Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: You're listening to the Weeknd warriors home improvement show, built by Paul Humbert. Now here's Tony and Corey.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the weekend warriors home improvement show. Thanks for staying with us today. In the show, Tony and I are talking about lumberyard lingo, things that we hear and say every single day that might sound confusing to the average beginner or a non construction worker or contractor. So Tony and I compiled a big list of terms that we use all the time.
[00:00:44] Speaker C: Right.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: And we call it lumber yard lingo. So let's start at the top in our lumber yard section. Things that you would hear in a lumberyard.
[00:00:52] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay, so here's the first thing you've. You go into a lumberyard, order some stuff, and you want to get it delivered, and the guy behind the counter says, okay, we're going to bring that out on a moffat. We're going to drop it out at your job site, and it'll be ready for you tomorrow morning.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: And you stand on the other side of the counter, go, okay, that sounds great. And then you walk away and go, what the heck is a moffat?
[00:01:11] Speaker C: What's a moffat? The Moffat is a truck that has a forklift on the back. And the forklift actually fits right onto the back of the truck. You see these all the time? Probably, yeah.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Profit is actually a brand name of a company. Yeah, it's a company that makes those little piggyback. I've heard them called little piggyback forklift. Three wheel, four wheel. Yeah.
[00:01:34] Speaker C: You'll pull the forklift up to the back of the truck, stick the forks in there, and then raise or lower the forks. It causes the lift to come up off the ground, and it's just right there on the back of the truck. They take that off, scoop the lumber off the back of the truck, set it down wherever you want it, put the forklift back on the back of the truck, go make their next delivery.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: Yep, they're going.
[00:01:51] Speaker C: It's a very cool thing. Very common these days. It used to be. Not like that. Which brings me to another term. Roller bed.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Roller bed. That sounds fun.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: Yeah, roller bed.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: You don't see too many of those around anymore.
[00:02:04] Speaker C: Roller bed's what we used to use all the time. It's a flatbed truck, but it's got rollers that run the full width of the bed of the truck. And they can be locked or they can roll. Right. You can lock them or unlock them, and then when they're unlocked, the. Whatever's sitting on top of them will move easily back and forth. So they would take that lumber on the back of that truck with all those rollers locked, strap it down, tilt bed. Right. And they'd take it out to the job site, unlock those rollers, mash the gas, and the truck would go driving out from underneath it, and that load would drop straight down on the ground. They also call that a ground pounder or a hard drop.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: You know why they call it a ground pounder?
[00:02:45] Speaker C: Because it pounds the ground. When it hits those loads of.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Knock the teeth, the fillings out of your teeth.
[00:02:51] Speaker C: Yeah. Those loads of lumber are very, very heavy. And it seems like an archaic way of doing things, but it worked for us for a very, very long time, and it is efficient. They get in and out very fast.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Yeah. The tough part about roller beds, though, were that you could really only get one or two deliveries on them, because you would strap down either one side or the other side, and you'd be able to unstrap one side and roll off one or roll off the whole thing. So you're pretty limited. The nice part about the moffat trucks of the forklifts on the back, they can load 510, 20 different loads on there and stop at each delivery along the way, pull the thing off, deliver, deliver, deliver, and run back to the yard. So they're much more efficient.
[00:03:37] Speaker C: Yeah. Power lumber company still employs the hard drop method with smaller trucks, like a two ton truck that takes smaller packs, some small deck packs, or fence packs. Those types of things still get dropped. But there we also are dealing with a lot of materials today that you can't drop. You can't drop fiber cement siding. You can't drop sheetrock. You can't drop concrete bags of pallets of concrete. You can't drop composite decking. Right. These are things that you can't do it. As we get more and more of those types of materials, it makes it more. It makes it safer and more cost effective to use a moffat in order to get that material off the truck.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: So that's.
[00:04:19] Speaker C: That's something there to think about.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Some other delivery methods might be a truss truck or a crane truck or a boom truck. A boom truck. All of those are common use in a lumberyard.
What about forklifts? I mean, forklifts you're gonna see everywhere in a lumber yard. Those are every. I think everybody knows what those are.
[00:04:38] Speaker C: Sure, sure.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: What's the difference between a unit, a bunk, a jag, and a load?
