slant eyes

i've searched high and low. I have even pestered people at work. But it seems everytime i buy a piece of wood, ie 2 x4, 2 x 6, and 2 x 8, it just warps the hell out of itself. prior to buying it, i spend the time to look at it and compare it to the others making sure it's as straight as possible. I get home and store it on top of other bits of wood being used as chocks to keep off the ground, thinking the moisture from the ground gets it warped. I tried keeping them stacked so that the weight alone keeps them straight, but they always warp up. does someone have any ideas or suggestions on how to pick/buy/keep wood straight?

or am i just buying the wrong type?

thanks in advance

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skinnymofo

find the dryest wood as it will warp the least as the rest of the moisture is taken out.
to help keep it from warping or to help straighten it, clamp it to something flat (table saw etc.) and let it sit there will still be a little warpage and if your building things just get a harder wood and drill countersink holes and let the screw suck it up.
and if you find a nice straight piece of wood, try and keep it the same humidity as the place you bought it from. it *should* stay fairly close to how you bought it.
you mind sharing what your building with your wood? just curious

splck

Buy kiln dried wood. look for nice straight, even grain with as few knots as possible.

You get what you pay for when it comes to lumber.

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nice line eh?

slant eyes

thanks for the advice guys. we recently had one of those pre-fab tin sheds in the backyard. problem with that was cuz it wasn't sealed bugs, spiders, snakes, and other misc pests were in there and no one wanted to go in -- that aside from the fact that it's unbelievably small. so we poured a concrete foundation and built a shed from scratch. this was made from the wood that i tried to keep straight.

now i am looking to buy more wood to make an aquarium stand out of an existing 3 foot wall/room divider/ledge thing at the foyer of the house. when you walk in from the front door, there is this 2.5 - 3 foot wall that is meant to act as a room divider. it's at an ideal height so i figured if i made it deeper and drywalled it to look like the walls, i could have an aquarium stand. i'll take before and after shots for you guys, if interested. thanks

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apetaster

Good info above - one thing I'd add is that lots of times the wood in lumberyards may appear to be arrow straight and without cups/crooks/bows but when you get it home and start to work it a few days later it looks like a hockey stick - one thing you can and should do is let wood acclimate to the environment in which it will be used for a week or two (especially critical with flooring materials) if you find that specific pieces of lumber have developed bad flaws, then at least it is before you do the installation - if you bought from a home center and have not returned it, you can even do exchanges (note that HD and Lowes often carries lumber that would otherwise not be saleable at a real lumberyard)

wakelagger

My Dad and I were at home depot buying red cedar planks to replace the well-worn spots on his deck. When we were picking the wood, we'd check how straight the boards were, and it was abysmal. They were twisted, bent, and all over the place. Crosby could've picked one up and scored a goal with it. But I digress. Anyways, as we were picking the few decent 2 x 6's, a contractor came by mentioning how he ordered some of red cedar for delivery for a deck a few days ago. of the 72 boards he ordered, he had to send back 40 because the warpage was too intense for the sober mind. Just as a test, he marked the boards he sent back with a pencil mark on the ends. Low and behold, those boards were the ones we were sifting through that day.
Does Home Depot actually think someone wants a higher end wood like red cedar to be twisted like charles manson?

cj2112

Wood is going to cup, twist and warp, it is not a static product. It will move, it will swell, it will shrink...noticably. Buying kiln dried lumber will help reduce this, but it still is going to do this somewhat as the level of moisture in it changes. Use it as soon as you can after you buy it, get it sealed as soon as you can. You want to acclimate panel products, and rough lumber that you are going to be milling. But kiln dried studs/joists should not require acclimating at all.

james t kirk

Home Depot's cedar sucks.

Make the trip to Central Fairbank Lumber on Steeles. They have great stuff. My friend bought all their cedar there and it was great quality.

http://www.centralfairbank.com/contact.html