Lawyers in the Midwest are really having a hard time as we get news of a possible class action lawsuit in Chicago that is beyond what a person in a high-paying job can imagine. Our legal hawks seem to be concerned that they are under-sizing their lumber, which in turn has led them to file a class-action lawsuit against Home Depot and Menards for using assumed nominal sizes when selling lumber.
        If you’ve ever bought commercial lumber, you certainly know what I’m talking about. The sawmill takes a piece of fresh wood directly from the forest and cuts it to a certain size. It is then aged either to dry and mature outdoors, or in an oven to achieve the same effect more quickly. This makes the wood workable for what you expect to use, but it will shrink the wood as it depends on variables like moisture so it can’t be accurately quantified. Thus, the sawmill cuts a 4-inch square piece of lumber into about a 3.5-inch square piece of seasoned lumber. Therefore, it will only be sold in a nominal 4-inch size. This has been the case since commercial lumber has been produced, we’re guessing for centuries or so, so it’s not likely to come as a surprise to anyone in the lumber market.
        So, back to the expected lawsuit. Once the laughter in the lumbering, construction, and woodworking industries dies down, will their claims of being deceived by selling customers a 3.5″ size and deceiving them a 4″ size? We are not Hackaday lawyers, but we believe the time-honored nature of nominal lumber sizes will be a difficult hurdle for their requirements, along with the existence of other nominal size products in the construction industry such as rolled steel beams. Would it be cruel to describe the entire hoax as a frivolous phishing operation whose sole purpose is to get a cash payout? Probably not, and we hope that the judges before then can agree with us.
       If you have any thoughts on this case, especially if you have a law degree, we would love to hear from you in the comments.
        I’m not sure what “thoughts” are needed? The last time I looked at a tree, the actual size was in small print.
        Unless there is a precedent. HD and Menard had to read and learn. http://www.hbsdealer.com/article/lowes-ordered-pay-2×4-settlement
        This is a different appeal process filed by local authorities. Chicago is without precedent.
        I am not a lawyer, but I have long admired their efforts to challenge wrongdoing and fight for what is right. In this case, it would be wrong to force a company to change the typical size of a billion-dollar product. So many projects and construction works will be compromised by any change in scale). It’s like changing the gas and seeing the effect on the car. Everyone knows the size and most of us understand why. Right now I like the price and the size, the change will push the price up, which is the wrong direction we need right now. Okay – that’s my 2 cents – maybe 1.9999999 cents – didn’t measure – does it matter?
        Fun but scary… Technically, these morons have legitimate complaints. No matter how funny it is. This is the only time I hope that the legal team at the big store will destroy these idiots….
        If you’ve ever picked up a hammer, I doubt that when you order 50 2 x 4 in one of those “gold parachutes” that work in big boxes, they’re probably 3 1/2 wide. Then came the order for “2 x 4″ and they were 3 1/4 inches wide. If you look at their website, both are sold as 2 x 4. Even though they print at actual size, as one gentleman said, they are all advertised as the “industry standard”. Another example of corporate theft. That being said, I’m sure you’re capable; your blunt guns point back.
        This is absolutely stupid and people should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who has bought lumber in bulk knows that this has been the norm in North America for decades, while the rest of the world is measured in metric units. Maybe the argument should be that the US is metric so everyone is the same. Too many people try to make money the easy way instead of relying on other people’s work. Maybe these people should get out of the real world and try to contribute to our society instead of looking for something for free.
        I think you’re missing out on the most costly part of getting your rough wood ready for use – thicknessing and sawing. This is where most of the size variation comes from.
        Not that it makes sense to file a lawsuit over this, but Ian is right, in my lifetime the difference in normal 2×4 sizes – even the same pegs – is enough that you can’t use old and new together, nothing serious. redesign. Have the physical properties of shrink wood changed? No. Has a piece of 4×8 plywood lost height or width? No, but lesser thickness… using cured and sawn laminates, of course. If you want to really experience it, try real 2x4s salvaged from an old igloo that is 100 years old or so…they don’t fit anywhere and look like beams compared to the current stuff. Now in many cases the current material can be a little thinner than the old but the same in strength, most lumber suppliers will either let me choose straight material with low knots or if I ask a smart person I will help, I will do it like this (in this game has a whole vocabulary). If they just named the size it would still make a lot of people’s lives easier, but it would be embarrassing because all those 1/32 and 1/64 cheats would show both difficulty and cheating. The author is clearly in love with the local lumber trade. A good report might also include pricing based on timing and natural disasters, intentional capacity cuts to keep prices high, and so on.
        I’m assuming this is the crux of the problem. Nominal sizes have been around for a long time, but today’s nominal sizes are smaller than they were 20 years ago. This is due to cost reduction.
