The History of Pine Stud Quality

[SawDat]

Cleaning up the shop, I've discovered various jigs, offcuts and pieces from old disassembled projects done with regular home center pine studs.   The quality difference over the years is startling.  The oldest stuff from the 1980's is heavy, dense and tightly grained.  Almost like a hardwood.  The current stuff is not only lighter for the same dimension, but nearly always not straight and true. Plus the recent stuff has loose knots that cause all sorts of issues.

The oldest pieces from 1990 and 1985 have between 50 and 70 rings for the 1½ inch thickness.  Pretty amazing.  You can barely see the rings in real life, much less on the screen.   The more recent stuff... well  you can probably count for yourselves.

None of this is any shock to those been around for a while.  But when you put the pieces side by side, it's pretty shocking how lumber farming has changed the wood.

Just interesting.

   

[meackerman]

my FIL was building houses back in the 60's and he can remember when construction grade wood was good, especially compared to the crap we have now.

[Wild Turkey]

my FIL was building houses back in the 60's and he can remember when construction grade wood was good, especially compared to the crap we have now.

My FIL built houses right after WWII.   He remembers sap squeezing out of studs as they were nailed.

[Duane N]

My house was built in 1964 and the Pine used to frame my home is hard as a rock.  I often broke sheetrock screws as I hung drywall during various remodeling projects.  Any way to tell if the older Pine you have is long-leafed Pine?  I know that tree is slow growing.

[Bibliophile 13]

My house is 100 years old. The 2X4s up in the attic are rough-sawn and actually 2 by 4 inches. Now that the resin has crystallized they are hard as a rock.

There are big knots in them, but there seem to be many growth rings per inch, at least in the couple places where they’ve been cut through for repair jobs and such.

[Bill Wilson]

I worked in construction back in the 70's.  I vividly recall the older guys in the crew always complaining about how you couldn't get a decent stick of framing lumber anymore.  Can't imagine what they would think of the stuff used today.

[FS7]

This is perfectly logical and to be expected.

There are more than twice as many homes in the U.S. today than there were in 1970. We had zero concern for sustainability in 1970, so using old growth slow-growing trees for construction lumber was fine. With the demand being so high, it makes absolutely zero sense in terms of both sustainability and economics to use slow-growing trees for construction lumber. We modify species to be fast-growing so we can both meet demand and replenish the forests.

With the increased demand comes a greater acceptance of lower quality lumber. There is little appreciable difference in the effective strength (given the purpose) of today's lumber as compared to 1970 lumber, and things like knots and slight deformities do not compromise the integrity of stud walls. There is absolutely no reason to have enclosed stud walls constructed of dead-straight slow-growing timbers when current whitewood common studs do the same job at 1/10 the cost with ten times the sustainability.

[Stwood_]

My house was constructed in 1931, and was framed and sided in locally grown white oak. Hard as granite....

[wmickley]

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?

[Arlin Eastman]

My Great Great Grandparents who lived in Minnesota harvested two huge cotton woods to build the house and shed.  I stayed at that house for a year up and down the steep steps.

Now that stuff was like rock after a hundred years plus.  My grandfather died 26 years ago and my grandma sold the place since the kids did not want 620 acres.