[00:04:44] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, those. Those are terms that get thrown out all the time. If they go out with their load builders that we employ go out into the lumber yard and find all of the materials that are on your order, and they put them all together. And they don't just put them together haphazardly. They put them together with the first thing you're going to use on the top and the last thing you're going to use on the bottom. And they stack this. This load of lumber or this jag of lumber, and they put it all together, and then they band it up with very strong bands, put it on the truck to go out to be delivered. So they call that sometimes a jag or a load. A unit really is something that refers to the lumber that comes to us from the mill. It comes in a unit. We buy in unit quantity or in truckload quantity. And a truckload has a. A whole bunch of units of lumber on it. We buy in volume, because that way we get it for less money, and we're able to turn around and sell it for less.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Typically, a full unit is whatever that. Whatever comes from the mill, whatever they predetermine that size would be. So if they. James Hardy, for instance, eight and a quarter, there's 230 pieces in a unit. So if you called up and said, I need a unit of Hardy, we would sell you 230 pieces. Right. Because I know that's how much is in it.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: But there are a lot of units that come from different manufacturers of the same commodity. Like, for instance, OSB or two by four dry or green lumber. You know, those things come in different size units, so that can get a little tricky.
[00:06:18] Speaker C: Yeah, it does the exact same way that studs do. We buy studs, which is a pre cut length of two by four or two by six used for framing walls in new homes and remodeling. And those studs, depending on what mill they're coming from, oftentimes have different quantities in their units. But one thing that's always true, and this is, this is a little deeper than I would probably would have normally gone. But the depth that the unit is, is always the same. You know, you. If it's two by fours, it's like 13 deep. If it's two by sixes, it's like nine deep. If it's two by tens, it's like six deep. You know what I mean?
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Always.
[00:07:00] Speaker C: And that is because the forks on the forklift, the depth of them do not change. And so the load builders always know how. How many rows there are that they're scooping up. And that's kind of one of the ways that they're able to do it very quickly. They are very good at what they do.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You have to design the units over around the size of a forklift.
[00:07:22] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Instead of vice versa. So a couple of things that you're gonna see with a unit might be a cover sheet.
[00:07:29] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Or even stickers.
[00:07:31] Speaker C: Yeah, stickers. Here's another story, but stickers on there.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: When I first started at the par lumber company, I started out sweeping and cleaning the yard. That was my first job. And I remember Ron Evertz.
[00:07:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Par lumber company manager there at the time, walked up to me and said, I want you to go with, you know, Ralph over there, this other guy, and you're going to swap out all the stickers in the yard. And I'm thinking to myself, like, price stickers? That's not a hard job. Why does he need two of us?
[00:08:05] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: I'm just, you know, sticker sheets. You know, stick and going to town. No, I was wrong. That was the most difficult job ever. Yeah. What a sticker is, is a piece of lumber, typically four by four.
[00:08:19] Speaker C: Or two by four.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Two by four that goes under a unit that doesn't have stickers already banded to it.
[00:08:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: So, like, two by a unit of two x four or two by six won't have anything to set it down. So if you set it down with a forklift flat on the ground, it's really difficult to pick that back up. So they use these, essentially, they're spacers that go underneath the units that you set a certain width apart. Depending on the length of the material, you might want more than two, but typically it's two. You set it under there so that way a forklift can come back and lift it back up off the ground. So I learned the hard way what a sticker was.
[00:08:58] Speaker C: Uh oh. Because you had to go and pick them all up and swap them all.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:09:02] Speaker C: Yeah. That's a big job. We use a lot of stickers, and stickers do not go to waste. We use them and use them and use them either until they can't be used anymore or until somebody else needs them and we send them on. We send stickers sometimes from our distribution yard out to the other yards and back again.
All lumber that we've got out there in the yard gets used for something.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: And I tell you what, in one way or another, old stickers make really good firewood.
[00:09:27] Speaker C: Yeah. Really good campfire, that's for sure. And at some point, they end up having to be used for that. So stickers and cover sheets generally would be for something that you don't want to get damaged up on top. So they would throw some old plywood that's been damaged or returned up on top to protect the top of your.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Or inexpensive plywood like OSP.
[00:09:45] Speaker C: We got to take another quick break. When we come back, more lumberyard lingo. You're listening to Tony and Corey, your weekend warriors. Don't go away.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Weeknd warriors home improvement show, built by Parlumber. When it comes to big or small projects around the home, Tony and Cory, you've got the know how and the answers to make your life just a bit easier. Here they are, your weekend warriors, Tony and Corey.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Hey, welcome to the Weeknd warriors home improvement show, built by par lumber. I'm Cory Valdez.
[00:10:30] Speaker C: And I'm Tony Cookston.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: Thanks for tuning in today. We've got another great show lined up for you. You know, Tony and I work for par lumber company. I've been with the company for almost 15 years. Tony, you've been there?
[00:10:41] Speaker C: Yeah, since 1987.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: Holy cow.
[00:10:43] Speaker C: Can you believe that?
[00:10:44] Speaker B: What is that, 32 years?
