a note on drilling into it later
whatever you pick, know that pine splits easier than hardwood, especially near the end of a board or close to an edge. mark had a lesson in this without knowing it — he was ten, wanted to help with pocket holes, and I set him up with a scrap board to practice on before he touched anything real. he drilled about forty holes into that one piece of pine. we started calling it "the cheese." still have it. but it also showed him, and me watching him, exactly how easy it is to blow out the edge of a soft board if you're not paying attention to where the hole lands. good practice piece, ugly as anything.
the opinion part
pocket holes get a bad reputation from people who think real furniture only uses fancy joints. i don't buy that. they're a real, strong joint, and they let you build something solid in a weekend instead of stretching one project over a month of Saturdays. use the right joint for the job. don't apologize for the practical one.
before next time
next time you're at Macey's or the lumberyard picking up anything, even if it's not for this class, walk the 2x4 bin and sight down five or six boards just to practice reading them. doesn't cost you anything but a few minutes, and it'll make picking good stock automatic by the time we actually need it.