Where can I get the best wood 2x4 studs?

[Dave Roock]

Having to sort through some boards to find the better boards is nothing recent. A "better" lumber yard may have some overall better boards but if you do not sort, you will get some stinkers. I remember going to a "better yard" some years back and still had to do some sorting. Home Depot will have some good boards but there may/will be some pretzels from others doing sorting. Ripping a wider board is a great option, still some sorting there. Building the same project with 2x6 or 2x8 will build a stronger frame. Helpful discussion, going to build a stand for a radial arm saw to line up at steel table height ( just picked table up). After looking at premade bench options, building one made far more sense from both a financial perspective and a quality/strength perspective.

[Paul F Franklin]

Avoid the problem by using LSL (laminated strand lumber). Start straight, stay straight, stronger than sawn lumber. More expensive, but if you don't need many so what. Downsides: somewhat rough surface, heavy, hard to hand nail.

[Tom M King]

This is good stuff, if you can find it. I don't think it comes in 2x4's, but I've made smaller pieces out of it. Even this needs to be equalized for a while.

https://www.weyerhaeuser.com/woodpro...framer-series/

[andy bessette]

"Studs" are often green lumber. You can almost watch the sap leaking out of them. While they make nailing easy, this is not what you want for cabinet work. You want dry wood.

[Richard Coers]

If you want to build dog houses, buy construction lumber. If you want to build furniture, buy furniture grade. #1 common in soft maple and poplar are great budget options for furniture. If you have no care of what the lumber looks like, get on the bandwagon and build with pallet lumber.

[Mel Fulks]

I’ve seen old true 2x4s of heart pine in salvage stores .

[Michael Drew]

I'd look for white pine, #1. You won't find it in the box stores. Also, just get 8' lengths. Studs are just 91.5" lengths for use with bottom and top plates in standard 8' wall height construction. If you are banging out track houses and buying flats of lumber, then get the pre-cut studs.

[Patrick Kane]

If you want to build dog houses, buy construction lumber. If you want to build furniture, buy furniture grade. #1 common in soft maple and poplar are great budget options for furniture. If you have no care of what the lumber looks like, get on the bandwagon and build with pallet lumber.

I regularly see roughcut poplar in the $1-1.30bdft range, which doesnt make it too too much more expensive than a typical 2x4 'stud'. Maybe you pay 30% more, and you have to surface the material yourself, but it will be night and day to construction grade lumber.

[Cameron Wood]

I disagree with the 2x8 strategy. IME (west coast), 2x8s are milled from the outside of logs and are routinely crappy, with sapwood and waney edges-
to be avoided if possible.

[Tom M King]

The problem is both the way trees are grown, and the way the lumber is processed.

As a grower of Pine timber, you have to file a Timber Management Plan to keep the land in the low tax rate. I write my own plan, and it's different than what is taught in schools these days, but no different than my Ancestors used. I've had to threaten to go to court, which I would do, to county officials that approve the plans. The law says nothing much about how the plan has to be, or whether it's written by a professional. My plan is approved.

Today, they grow timber to yield trunks large enough to be harvested as early as possible. This means the trees are thinned early, and given room to spread out. Small sizes of framing lumber has a large percentage of Juvenile wood in them. 4x4's are almost all Juvenile wood. Since the trees are thinned so early, limbs branch out all the way to the ground.

Good timber growers used to let Pine trees grow thick and tall before they were ever thinned the first time. This makes the lower limbs fall off while the trees are small diameter as the crown stretches up to get light. We like for the lowest limbs to be 34 feet up before ever thinning the first time. This makes the trees tall and spindly, and as a result don't reach the same diameter as fast as the early thinned ones that have limbs all the way to the ground. With limbs about 34 feet, the trees are thinned to allow them to grow bigger, which as a by product gives you a small amount of Juvenile wood relative to the ones thinned early.

When exposed to light, hardwood tree trunks will grow new limbs all the way to the ground. Pine doesn't do that. When limbs fall off, they aren't replaced, but the tree continues to grow up and out, and the rest of the wood on the trunks is clear.