[00:10:47] Speaker C: You know, like that. My math doesn't go that high, so.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: 32 years. That's crazy. A long time. Yeah. So, you know, we've learned a lot working at the, the lumberyard, and we thought we'd bring this show to you today to talk about lumberyard lingo.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, it is one of those things, like, you know, any industry, there is a kind of two languages, right? You know, Corey and I do a little bit of radio and a little bit of tv. And in those, in that industry, it has its own lingo as well, its own language. And oftentimes Corey and I feel like, what are they talking about? I don't really know what that is. It kind of helps you feel at home, at ease, gives you a little confidence if you can talk the language of the professionals whenever you're dabbling in something. So if you're a weekend warrior, Diyer, a homeowner, and then you're going to be doing projects around the home that's going to require you to slip into a building material supply store like par lumber and buy materials, and it's a lot easier if you can just speak their language.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: Yeah, you make a good point because I think a lot of people feel intimidated. They walk in and, you know, everybody's looking at them and they're not a contractor or, you know, I'm not a builder, I'm not a contractor. I don't know what I'm doing. So they don't want to. They don't want to go in.
[00:12:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: But the fact of the matter is, it's. It's not so, you know, mystifying.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: Well, it's. It's easier once you've heard it one time, whatever it might be. So we're going to do that. We're going to talk about a lot of terms that are used in the building material supply industry in the.
In a lumber yard or that type of a place, and then we're just going to talk about them. This is. This is what they mean. Uh, and sometimes they have meanings that, uh, multiple meanings. You know, maybe Corey and I are going to know it as one thing, and maybe there's something else. We aren't the end all beat all, but we've been doing it long enough that we'll be able to give you some insight, and, uh, maybe it'll help you out the next time you're in getting something.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: There is a caveat. There's a. There's one thing that I want to say that is that, uh, things are regional, too. You know, you may. You may hear things in your region, wherever that they. You. You are listening from, and not call it what we call it here.
[00:13:11] Speaker C: Here in the Pacific Northern. Yes. Yeah. Bnw.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: I moved here from Michigan, and I learned a lot when I started at parliament company almost 15 years ago. I heard terms people walking in the door. I worked at the front counter. So when people walked in and asked me, hey, you got any leatherback?
[00:13:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: And I'm like, what in the world is leatherback?
[00:13:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: I had no idea.
[00:13:32] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: You know, so that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna. We're gonna throw out some lumber yard lingo, maybe do a little explanation.
[00:13:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: How things work. Behind the scenes stuff.
[00:13:42] Speaker C: It's like, that's a lot of slang, kinda. And, you know, there are things like, Corey was talking about things that are regional, things that are, you know, national. And there's also things that are even smaller than regional, you know, just in your area. One contractor that's been in the business for a long time, and he learned from a contractor that taught him, they have. They have terms that they use to describe things. And, uh, I still hear terms today that I've never heard before. It's an ever growing, ever changing thing. Um, but it's a lot of fun to talk about. So that's kind of going to be our focus today.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: I'll tell you another funny one that got me when I first started in the lumber business, Teco.
[00:14:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: I had no idea what a TQO was.
[00:14:28] Speaker C: They actually put it on the box now, do they? Yeah.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: See, I remember when I first started, people would walk in and say, I need a box of t cos, and I'd go, I have. I have no idea what that is.
[00:14:37] Speaker C: I don't know what that is.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:38] Speaker C: But you just turn to somebody that's been there for a while.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:41] Speaker C: And you say, what's a Tico?
[00:14:42] Speaker B: You only laugh at you. Yeah.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: You only have to ask that question one time, which is why we feel like maybe spending some time here on the radio talking about it. That would help you out. You hear it one time, maybe you'll retain it.
[00:14:55] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:14:55] Speaker C: But there's a lot of those things. Here's another story, Corey, and I've actually told this story on the radio before, and I'm going to just give a really quick version of it. This speaks directly to lumberyard lingo.
There was a lawsuit some time back.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:15:12] Speaker C: Maybe even years ago.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: It wasn't that long ago. It was a couple years.
[00:15:16] Speaker C: California, where somebody had gone into a building material supply store to buy a two before.
Did I say that right?
[00:15:24] Speaker B: Two before, a two before, two by four.
[00:15:26] Speaker C: Yeah, but you have to say it like a contractor says it. A two before, two before.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Not nobody says two before.
[00:15:32] Speaker C: So he came in to buy a two before and they sold him some two before and he left and went back to do whatever he was going to do with it. Well, he was unsatisfied with his two x four because ultimately, when he got back, his two by four did not measure two by four. It measured an inch and a half by three and a half. And he thought, well, they sold me the wrong thing. So we went back and he was upset about it and they said to him, no, that's. That's what it is. We sold you a two by four and it's inch and a half by three and a half. This guy, and again, I don't know all the details, but this guy or gal sued that building material supply company. I think you said Home Depot was named in there.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Yeah. All of them. Essentially every. Every lumber supplier in California got sued.