        If the original boards were not 2×4 before drying and finishing, the nominal size argument will be dropped. Given any advances in craftsmanship, it’s hard to imagine that they would somehow get less wood from the same board.
        He doesn’t even have to be 100 years old. My grandma’s house is only 50 years old, and lumber in the house is allowed in 2×4 inches. Not only that, it is also as tough and durable as it gets. Attempting to cut it will break the blade.
       I think it’s a legitimate claim because anything reasonable like trying to find 3/4″ plywood is next to impossible these days and working with 16″ is a big hassle when building something big.
        It is also a pain in a small size. I do some woodworking at a local day camp, including design projects and blank cuts. When I set up stops on my table saw to cut parts that need to be joined, I no longer make assumptions about the width or thickness of the workpiece – I use real wood.
        My understanding is that this is largely due to the fact that in the “good old days” wood came from much older trees, including slow growing species. The old age was mostly cut down, and today it is rare and mostly protected (that’s right, rare now). Today’s wood is harvested from young trees growing on older trees, and the same land is recut every 10 to 20 years or so.
        This requires the use of faster growing and therefore softer wood. No one can force a business to wait 100 years or more for a product to grow! These trees grow faster because they are less bulky. This is why we get softer wood that shrinks more when it dries. There aren’t many “things” in this forest.
        It’s a combination of what I was told and what I did from what I was told. Maybe it’s wrong. Is there a taker?
        I disagree. What was once 2×4 has actually become 2″ x 4″… anyone renovating an old house will see this happen. The new 1.5×3.5 standard is based on the desire to cut costs and maximize profits by providing as little nominal material as possible. It’s no different than buying bacon at the grocery store. A year ago, the parcel was 500 grams. Now they are all packaged in 375 grams, and the price is about the same. People first complain, then agree and continue to buy because “this is the new normal.”
        I used to have a big lumberyard in the city and I bought six geriatric machines. If you ask for a 2×4 board, they will give you a real 2″x4″ board. In general, they are expensive, but they have the best options and the best wood. Their “Pine grade pine” is better than any other sawmill’s “uncontaminated pine”. Home Depot wood is crap by comparison. Unfortunately, the plant burned down about 10 years ago and we lost a great supplier of quality timber.
        This problem is bigger than stock 2×4. The 3/4″ ply is not really 3/4″, and their 4/4″ and 5/4″ lumber is not really 1″ and 1 1/4″ as it should be. If you live in an old house and have lived for a while, you know that the 2×4 in the old house is actually 2×4, but the one in the store is no longer a rough saw, but 1 1/2 x 3 1/ 2. You must add strips of additional thickness and continue on the road or where unedged lumber is produced.
        A bigger issue for me is lying about 3/4″ plywood actually being a slightly smaller size (probably metric), or lumber listed in quarters of an inch, which is not a quarter of an amount but some random nominal size. It’s *not* the industry standard “we’ve been doing this for years”. This is a mislabeling of the product.
        This is because many old houses are built with 2×4 rough lumber 2×4 inches. The 2x4s sold at the hardware store have 4 sides, which reduces them to 1.5″ x 3.5″. It’s not a recent development, it’s been that way since I was a kid (40 years ago), long before that.
        @jdoeg you don’t use the 2×4 sawmill often. Most of the stock I have purchased from Menards over the past 15 years still has saw marks on the surface. They sawed the boards very thinly and hardly planed anything, just enough to put them on the pallet in several even layers.
        The carpentry shop explained to me that very little shrinkage is due to drying. All these cuts and the final thickness planing are taken into account. The idea is that if you could split a whole tree into lumber, all 2x4s would be 2×4 inches, all 1x12s would be 1×12 inches, and so on. But they can’t do that. Someone has to pay for all the wood, and that’s always the buyer. Like “free” pizza delivery, nothing is truly free.
        This is the story that was told to me. Of course, they could still make them 2″ x 4″ and pay for less trash per tree.
        I think so too. If the amount of shrinkage and the required gouging are known, then why can’t it be compensated for in the raw grinding? If you know that the 2″ size will shrink to 1.5″ when it’s ready to use, why not cut it down to 2.5″ to get what’s advertised? Maybe then we’ll have straight walls and vertical houses. This would allow for simpler and more accurate calculations for each building project without having to make up the 25% difference per board (I understand that losses increase with board size, this is just an example). I think the answer is related to everything else in this world. money. The timber industry doesn’t get the same amount from harvested wood, so they lose out on reducing the number of boards per tree, which of course we can’t. It is much easier for the consumer to make amends than it is for the mill to lose that extra 1/2 inch of wood. Again, money is more important than sanity.
        Reminds me of that old joke. If you’ve got a bunch of lawyers burying their heads in the sand, what do you have… Not enough sand.
