A rough cut 2x4 from the saw mill is 2x4. After kiln drying and planing,
its 1.5 x 3.5. They arn't cheating you, that's just the way it is.
Suitable wood for your project depends specifically on what your project
is. I have found totally clear, white spruce 2x10's at Home Depot but
they are rare. I pulled these aside when buying lumber for the house.
Now they are a mast on a small sailboat.
The gunwales on my Adirondack Guideboat are old growth douglas fir,
industrial grade flooring salvaged from an old factory.
Here in Vermont you can still buy pretty good White Cedar planks but
they are hard to find. I own 10 acres of woods and have a bunch of
Tamarack trees, the bottom of which make pretty nice small boat stems,
if you don't mind grubbing them out of the dirt and roughing them out
with a chain saw. An awful lot of work. A local saw mill has
occasionally had some black
locust boards, great for light steam bent ribs.
The problem with wood is that people are so removed from the source
that they think they can just go down to Lowes and buy wood that
the guy working there has never even heard of. White Wood, Hem Fir, etc
are an insult to the intelligence of a craftsman.
You have to get in touch with your materials if you want to build a
boat. Wood comes from trees, not Lowes.
One way to deal with the wood problem when building an older design is
to adapt the design to epoxy/strip built construction where the wood is
cut into smaller stips, the bad parts culled out, and glued back together.
Regarding lumber grades..I think most states establish standard grading
rules that dealers must follow or they are liable for misrepresentation
and fraud. There are seperate grading standards for hard woods and soft
woods. For instance, a white pine board that is Graded SELECT can have
no more than one knot on the face. If it's nine feet long, its counted
as 8 ft long. Sellers violate the rules all the time and negotiating a
fair price for locally produced lumber is kinda like dealing with a new
car dealer.


Russ B wrote:
I've been perusing some old boat plans, and have a question regarding the
sizes of boards. "Back in the day" when some of these plans were written,
lumber was actually the size it was sold to be. Now, a 1x4 may be as little
as 3 1/4 in. wide (as measured at local Lowe's home improvement center).
How does one compensate for this when building from old plans?

I was also apalled by the prices for REALLY knotty boards labelled as "top
choice". By the way, what is "white wood" anway??? Is good lumber really
that scarce? About 20 years ago I worked in home construction during the
summers, and even the cheapest boards we used as bracing were longer,
straighter, and a whole lot clearer than the junk I saw at Lowe's.

Russ B