[00:16:20] Speaker C: Because they were selling a product that, or they were marketing a product that was not exactly what it was being called. And so that is one of the things that, that we want to address because there's a lot of those types of things. So many things like that it has a name because the name is a traditional name that goes all the way back. And it's exactly what you want. It just isn't really meeting the description of its name because its name hasn't changed. But the product has a little.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Well, and there's a reason for that. There's a reason that a two x four is an inch and a half by three and a half and no longer two by four. When they first started cutting them, they were two by four, but over time, you know, they. They add a different milling to those things to make them cleaner and straighter and more consistent. And that's what you get. Inch and a half by three and a half.
[00:17:13] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. It used to be, of course, that you would buy a two by four that was two by four, but it was rough, square edged, and it was what now we refer to as a full son. Two x four.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:17:26] Speaker C: But it's very uncommonly used or less, much less commonly used. And so the. So the connotation full song goes with the thing that's less regularly purchased. And instead, the standard name, two x four goes with what is planed and passed off as my framing material now.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Yeah. I still call it two by four.
[00:17:50] Speaker C: Yeah, well, everybody does.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: I'm not going to walk in and say, give me some inch and a half by three and a half, please.
[00:17:56] Speaker C: That would be funny. That would be somebody that said that would be somebody who needs to hear this show and they would need to know that that is referred to as two x four.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:18:05] Speaker C: So this is actually a good jumping off point. Let's start right here. If you're going into a building material supply store and you're going to be buying lumber that you're going to use to frame up a table in your shop or frame up a shed or a fence or whatever it is that you're working on, you would go in there and say, hey, I need to get some two by fours and some two by sixes. I need some four by fours. And these are the things, what you'll find out is that those things that you're buying are not actually measuring the dimension that you're asking. We'll talk some more about that when we come back. We gotta take a quick break. You're listening to Tony and Corey, your weekend warriors. Don't go away.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: You're listening to the Weeknd warriors home improvement show built by parliamer. Now here's Tony and Corey.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the show, everybody. Thanks for sticking around today. Tony and I are talking about lumberyard.
[00:19:22] Speaker C: Lingo, and sometimes lumberyard lingo is not really, is not really exactly the way it's described. Here's a primary example. Corey, you got a set of blueprints over there?
Do you have.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: No. Well, blueprints are. That's an old term.
[00:19:40] Speaker C: I know it is. And yet it's used all the time. Here's the thing, folks. Blueprints were blue. They used to be blue. Corey actually used to work with Prince. Tell me about that.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, back in the day, we used to copy them with the little, you know, the ammonia transcriber that had the paper roll and that sort of thing. It's totally different now. It's, it's changed so much over the years. I can't even tell you the last time a paper set of plans crossed your desk. Came. Yeah, came across my desk. It just doesn't happen that often.
[00:20:13] Speaker C: Yeah, they used to be blueprints and blueprints used to be blue. It was like a blue, blue paper with white what looked like white writing. It was really the negative. It was the negative of. So it was the absence of the blue was the white. And that was, and that was the writing. And then later it was white paper with, with blue what looked like writing. And then, you know, that gave way to just regular white paper with black print. And honestly, now we almost don't even see plans much anymore. You, you have to have a set of permittable plans. A hard copy set of permittable plans.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Usually red stamped.
[00:20:48] Speaker C: Yep. On a, on a project that is permittable.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:51] Speaker C: So if you have to get a permit, you've got to have a permitted set of plans. And that stays at the job site during your project.
But apart from that, so much of it is just done on the computer, on the laptop or on a tablet or on your phone, even so much digital. And now everything's digital now with pins that allow you to just write right on the screen of your computer. I mean, papers, you know, I don't know.
It's a different time.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: Well, and that's one thing I'll say, is people will call me and they ask me, do I need to bring you a set of plants like back in the old days? I say, absolutely not. Who's your architect? I'll call them and get the engineered set. Yeah, I'll call and get the PDF's emailed to me directly. And that saves so much time and money because you can go to these print shops and they'll charge you, you know, x amount of dollars, two, $3 a sheet.
[00:21:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: So if you've got 20 sheets, you know, you could pay 40, 50, $60 for a set plans.
[00:21:50] Speaker C: What is, what is that digital copy cost?
[00:21:53] Speaker B: It's nothing, right?
[00:21:54] Speaker C: It's free. That's the thing. You mentioned you would contact the architect and get an engineered set of plans. Does the, does the architect who drew the plans also provide the engineering? I mean, is an architect an engineer?
[00:22:07] Speaker B: No. Well, an architect is not an engineer and an engineer is not an architect, typically.
