[gaweidert]

The inch, foot, yard system also begins at zero.

Very abstract.

Then let's go talk to our carpenter friends. I still can't get my head around the concept of a 5/4 board. The wraparound porch on my house is covered with 5/4 cedar decking.

Looks more like .75" thick by 3.5" wide to me.

That is true, but zero is nothing. A starting point. How can placing nothing to the right of the number one suddenly multiply the value by ten? Best bet is to go to Roman Numerals. MMXVII makes much more sense that 2017. There is that pesky zero again. But this time it multiplies by one thousand? How can this be? I am suddenly very confused. Or at age 66 just a bit addled.

5/4 board is a board that was rough cut to 1 1/4 inches thick before being planed smooth. You should be thankful for inches and feet. Without them you would have no lumber from which to make that deck.

I'll also be glad when the Celsius temperature measuring system is abolished. I have a hard time with the concept that at 38 degree day is hot. Just not a big enough number.

[JimJohnson]

Fortunately time measurement standards are fairly consistent around the planet (all you Einsteinian physicists stay out of this discussion). It makes travel so much easier when you are told what the typical walking, driving, flying time might be. - or what fraction of a second our shutter speed should be to take that image home with us.

[ccc_]

That is true, but zero is nothing. A starting point. How can placing nothing to the right of the number one suddenly multiply the value by ten? Best bet is to go to Roman Numerals. MMXVII makes much more sense that 2017. There is that pesky zero again. But this time it multiplies by one thousand? How can this be? I am suddenly very confused. Or at age 66 just a bit addled.

5/4 board is a board that was rough cut to 1 1/4 inches thick before being planed smooth. You should be thankful for inches and feet. Without them you would have no lumber from which to make that deck.

I'll also be glad when the Celsius temperature measuring system is abolished. I have a hard time with the concept that at 38 degree day is hot. Just not a big enough number.

if you are afflicted with the curiosity gene the educational process can be quite tedious
so many "teachers" who don't deal with concepts particularly well
mrs. fleming in the third grade pushed aside the lessons by rote to explain the idea of zero
zero wasn't so much nothing as a container with nothing in it.

however many years later I worked on a awful lot of equipment where zero was one
corresponding to a bit in software...somewhere
0-1, 0-7 or 0-9

1-13 had to be expressed in BCD...binary coded decimal...a place where nothing could not live

the kids who didn't get it at seven were well and truly screwed in their thirties and forties
headaches and frustration abounded

as to Celsius...another abomination that needs to be scuttled
at zero my snot should freeze

[robtcorl]

2x4s were 2"x4''.

Years ago a friend was looking to buy a house, his dad told him "Son, make sure the house has "real" two by fours."

[Rupert]

the kids who didn't get it at seven were well and truly screwed in their thirties and forties
headaches and frustration abounded

Not a problem really....if you have a good shotgun you can make a lot of corrections to ridiculous attempts to "correct" our mathematical "deficiencies". West Texas proved very costly, but it saved the rest of the state from such a blunder.

Years ago a friend was looking to buy a house, his dad told him "Son, make sure the house has "real" two by fours."

Bob....years ago I got involved in a remodel of a 100 year old home. It was a two story and very elegant in its day, but had seen long years of hard times. I spent a year on it off an on, with a crew of various skilled workers. One oddity these guys had never seen...all the lumber in the house was true dimensional. A 2x4 was 2" x 4". Most of it was rough-sawn but very high quality.You almost never saw a knot in any of it.Some of the 14-16 foot ceiling joists were 2x12 and perfectly clear, not a knot or blemish. Beautiful lumber it was in that house!

Regards!

[ccc_]

Not a problem really....if you have a good shotgun you can make a lot of corrections to ridiculous attempts to "correct" our mathematical "deficiencies". West Texas proved very costly, but it saved the rest of the state from such a blunder.



Bob....years ago I got involved in a remodel of a 100 year old home. It was a two story and very elegant in its day, but had seen long years of hard times. I spent a year on it off an on, with a crew of various skilled workers. One oddity these guys had never seen...all the lumber in the house was true dimensional. A 2x4 was 2" x 4". Most of it was rough-sawn but very high quality.You almost never saw a knot in any of it.Some of the 14-16 foot ceiling joists were 2x12 and perfectly clear, not a knot or blemish. Beautiful lumber it was in that house!

Regards!

we had a tornado go through town
where the homes were "modern" a loader and dump truck sufficed for demolition
the really old houses...disassembled by hand and loaded into carpenters' trucks

---------- Post added 07-12-17 at 07:51 AM ----------

Years ago a friend was looking to buy a house, his dad told him "Son, make sure the house has "real" two by fours."

