I’m going to whole heartedly disagree. Does it need to be perfectly straight? No. Am I going to eyeball each one to make sure I don’t spend half the project with prybars? Yes.
Also I’m deep in American Pacific Northwest timber country and the mills don’t do business with individuals in my experience unless you’re bringing your own trees.
And I’m not paying money to get the equipment to plane my own 2x10s nor am I going to be able to pressure treat my own lumber.
It’s insane to me that the response to the decline in lumber quality is make your own lumber.
You don’t want to make hockey stick from a bend piece of wood anyway. Those are made of carbon fibre, and if you want a one from wood it’d be better to use some kind of laminate glued to shape, otherwise it’d feel dead and probably break when used.
Sounds like you don’t do much precision or creative woodworking. Here’s one for you, i made a cat wheel out of wood. A wheel. It has to be perfectly straight to roll on castors or else it’ll be a shit wheel or hurt the cat. A few months back I was working on a bookshelf,that you can slot and take apart when you need to move with little inserts that have to line up just right, you really want straight wood for that or else things aren’t gonna work.
I’ll tell ya too, living in the suburbs outside of Chicago, you don’t get a lot of lumber mills that are small and local, and the actual big mills are like an hour drive and you have to pay a premium to buy in bulk. Sometimes you have to go to home Depot and buy their shit wood. I have a planer so I can deal but it’s still a hassle I’d rather avoid. I don’t know what someone without $300 to spend is gonna do
I got a lot of downvotes… Is your wood really that shit? I buy the cheapest crap in Europe and it’s still… straight (enough) for ordinary construction and even more. It’s only if I needed unfixed poles or detail work that I’d ever consider looking for “straight wood”. We do have shit wood but that’s mainly aesthetics. Look at the edge. Bendy boards are totally fine. They’ll attach just fine.
Anyway, warning, long story coming in:
The only time I’ve purchased wood directly from a mill was for a musical instrument. My friend wanted to build a fretless basd and asked if I wanted to come along for the ride. Sure, dude.
So he got some kind of hardwood from Southern America perfectly cut but still a spare and it cost him more than buying a god damn finished fretless bass.
The best part is that the idiot never even followed through and built it.
He still has that $200 piece of perfect wood somewhere in his boxes of stuff that he didn’t unpack the last 2 times that he moved.
Anyway, go ahead and eyeball the wood. I don’t mind.
OP is mostly correct, the construction grade boards the home centers sell are going to have some level of warping. If you don’t want to deal with that you need to go to an actual lumber store. There’s one in most cities. In Seattle (well Ballard…) Limback Lumber is a great place to visit.
I’m going to whole heartedly disagree. Does it need to be perfectly straight? No. Am I going to eyeball each one to make sure I don’t spend half the project with prybars? Yes.
Also I’m deep in American Pacific Northwest timber country and the mills don’t do business with individuals in my experience unless you’re bringing your own trees.
And I’m not paying money to get the equipment to plane my own 2x10s nor am I going to be able to pressure treat my own lumber.
It’s insane to me that the response to the decline in lumber quality is make your own lumber.
What are you building that requires perfectly straight wood?
It does not need to be straight, but I’m not in the sporting goods section looking for a hockey stick.
You don’t want to make hockey stick from a bend piece of wood anyway. Those are made of carbon fibre, and if you want a one from wood it’d be better to use some kind of laminate glued to shape, otherwise it’d feel dead and probably break when used.
I think there is a middle ground
It doesn’t have to be perfectly straight, but I’d like things to be reasonable square to prevent as much extra work as possible.
Sounds like you don’t do much precision or creative woodworking. Here’s one for you, i made a cat wheel out of wood. A wheel. It has to be perfectly straight to roll on castors or else it’ll be a shit wheel or hurt the cat. A few months back I was working on a bookshelf,that you can slot and take apart when you need to move with little inserts that have to line up just right, you really want straight wood for that or else things aren’t gonna work.
I’ll tell ya too, living in the suburbs outside of Chicago, you don’t get a lot of lumber mills that are small and local, and the actual big mills are like an hour drive and you have to pay a premium to buy in bulk. Sometimes you have to go to home Depot and buy their shit wood. I have a planer so I can deal but it’s still a hassle I’d rather avoid. I don’t know what someone without $300 to spend is gonna do
I got a lot of downvotes… Is your wood really that shit? I buy the cheapest crap in Europe and it’s still… straight (enough) for ordinary construction and even more. It’s only if I needed unfixed poles or detail work that I’d ever consider looking for “straight wood”. We do have shit wood but that’s mainly aesthetics. Look at the edge. Bendy boards are totally fine. They’ll attach just fine.
Anyway, warning, long story coming in:
The only time I’ve purchased wood directly from a mill was for a musical instrument. My friend wanted to build a fretless basd and asked if I wanted to come along for the ride. Sure, dude.
So he got some kind of hardwood from Southern America perfectly cut but still a spare and it cost him more than buying a god damn finished fretless bass.
The best part is that the idiot never even followed through and built it.
He still has that $200 piece of perfect wood somewhere in his boxes of stuff that he didn’t unpack the last 2 times that he moved.
Anyway, go ahead and eyeball the wood. I don’t mind.
Not “my wood” specifically home Depot wood. The joke is that the company is infamous for having shit wood
OP is mostly correct, the construction grade boards the home centers sell are going to have some level of warping. If you don’t want to deal with that you need to go to an actual lumber store. There’s one in most cities. In Seattle (well Ballard…) Limback Lumber is a great place to visit.