But what you're, I guess if you want to talk about that process, you know, you're going to have an architect who's going to draw the architectural drawings of your home, which are the, you know, the plan, the floor plan and the exterior, the elevations. They're going to draw that. Then an engineer is going to take that, run all their calculations for load, for seismic, for wind, for lateral. All of these calculations that go into making sure that that building doesn't fall.
[00:22:43] Speaker C: Fall down or get crushed underneath a whole bunch of snow.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Exactly. Snow loading. All of that stuff gets calculated in and they add in all of that stuff we talked about earlier, you know, the hold downs and the shear walls and the beams and all of that stuff that comes from the engineer. And that's, it's tip. They go hand in hand. You need both to build a home and you need both to get a good lumber takeoff.
[00:23:08] Speaker C: So here, then here's another question. Can, if you are wanting to build something, do a remodel or build a new home or, or whatever that is your project is, and you want to get a set of plans, do you have to have a new set of plans drawn? Or could you choose from an already engineered set of plans that somebody has been using over and over already that maybe a design that you like?
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Yeah, you can absolutely do that. There are a lot of designers in town. You know, for instance, Allen Mascord, that's a, that's a very common, very common architect firm in downtown Portland. You can call them, and they have a library of plans that you can just purchase. You walk in the door, you pick it out and you purchase it. Or you can go through the full custom. Right. They, they sit with you. You sit down and design it. Obviously, that's going to cost you more money.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: So you have the responsibility of going out and finding your architect. And then do you have the responsibility of going out and finding an engineer? I mean, do you have to this stuff yourself?
[00:24:13] Speaker B: Possibly.
I know builders who do. They use architects and then they have their own engineer, or they have an architect that works with an engineer. So sometimes you see them hand in hand. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes an architect will have several engineers that they work with. It just depends. I will throw out one thing. The one single worst thing that you can do as a homeowner is go online, go shopping, and buy a plan designed and drawn by an architect that's.
[00:24:49] Speaker C: Not in the Pacific Northwest.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: Yes and yes and no. I hate to say that, because there's a lot of legitimate companies out there that sell really good stuff, but I've seen some terrible ones. You know, I get a plan from South Carolina, and it's up here. You know, they bring it up here, and the plans are completely useless because they have to go to a local engineer, get the whole plan re engineered, and a lot of times redrawn, because a lot of the things, the components in that building won't even work here. They don't even meet code in Oregon. So it's really, in my opinion, a bad idea.
[00:25:29] Speaker C: Finding a local architect who's, who is drawing plans for homes in this area, I feel like, would be the best way to go. But you're probably, if you're a homeowner, Cory, and you're, and you're broaching this project, you're probably first choice, or the first thing you want to do is choose a contractor. You're not worried about the architect or the engineer at the beginning of your project. You want to find a contractor.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: I wouldn't necessarily 100% agree with that. I would. You know, if I were building my dream home, I would seek out an architect in design and build my plans, you know, up front and then shop around to builders. You.
[00:26:10] Speaker C: I'll tell you what. This is my opinion. I appreciate that. I appreciate your view. Here's my view. What I want to do is I want to have this perfect little turkey cranberry sandwich. And so I'm going to find a contractor that has a relationship with an architect that has a relationship with an engineer, and I'm going to get this little party together where everybody knows everybody and communicates really good and cheers. And I'm going to. Yeah, I'm going to have this tight little knit group of people who are working to make my dream come true and not try to patch, patchwork, you know, quilt together a bunch of guys from different places. I think there's a lot to be said for the relationships that are built in this industry. And I feel like if you can capitalize on that by choosing one contractor that you trust to work with you and then use his relationships because. Or her. His or her relationships because that is going to benefit you, in my opinion, in the end. So that would be my piece of advice.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I could see both situations where if you want to work with a builder and use that builder's architect and builder's engineer, but in my experience, having that plan not being limited to a particular builder's style, I mean, you could get halfway down the road and realize, man, I've chosen the wrong builder. And now all of a sudden, you're letting the builder go. But still dealing with an architect that you may not love, well, that comes.
[00:27:48] Speaker C: Down to making a. That comes down to having made the wrong choice to begin with. Right. That's why we preach so much about how important it is that you use references and find the guy that. And interview him or her and find the contractor that you are compatible with and you communicate with, and that has the same vision that you have. That way you can move forward with that person.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's a good point.
[00:28:16] Speaker C: Um, so, you know, we, we touched on lumber earlier and, and some of the things like dimensional lumber, we talked about two by four. It's not just two by four. Uh, that has that same situation. It's right up the line, folks. Two by four. Two by six. Two by eight. Four by six by.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: You're right, Tony. And all of that lumber that you just talked about is kind of referred to as dimensional lumber. But there is a type of lumber that actually is the size that it says it is.