I had a conversation with a Swedish carpenter who abhorred dimensional lumber and balloon construction

he said he did one or two jobs a year and built everything with joints
in other words the drywall and sheathing didn't hold the house up

of course, I asked him how he could afford to build that way
his response was...it didn't cost HIM anything
he worked by word of mouth and had a waiting list of clients

[Racer X 69]

That is true, but zero is nothing. A starting point. How can placing nothing to the right of the number one suddenly multiply the value by ten? Best bet is to go to Roman Numerals. MMXVII makes much more sense that 2017. There is that pesky zero again. But this time it multiplies by one thousand? How can this be? I am suddenly very confused. Or at age 66 just a bit addled.

Without zero there can be nothing above 9.

5/4 board is a board that was rough cut to 1 1/4 inches thick before being planed smooth. You should be thankful for inches and feet. Without them you would have no lumber from which to make that deck.

That just doesn't make any sense. Plane away nearly half of the thickness of a board to make one?

I'll also be glad when the Celsius temperature measuring system is abolished. I have a hard time with the concept that at 38 degree day is hot. Just not a big enough number.

Better 38°C than 560°R.

And hey. How about the measurements commonly associated with a woman's figure? Say 36", 24", 36"?

914mm, 609mm, 914mm. (of course she wouldn't have a waist if it weren't for the zero)

[Racer X 69]

One oddity these guys had never seen...all the lumber in the house was true dimensional. A 2x4 was 2" x 4". Most of it was rough-sawn but very high quality.You almost never saw a knot in any of it.Some of the 14-16 foot ceiling joists were 2x12 and perfectly clear, not a knot or blemish. Beautiful lumber it was in that house!

In the early days there were no mills that kiln dried lumber. It was all sawn to the nominal size, and shipped to the customers. And of course it was all cut from old growth trees, the likes of which man will never see again.

Many years ago a company on the Everett, Washington waterfront named Western Gear went out of business. It had been established in the late 1800's on the waterfront. A huge manufacturing plant, gears and machinery were produced there. The buildings had been constructed from timbers cut and milled form old growth trees. When they tore the plant down locals were allowed to come and take as much as they wished so the demolition company wouldn't have to pay to remove it.

I went there daily for a month, picking and pulling timbers that have been cut dimensionally from the old trees. Beams 6"x14" longer than I could manage. I cut many down to lengths I could manage and move in a pickup or on a flatdeck car trailer. I built a shop with the material I took from there.

It stood for over 30 years until the property it was on was sold to developers who tore every building down on several sections of land, raped off all the vegetation, hauled everything off to a landfill, and built hundreds of Ticky Tacky boxes with Zero Lot Lines, out of lumber that has been farmed. The trees used to build those new homes were so small that they aren't cut into dimensional lumber.

No, the lumber used in those homes is created by chipping those young trees into bits, and the bits are smashed together with glue to make OSB and 'engineered' lumber, which is another way to say 'chip board'.

[ccc_]

...That just doesn't make any sense. Plane away nearly half of the thickness of a board to make one?...

unfortunately it makes total sense...most buyers would think a rough cut board defective

I helped my father in law timber out and mill three huge cottonwoods
when we were done framing he couldn't give away the leftovers
not because it was cottonwood (which seems a good reason to me) but because of all the saw marks

pretty sells...ugly doesn't

[Racer X 69]

we had a tornado go through town
where the homes were "modern" a loader and dump truck sufficed for demolition
the really old houses...disassembled by hand and loaded into carpenters' trucks

My home is built with (mostly) concrete. Called ICF, for Insulated Concrete Form, the blocks are assembled into walls, tied together and filled with rebar and concrete. The interior walls and floors are conventionally framed with wood, and the roof is conventional wood truss design. We don't get tornadoes here, but if we did, the house would be fitted with shutters, and a tornado would cause little if any damage to the structure.

The exterior walls are 457mm (18") thick, with a R value of 50.

I had a conversation with a Swedish carpenter who abhorred dimensional lumber and balloon construction

he said he did one or two jobs a year and built everything with joints
in other words the drywall and sheathing didn't hold the house up

of course, I asked him how he could afford to build that way
his response was...it didn't cost HIM anything
he worked by word of mouth and had a waiting list of clients

The GC I hired builds 2 homes a year, taking 6 months to build each one. In the 6 months it took to build the house he was here all but a couple days at the beginning as he tied up loose ends on the previous home he was just finishing, and a few days near the end as he was setting up the next build.

