Yes, that shit is warped and has knots in it. Yes, if you want the shit that doesn’t have warping and knots, you do indeed have to pay more money.
This is how all commodities, products, and services have worked, since the first time someone had the idea of trading one resource for another resource.
Please try to wrap your head around the concept. Better things cost more. This should NOT be blowing anyone’s fucking mind.
What’s so hard about the concept that things may have worsened over time? Worse lumber doesn’t mean the worst lumber.
The fact that trees change their characteristics over a timescale of hundreds/thousands/millions of years, not a few decades. Lumber has not gotten worse. People’s memories are just faulty.
There’s a difference between old growth trees and farmed trees. The rings are larger. The wood is slightly less dense.
Humans have an impact via selective breeding focused on speed of growth. So yes, it changes over decades.
Are you so sure?
Of course every bunk has duds but more lumber is younger now. Younger lumber is less stable.
Ever taken apart an old structure? The ring count is very impressive compared to new stuff
Old structures weren’t built with the cheapest possible lumber. The ones that were? They, uhhhh, they fell apart before they got to be old structures. This is called survivorship bias.
Pointing to an old building with quality lumber in it does nothing to refute my point. All we know about an old building that survived for a long time is that it had pretty good lumber. We don’t know what anyone paid for it. So, at best, there’s neither refutation nor support for any position that’s being debated, here.
If you find the receipt for the lumber inside the walls, and it becomes clear that the building was built with the cheapest possible hardware store wood, then we’d have something to talk about.
No I’ve taken apart some terrible, rotted messes. Junk. I understand survivorship bias.
Besides, don’t take my anecdote for it, just go look up industry discussion on age of timber stocks, and rapid to-market silviculture vs old growth
If you’re saying there are real, trustworthy statistics that say modern lumber is from newer growth, then I will provisionally accept that maybe I’m incorrect.
I still don’t think that maps directly onto some Boomer looking at a warped 2x4 in Home Depot and declaring that he used to be able to use hardware store lumber as a straight-edge, back in 1970. Boomers DEFINITELY remember shit incorrectly. That’s a hill I’ll die on.
You also have to remember that there are differences in the way that lumber is treated now. There used to be a fairly long drying process prior to milling. Now things are kiln dried, and may still be quite wet when they get milled. That means that the lumber is going to tend to warp pretty badly as it dries more. I’ve personally gotten wood at box stores (which, TBH, are usually pretty good) that was double what the moisture content should be. But the flip side is that, without kiln drying, it takes a lot longer to get lumber to market, which would significantly screw up your ability to respond to changes in the market.
For people that make fine furniture now, there’s still a long normalization process before you use your lumber. Typically you want to store your lumber inside your work area for 4 months to a year–depending on the thickness-before you start jointing and planing; otherwise you’re likely going to see some bowing, twisting, or cupping. And you still might, depending on the grain.
What defines different grades of lumber can easily change and if you’re paying attention to the world, it’d be hard to imagine that not happening
Changing the fine print about lumber grades could cause changes in the middle grades of lumber. That’s absolutely a thing.
You could easily notice a change in what is considered almost-the-most-premium versus middle-of-the-road lumber.
But the top and the bottom aren’t going to change. They CAN’T change. It’s physically and logically impossible for them to change. The highest price will always get you the actual straight, consistent, knot-free pieces. The lowest grade will always be filled with warped wood and knots.
I’m simply not wrong about this. Good money = good shit. Cheap prices = worst quality. These concepts are not up for debate. They are simply facts.
As a counterpoint I introduce monster cables.
Ridiculously expensive with no appreciable gain in quality.
Prices are subjective and you could easily sell someone lesser quality for a higher price.
People scam people all the time.
So no, good money does not equal quality.
Your concepts are up for debate.
I’ll concede that the principle isn’t 100 percent infallible. And certainly, people are always trying to scam buyers into thinking they’re getting a premium product, when they’re really not. But we’re really not even talking about the top end of the lumber situation, are we?
We’re talking about old-timers fantasizing about some mythical time when the cheapest possible lumber was somehow not the worst lumber. That DEFINITELY never happened. There was never a time when people were randomly selling perfect boards at the cheap lumber price. There’s no incentive to do that. Maybe as, like, a loss-leader item, in some kind of specific promotional situation, maybe. But then you’d know that’s what was happening. Like, the store is trying to get you to come in for great wood, and hopefully you’ll buy a saw or a drill.
Again, that’s not what people are talking about, when they go on rants about hardware store wood. They’re either surprised-Pikachu mode because cheap lumber is shitty, or they think they can remember some time in the dinosaur era, when cheap lumber was generally good. Truly, for the last time, THAT WAS NEVER A THING.
Have you ever seen old lumber?
The quality was way better, the whole scale has fallen compared to back then.
The best stuff now has the potential to beat the common grade sure, but it is not likely.
So to them it is true, they have just seen higher quality.
I made a headboard out of some would I got out of old houses, super nice and tight grain pattern.
The width of one ring now could easily be as wide as 3 were in that wood, maybe 5.
This is so simple and so true from what I’ve heard. I don’t understand how op doesn’t get it
I believe you that cheap lumber has always been bad.
I live in BC where forestry is a big part of the economy. As i understands it, there is a big difference in log quality between old growth fiber and second growth fiber. It’s because old growth trees grew in forests and second growth trees grew in fields (initially).
Trees grow towards light. Forests are shady so trees grow slowly and pretty much straight up. Fields are bright so light is everywhere and trees grow quickly in every direction. Therefore old growth trees have fewer knots, and tighter, straighter grain where second growth has more knots, and fat rings with more twist.
Also because of improved distribution infrastructure the cost of shipping crappy wood to a market where people don’t know any better has gone down. Also if you live in an area with historically good wood supply, it’s also easier for the good stuff to be sold into other markets too.
Also, because everybody tried to build a new deck at the same time (during the pandemic) quality control may be more lax now because they know it will sell anyway.
Here is a quick visual comparison between old growth and second growth forests. The video more from an ecological perspective but it gives a good view of the difference between an old growth forest and a replanted forest.
There are a lot of differences between old growth and new growth wood that could at least partially account for your colleagues’ opinion.
Another thing that’s potentially changed is who they’re buying their wood from. Buying it from an orange hardware store vs from an actual building supplies store could make a big difference.
That’s unironically fascinating. I’ll have to re-read all of this in more detail, when I have time later.
This level of detail, of course, is the exact opposite of the people I was talking about in the meme, and in this discussion. You wrote like seven paragraphs of interesting, cogent, logical shit. The people I’m talking about? They just say shit like “BACK IN MY DAY, WE HAD REAL LUMBER AND IT WASN’T WARPED. I BLAME THE DIET SODAS AND THE HIP-HOP MUSIC.”
Because back in their day they did get real lumber that wasn’t warped.
The rest is just yelling at clouds.
That reminds me, I’m getting old enough I need to pencil in some time for that
Binary thinking isn’t worth arguing with because it’s simply too stupid to be
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High prices =/= good. Low prices =/= bad. High grade lumber will tend to be more expensive, but assuming that something is better because it’s more expensive is a great way to get conned.