        Q: What’s the difference between a dead skunk on the road and a dead lawyer on the road? A: There are skid marks leading to a skunk.
        Q: What is the difference between a som and a lawyer? A: One is a low-level organism that sucks slag and feeds on the bottom, and the other is a fish
        In any case, what’s going on here? It doesn’t matter why these two companies, they are just intermediaries, they do not cut wood from the forest, they are the work of different companies. There are many other sawmills that also sell lumber with the same “size difference” as these 2.
        I doubt that lawyers have any real legal basis for this, since for decades lumber has always been cut to original size and then air dried before being sold. 1.75×3.5 is not like 2×4.
       If they start cutting 2x4s so that they are 2″ x 4″ when sold, everyone will be furious because they are too big.
        For a long time there were such, but with rough dimensions – not a smooth surface. My house is completely rough, real timber 2×4, 2×6 and 2×8. Nominal dimensions are based on the expected distance from the workpiece to achieve a smooth surface with consistent dimensions and are the standard. At a given level of humidity, the dimensions will be in a given range. This is where they fail.
        This little gem was taught to me when I was an elementary school student. The work in progress is 2×4. Finished size 1 3/4 x 3 3/4. I was then taught that this is the current method. He changed several times. A 1/2 inch drop in one direction is not surprising. They probably cut out 1 3/4 x 3 3/4 and then finished, that is, the remaining 1/4 on each side. For every 7 boards you get an extra direction and 14 boards in the other direction. If these boards are green, unfinished, then yes, they have a cover. There should be very little shrinkage of a maximum of 1/4. 1/2 inch is the most unusual.
        “Earlier standards required wet logs to be full nominal size when dry. However, over time the size decreased. In 1910, a typical 1″ (25mm) finished board was 13/16″ (21mm). In 1928, this figure was reduced by 4%, and in 1956 by another 4%. In 1961, at a meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, the Class Simplification and Standardization Committee agreed to what is now the current US standard: section, crop size is fixed at 3/4. ” for 1″ (nominal) boards; and cut size for 2″ (nominal) lumber reduced from 1 5/8″ to current 1 1/2″
        People should read this answer carefully. Then buy a 2×4, a few inches long, and compare it to the previous 2×4. In other breaking news, 1-pound coffee cans now only hold about 11 ounces of coffee, and coffee isn’t the only item that’s shrinking in size. A 1 gallon can of bleach now becomes a 3/4 gallon can, and so on. Worst of all, inflation ensures that no matter how much sizes and quantities decrease in real terms, prices rise, and not just in nominal dollars. In short, this is a scam and the end user/consumer is losing money and this is getting shorter and shorter.
        Coffee, bleach, and other similar items are not sold in “nominal” sizes. Denomination literally means “in the name”. This is the same size as a standard pipe. Tube 1/8 inch plan. The 40 doesn’t have a 1/8″ ID (bigger, actually, because improvements in metallurgy have allowed the pipe to go from the original 1/8″ hole to a larger hole that now has the same OD.) The coffee can you came in was probably the same capacity as before, but if it only had 11 ounces of coffee, it’s better to say 11 ounces (or less) on the label, otherwise it’s a textbook scam. The same goes for your bleach. However, it is understood that the dimensions of the lumber are nominal, not dimensional, no matter how large they used to be, they are only nominal 2×4, so this claim will be denied.
        But they are no longer 1.75 × 3.5. They are when I go to the carpentry shop. Two stacks of 2×4 to match 4×4. Now it’s 1.5×3.5 and it messes up a lot.
       Not so long ago, Subway got into trouble for selling “foot” subwoofers that were actually only 11 inches long.
       Their excuse is that being a foot long is a trademark and it’s just a coincidence that you think you’re getting a foot long subwoofer.
        Sometimes it is good that a product does not contain an ingredient that is implied in its name, for example, in the word “sandwich”. Some of them are really gritty and crunchy despite sometimes windy days at the beach.
        “Baby oil is also a good example…” Yes, no matter how much you use it, it will not stop squeaking. }:¬)
       But the “hamburger” is called not because of the nature of the product, but because of the name of the city from which it comes from … Hamburg, Germany.
        Do sawmills really cut raw wood into full 4×4 dimensions? If the factory cut raw wood to a size of 3.8×3.8, then yes, it would be a scam.
        This is not a scam as it is listed as part of the American Lumber Standards Board class. The final measurements of the dress are a true standard and are strictly adhered to. At home, my ALSC score was not explained to me, but this is a set of sizes that lowered the score due to sizing issues.
       If a piece of lumber is sawn into a kiln-dried piece, it will be sawn to full size to provide enough wood to compensate for shrinkage during kiln and trimming/planing.