[ccc_]

In the early days there were no mills that kiln dried lumber. It was all sawn to the nominal size, and shipped to the customers. And of course it was all cut from old growth trees, the likes of which man will never see again.

Many years ago a company on the Everett, Washington waterfront named Western Gear went out of business. It had been established in the late 1800's on the waterfront. A huge manufacturing plant, gears and machinery were produced there. The buildings had been constructed from timbers cut and milled form old growth trees. When they tore the plant down locals were allowed to come and take as much as they wished so the demolition company wouldn't have to pay to remove it.

I went there daily for a month, picking and pulling timbers that have been cut dimensionally from the old trees. Beams 6"x14" longer than I could manage. I cut many down to lengths I could manage and move in a pickup or on a flatdeck car trailer. I built a shop with the material I took from there.

It stood for over 30 years until the property it was on was sold to developers who tore every building down on several sections of land, raped off all the vegetation, hauled everything off to a landfill, and built hundreds of Ticky Tacky boxes with Zero Lot Lines, out of lumber that has been farmed. The trees used to build those new homes were so small that they aren't cut into dimensional lumber.

No, the lumber used in those homes is created by chipping those young trees into bits, and the bits are smashed together with glue to make OSB and 'engineered' lumber, which is another way to say 'chip board'.

a lot of your old growth is shipped straight to japan
the reasoning is that we don't care and the Japanese will pay a premium for real wood

you have to admit that engineered wood is better than wasted wood...don't you?

the heavy equipment operator who graded a flat spot for our barn has a sideline...he salvages the wood from barns and houses he wrecks out
in his barn he mills, joins and/or laminates some gorgeous old wood, then sells it on to boutique builders regionally (mostly for use as flooring)
that would be walnut, oak and locust

[Racer X 69]

a lot of your old growth is shipped straight to japan
the reasoning is that we don't care and the Japanese will pay a premium for real wood

What old growth that is left is protected, on federal forest lands, and will never be harvested. The last of the old growth that was cut down commercially was more than 50 years ago. As a boy I recall seeing logging trucks with 2 or 3 log loads. That was indeed a very long time ago.

Today lumber is farmed, and forest lands are managed like any other farming. Tree farms harvest timber for lumber at about 40 to 50 year intervals. The trees aren't very big when cut down, usually about 300mm (12"" in diameter). Trucks these days will have about 75 to 100 logs on a load.

Cedar has been over harvested and nearly cut into extinction. There used to be cedar shake mills everywhere, and almost all homes had shake roofs. Today cedar is a protected tree (in the Northwest) and anyone caught taking cedar without proper permits (very hard to get) is arrested and prosecuted.

And almost all homes have composition roofs now.

[robtcorl]

There was a lot of wood used to build structures for the 1904 St Louis World's Fair.
A lot of that wood was recycled and can be found in barns and outbuildings in the StL area.
We used to live near a large red barn built from the material.

[Rupert]

Very interesting stuff....I already knew a lot about the old forests and wood, my Granddad schooled me on "how it used to be" when he worked on building those now old-time mansions...with no power tools and the pay was $1 a day......$1.25 if you were lucky.

Most interesting on how Racer's home was built. I've known of a few around here built with that method, but never saw it happening in progress up close. Very interesting!
I do have a Mexican friend that I did the plumbing on his home a few years back. He came from way down in Mexico where they had no tornadoes, and tornadoes horrified him. So, he bought some land and built a concrete home.....100% of the structure, including the roof. It could take a direct hit and other than some broken glass, you'd never know it. Inside was normal and attractive...outside was a stucco finish. Nice looking place.....I'll get some shots the next time I'm out his way.

Lunch time here.....I don't usually eat much if anything but these smoked oysters just kept calling out to me today!



Delicious!

Regards!

[ccc_]

What old growth that is left is protected, on federal forest lands, and will never be harvested. The last of the old growth that was cut down commercially was more than 50 years ago. As a boy I recall seeing logging trucks with 2 or 3 log loads. That was indeed a very long time ago.

Today lumber is farmed, and forest lands are managed like any other farming. Tree farms harvest timber for lumber at about 40 to 50 year intervals. The trees aren't very big when cut down, usually about 300mm (12"" in diameter). Trucks these days will have about 75 to 100 logs on a load.

Cedar has been over harvested and nearly cut into extinction. There used to be cedar shake mills everywhere, and almost all homes had shake roofs. Today cedar is a protected tree (in the Northwest) and anyone caught taking cedar without proper permits (very hard to get) is arrested and prosecuted.

And almost all homes have composition roofs now.

just because it is on federal land is no guarantee that the trees won't be allocated to timber companies...it is a managed resource

composite roofs probably upset the woodpeckers