[00:28:46] Speaker C: Dimensional lumber. Like, it's dimensionally incorrect.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: But the lumber I'm talking about is called Ewp. Hmm. Ewp lumber, engineered wood products. And what that means is they are built with many pieces of lumber or many pieces of wood, like chips or strands, or even two by material that has been laminated together. A common word might be glulam.
[00:29:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: A glulam is simply dimensional lumber that has been laminated and glued together to create one large, very strong beam.
[00:29:24] Speaker C: If you were to take two by four and stack them up the same height as a four by twelve, for example, those two pieces of wood together might look like they're the same size, but a glulam is substantially stronger. We gotta take another quick break. We'll be right back. You're listening to Tony, Corey, your week in worms.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: You're listening to the Weeknd warriors home improvement show, built by Paul Humber. Now here's Tony and Corey.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the weekend warriors. Thanks for sticking around. If you haven't already, go check out our Facebook and Instagram. We're at or you can go check out our YouTube channel. We've got a great selection of videos up there that we've been working on all this year. Make sure you like all of our videos and subscribe. We think you'll love it.
[00:30:28] Speaker C: Yeah, you can get us on our website at www.homeshow.com or you can go to par.com parr.com comma, click on the weekend warriors link and it will take you right to our website. All of our stuff is up there. We love to hear from our listeners. Feel free to send us an email or leave a message on the website and we will definitely get back to you and hopefully we can help. We love to hear any kind of feedback that you've got, positive or negative.
We love it. We love to know that people are listening. That's the thing.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: Absolutely. So, Tony, today, Tony and I today are talking about lumberyard lingo terms. You're going to hear when you go to the lumberyard and maybe help you out a little bit and make you feel like you're at home when you walk in there.
[00:31:12] Speaker C: Yeah, I know a lot of times, Corey, the thing that brings somebody into, um, a building material supply or a par lumber is that they've got a project and they have to buy material for the project. And the first thing they want to know is what's it gonna cost? You know, what's it gonna cost? How true. What do I need to do this job and what's it gonna cost? And sometimes all you've got is a drawing on a napkin or maybe you just have an image in your head. Maybe you're just going in with an idea. And yet, unless you know whether or not you can afford it, you just don't know whether or not you're going to move forward. So what you really need to do is talk to a professional that can help you with that. And so that's where it starts.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: Yeah, you're absolutely right, Tony. A lot of people, they, before they start a project, they need to know what their budget is. We've talked about that so many times on this show. When you're getting ready to do anything, you need to know what it costs so you can set your budget and plan accordingly. Yeah.
[00:32:08] Speaker C: You also need to know what materials you're going to use to do it. You can do projects with all kinds of different materials, deciding what is most cost effective and most efficient and is going to look the best and last the longest. All of those things play into your decision about what products you're going to use.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: Well, and that's actually a pretty good tip, you know, sitting down with a seasoned contractor sales person and asking the right questions. You know, if you're going to do a remodel on your home and you're going to reside, well, I think you should go in and talk to somebody that knows about all sorts of different siding products. You don't want to just choose the one that's on your plan or choose the one that your architect says because that might not be the most cost effective or that might not be the most resilient for your application.
[00:33:00] Speaker C: That brings me to the next term, which is takeoff. Oh, yeah, takeoff.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: Takeoff.
[00:33:05] Speaker C: Yeah, takeoff. I mean, they're not, if, if you go in there looking for some materials and they say, oh, do you need a takeoff? They're not asking you to leave or telling you to get out of here. Hey, take off. A takeoff is a term referring to you have whatever it is that you have. If it's a thought or an idea or drawing on a napkin or a plan or a print or something like that, they're going to take that and they're going to estimate what materials you would need or how much materials you would need in order to do that project. They're taking off of that picture, a list of materials that you would need to do it. So that's what a takeoff is.
[00:33:47] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot with takeoffs. We should talk about that for a little bit.
[00:33:51] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: I get. That's, that's what I do, right? I do that for a living. I work in a, as a contractor, salesperson, and all day long, that's all I do is take plans in, I do take offs and I ship those, that material.
[00:34:03] Speaker C: You're just a takeoff guy.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: I'm a takeoff guy, but I don't, but here's the thing. I don't do all of my own takeoffs. So if somebody walks in with a pretty complex building or home, I submit it and I get a third party company. So I pay a third party company to do that takeoff for me. So that's. Let's talk a little bit about that because a lot of times, right, you have a homeowner or somebody that's walking in with a set of plans under their arm, and, you know, I'm a builder or whatever, they come in and they say, I need to get a takeoff done and I want to build this thing. And, you know, this is what I need. And they are looking to get maybe a budget number. Right. You know, when it comes right down to the root of it. They only need a budget number. Well, there's a lot of things with a takeoff that make it either good or bad. And one of them, for instance, is not having a complete set of plans. A lot of times in the budget side of things.
