The History of Pine Stud Quality

[RonL]

Earlier this year I pulled an old 1x12 out from my small stack. It was a painted board I had rescued from a parts room. Probably at least 40 or 50 years old. Plained it down to 1/2 inch to use as dovetail practice boards. Didn’t pay much attention to the wood till after I had cut it up and started to layout my dovetails.
Well I have a 4 sided box not sure what to do with it. But just seems a shame to waste such beautiful tight grain pine.
RonL

[Tony Z]

We have 34 species of pine growing in North America. Besides these are species in a dozen other conifer genera.

What species are your samples?

Warren is correct. In NW PA, through the years we've had hemlock, spruce, fir and who knows what else. In our DuBois Lowes, you have spruce as typical lumber, but also higher priced fir (very nice, straight with tight growth rings).

[ianab]

There is a natural tendency to associate ring count with quality, but they aren't directly related. There is some correlation, but it's not always the case. 

This is what good NZ grown Radiata pine looks like. It's a full size 2x4 that I cut myself. It's knot free, straight, strong and stable. To be fair, you won't find find wood this good in the construction grade pile, as it would get sawn into more valuable appearance grade boards. 

Where wide growth rings are associated with unstable wood is when young fast growing pine logs are sawn. The first 5-15 years of pine growth in the core of any log are "Juvenile" wood. This is weaker, and will also shrink in length as it dries. So if one side of a board is Juvenile, and the other later grown wood is more stable, the board is going to bow or crook as it dries. Hence finding boards that are better suited for rocking chairs.
In a slower growing forest tree, that juvenile wood was only a small area in the middle, and the sawmill knows it's going to be low grade anyway. They recover plenty of better quality from the rest of a ~200 year old log. But if a top log from a plantation tree is only 8" dia, and maybe 15 years old, most any board you make from that is going to be low quality. But it it only needs to be good enough to pass grading. The better stuff gets pulled and sold for higher value uses. 

You can see in this picture that the board was cut well away from the pith of the log, from wood that was maybe 15-20 years old, and the tree had been pruned  early in it's life to remove the lower branches, so no knots in the board. But if you judge it solely on the growth rings, you might assume it's crap.

   

BTW, my house was built mid 60s, and the construction grade wood is more like the 2019 sample from the first pic. 

[Timberwolf]

There is a natural tendency to associate ring count with quality, but they aren't directly related. There is some correlation, but it's not always the case. 

This is what good NZ grown Radiata pine looks like. It's a full size 2x4 that I cut myself. It's knot free, straight, strong and stable. To be fair, you won't find find wood this good in the construction grade pile, as it would get sawn into more valuable appearance grade boards. 

Where wide growth rings are associated with unstable wood is when young fast growing pine logs are sawn. The first 5-15 years of pine growth in the core of any log are "Juvenile" wood. This is weaker, and will also shrink in length as it dries. So if one side of a board is Juvenile, and the other later grown wood is more stable, the board is going to bow or crook as it dries. Hence finding boards that are better suited for rocking chairs.
In a slower growing forest tree, that juvenile wood was only a small area in the middle, and the sawmill knows it's going to be low grade anyway. They recover plenty of better quality from the rest of a ~200 year old log. But if a top log from a plantation tree is only 8" dia, and maybe 15 years old, most any board you make from that is going to be low quality. But it it only needs to be good enough to pass grading. The better stuff gets pulled and sold for higher value uses. 

You can see in this picture that the board was cut well away from the pith of the log, from wood that was maybe 15-20 years old, and the tree had been pruned  early in it's life to remove the lower branches, so no knots in the board. But if you judge it solely on the growth rings, you might assume it's crap.



BTW, my house was built mid 60s, and the construction grade wood is more like the 2019 sample from the first pic. 

.........................
There's a house at the Georgia Agrirama in Tifton Ga. that has the complete interior built of Curley Southern Yellow pine..The builder owned a large sawmill and instructed his sawyers to save all the curly pine they cut for him.