There is some danger to losing some to ice, but you don't thin them enough for this to matter the first time in case you lose some before they get large enough to withstand a load of ice.

This is the way you grow large, clear saw logs. It has taken longer to get them to your harvest target, but the value of the logs are higher enough to make up for it, it just takes much longer.

These are logs you get good quality lumber out of.

Now about the lumber processing:

Up until the past three decades, you could buy no.2 Yellow Pine 2x4's up to 16 feet long that were straight, and would stay straight. The mills would rough saw good timbers, air dry the wood on stickers for a year outside, then put them in a kiln slow fired with sawdust from the mill, and then do the final processing, which included a straightline saw to start with.

These days, they saw the lumber one day, kiln dry it overnight, dress it in the morning, and band it in bundles. You need to stand back when you cut one of these bands. This is the framing lumber we know today, for the most part.

Around here, you can't even buy a Yellow Pine 2x4 or 2x6 these days because it's almost all non useable when processed like this. Pine is a very stable wood if grown and processed well.

[Dave Roock]

Stopped in the most visited local Home Depot & checked out the 2x4 and other lumber. Stud grade had some good boards but needed some careful sorting as usual.
There were better grade boards available. One option was called Premium Burrill Fir Stud. Very nice boards, $4.57 ea. / 100+ $4.11 ea Checked overall customer reviews and saw mostly good reviews. Some very nice SYP lumber also. You will have to sort anywhere you go, Home Depot gets a bad rap somewhat unfairly. Picked up a Red Oak plywood sheet there last year, it was a very good board but I sorted through a few to grab a good one. Spending a few extra $ to get a few premium boards = a good idea.

[William Hodge]

Daniel, it's worth getting decent wood for the upholstery work bench. Talk to a wholesaler, see what they have. You mentioned Polar, that works great as a utility wood. Given the cost of the wood and the cost of labor, the cost of wood should not be a major percentage of the price. I am selling three board feet of wood for $1,625., made into some mill work. I buy the wood for $6. a foot, and am machining it, and assembling it, and selling it for $541. a board foot.

Poplar might be $4. or $5. a foot, it's worth it to make a cart that won't warp and twist. Any framing lumber is subject to some movement, by definition. We all have stories. I bought dry Czechoslovakian 2 x 4's at a lumber yard, and I built my sister a bed out of them. 30 years ago. I built a generator shed out of Home Depot lumber last fall. It worked great. the 6' x 8' shed is out of square on the diagonals by 2", but I chalk that up to my carpentry skills, not the wood.

[Jim Dwight]

I need to quit blogging and go work on a somewhat similar table I committed to make for a work room at church. The pastor who ordered it wants it nice enough he can pull it out into the lobby area sometimes. I picked out 2x4s for it last Thursday and have the doubled up pieces glued together and ripped to rough dimension. I need to run them through the planner and cut to length and make the pieces which are not doubled out of the rest of the pile.

When I got to the BORG (my favorite locally for several reasons but mainly proximetry, the Lowe's takes 10-15 minutes longer to reach) I looked at the stack of 2x4s. It was an almost new bundle that had not been picked over. If I found a picked over bundle, I would have started looking at wider material to rip down. I still had to pick through the stack to find decent pieces but I got what I think I need plus a few pieces - to allow for those that move before I get them fastened into the table. I haven't measured the moisture content cut I expect it will be up to 20%. Not the best for furniture making but I've used similar material several times in the past. It can work but you need to allow for more shrinkage. The best thing about using this material is the price. I think I paid $50 for what I need which is a lot less than I will spend on the top (prefinished flooring to match a picture of what they want).

[Ben Ellenberger]

I regularly see roughcut poplar in the $1-1.30bdft range, which doesnt make it too too much more expensive than a typical 2x4 'stud'. Maybe you pay 30% more, and you have to surface the material yourself, but it will be night and day to construction grade lumber.

This is my approach too. I pretty much only use poplar for “inexpensive” furniture I make. I’m sure you could save a few dollars picking through framing lumber and trimming it down, but I value my time more highly than that.

[Dave Sabo]

Around me Lowes consistently has the best 2x4s of anyplace , incld. the 100+ year old lumber/ milwork supplier.