[00:35:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: The budget process, when you're maybe talking with a builder or you're talking with an architect, and they start drawing up the plans and you say, man, I don't know if I can afford this. I'll take it in and get a takeoff and get, get a lumber bid and I'll get a window bid and a door and all of these things. Right. So you can try and compile together.
[00:35:25] Speaker C: A budget in that point of the process. We would call that a bid set of plans.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: Yeah, bid set.
[00:35:30] Speaker C: It's an incomplete set. Maybe the picture's not incomplete. Maybe the picture is complete, but the details that are going to be required in order to get that done and have it meet code and all of that right is going to require more, more thought, more money, some engineering, all of that stuff. So.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: Well, you make a good point, because the thing about Oregon, Washington, all in the Pacific Northwest, the west, California, even Idaho, we have seismic requirements here. And all of the plans have to go through a rigid set of engineering code approval, things that are going to cost money.
[00:36:11] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: So you can build a building with none of that stuff in it, but it would fall down. So you have to include beams and hold downs and shear walls and all of those things cost quite a bit of money. So if you come in with a bid set, a lot of times that information isn't in the plan. It'll say something like garage header.
[00:36:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:34] Speaker B: It'll say something like kitchen, bathroom. You know, that isn't information.
[00:36:40] Speaker C: Very, very vague.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: That isn't important to somebody doing a lumber takeoff.
[00:36:45] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: I need the beams that are there, the hardware, the hold downs, all of that information.
[00:36:51] Speaker C: So you can still do something with a bid set.
[00:36:54] Speaker B: Yeah. What I would say would be a good tip for somebody that's looking to get a building done, you know, constructed or a home or whatever. If they have a bid set and you're just looking to get a budget number, I have that. I can give you a square foot price for what approximately that building would cost you, you know, in the end. So.
[00:37:18] Speaker C: But you have to. But you have to keep in mind that that's exactly what it is.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: Correct. And I have to know that. And what essentially what you're doing is you're going to get, if you took that in, and the person taking that plan from you didn't know better. They would spend money, you know, of their own to get a takeoff done. They'd put all that material together, they would give it to you, and you'd say, sweet, I'll take it. This thing's going to cost me 15 grand.
[00:37:42] Speaker C: Ship it out tomorrow.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: Well, not tomorrow, but they have to wait.
[00:37:47] Speaker C: That's what I'm saying.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: So they're going to go through the process. They're going to get the plan engineered, they're going to go to the city, get it redlined, get an approved set, and then they're going to say, all right, I'm going to. I'm ready to buy that material. Go ahead and ship it. Well, then they're going to be short. They're going to need a lot more material. And then next thing you know, you're six, $7,000 over budget.
[00:38:06] Speaker C: Right.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: So you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot if you go ahead with a plan set or a bid set. Right.
[00:38:13] Speaker C: You just need to know that the number that you get based on the bid set that you provide is a budget number that is not going to include the money that is required to pay for all of the details and things that are called out in the final set of plans.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: So my tip would be, if you're looking, if you're truly just looking for a budget, say that up front. I'm looking for a budget number for this building to see if I can afford it or to see if I can make changes, or maybe, maybe I can sit down with you and you could point out some different things on this plan that would help me save money, if that's important to you. Or you can say, I want the best of the best. What products are available to me that will make this the most amazing home in the world?
[00:39:02] Speaker C: Right.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: We can help you with that, too.
[00:39:03] Speaker C: Right.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: So just being honest with everybody upfront, I think, is a really good tip.
[00:39:09] Speaker C: And keeping in mind, again, that when you finish and you get your final set of prints, your, your permitable set of prints, you will need to get it quoted again. And then, and only then, will you know what your actual money out is gonna be at the end of the project.
[00:39:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:26] Speaker C: With everything included.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:39:28] Speaker C: And you can take that to the bank. All right, we gotta take another quick break. Boy, it's going fast. Don't go away. More lumberyard lingo. When we come back. You're listening to Tony Corey, your weekend warriors.
[00:39:52] Speaker A: You're listening to the Weeknd warriors home improvement show built by Parl Umber. When it comes to big or small projects around the home, Tony and Corey, you've got the know how and the answers to make your life just a bit easier. Now here's Tony and Corey.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the show, everybody. Thanks for staying with us today. In the show, we're talking about lumber yard lingo. Tony and I work at part lumber company for a combined 50 years, it seems.
[00:40:23] Speaker C: Oh, my goodness.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: That's a lot. That gives us a lot of experience working in the lumber yard and learning a lot about the type of things that we say that might sound weird to other people.
[00:40:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: So we're sharing that, some of that background knowledge. And the first half of the show we were talking about, you know, different things with takeoffs. And right before the break, we were talking about engineered wood products. And what that means is they take typically smaller pieces, either shreds of wood or chips or strands or even full dimensional lumber and a bunch of glue and a bunch of glue or resin and squish it all together and make new, strong lumber.
[00:41:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:41:09] Speaker B: And it is, like Tony said, substantially stronger. And it with that comes a little bit of cost, but it's fantastic. You can't buy any more pieces of wood that are seven inches wide by 28 inches tall.
[00:41:28] Speaker C: Right.
[00:41:29] Speaker B: It's really, you just can't do it.
[00:41:31] Speaker C: Right.
[00:41:31] Speaker B: You know, there isn't trees big enough out there anymore.
[00:41:34] Speaker C: And even if the trees were big.
[00:41:35] Speaker B: Enough, you wouldn't want to cut them down.
[00:41:37] Speaker C: They wouldn't have large enough sections that are not compromised by knots and, and pitch pockets and things that make them weak. It used to be that the trees were so big around, they could take the strongest sections and make the strongest pieces of wood. And then the lesser strong sections of the tree they would use for lesser grades. But the trees are smaller and we're harvesting them more often, so you end up having to make something. And what they do is like, for example, we were just before we went to the break, we were talking about a four by twelve. The difference between a four by twelve and a three and a half by eleven and seventies glulam. They are very close in size, but the glulam is substantially stronger. You're getting the same strength, but in a more compact product. So where before you might have to have a six by twelve. Now you can do that with a five and a half by eleven and seven eight or a five and a half by nine, maybe, or something like that.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: Yeah, you make a good point. Some other engineered wood products that you'll probably hear some of that, you know, lingo around would be an I joist, a truss joist or something like that. That is essentially what they do, is they take two smaller pieces of LVL and span them together with OSB. Well, we're going to talk about OSB a little later because OSB is technically an engineered wood product. They take a recycled and even, you know, new wood, but they chip it up and then they glue it together to make a super strong panel. In the way an I joists work is, you have to understand how the compression of load is transferred across a member or a, you know, a piece of a floor joist, for instance. You know, when you're putting compression on there, your top and bottom cord of that eye joist. So the top eye and the bottom of the eye are handling all of that load in that piece of lumber. That OSB in the middle is really there just to keep them together. So it just creates a very strong, low weight, very low waste piece of.
[00:43:51] Speaker C: Lumber that's made out of.
[00:43:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Pieces of wood that you normally wouldn't be able to use for anything.
[00:43:57] Speaker C: Fall down. Yeah.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: Essential.
[00:43:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:59] Speaker B: So it's a very smart thing to do. But you're going to hear these terms. You're going to hear Glulam, you're going to hear I joist, you're going to hear LVL, PSL, silent floor. LSL. These are weird terms that are. It's just engineered wood. LSL stands for lateral strand lumber.
Lvl stands for laminated veneer lumber. And lvl kind of looks like really thick plywood.
And then a PSL, of course, is made by weyerhaeuser. It's a paralleled strand lumber. It's super duper strong. They take specific wood species, they cut it into long strips, and they orientate it in such a way with the glue and the resin that it is super duper strong.
[00:44:45] Speaker C: Yep, absolutely. And it does add cost, but it allows you to do things that you couldn't have done otherwise. And it's readily available. Everybody's got it. The specs on that product is widely known. You can get span tables and stuff on the Internet or on, in paper form. I guess that tells you exactly how strong it is, how much load it will carry and all that stuff. So it makes it. It makes it easier for us to predict what. How it will perform when it's out there. And solid sun lumber is honestly kind of unpredictable.
[00:45:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it's going to shrink. It's going to cup, it's going to crack. Twist bow.
[00:45:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:45:26] Speaker B: If you have a solid sawn floor, which means solid pieces of lumber or floor joist. If you're floor joists, sometimes they'll use two by ten or two by twelve. And if you lay those out. Yeah. Every single piece is going to be different.
[00:45:41] Speaker C: Right.
[00:45:42] Speaker B: Because it's from a different part of a different tree. Even so, that's the real benefit to using engineered wood products, is they're all the same. Another thing about consistent, they're completely flat, they're completely square. They don't twist.
[00:45:55] Speaker C: They're completely dry.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:45:57] Speaker C: And that's another thing. We deal a lot with mold and mildew in new construction, especially in the Pacific Northwest. We have a lot of rain. And so buying engineered wood products that are dry and predictable give us a better outcome and more confidence going forward.
So, yeah, that's a lot. It's a lot of stuff. They have to be wrapped most of the time. We take good care of them and.
But it is, it's a really good option to solid sawn lumber.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: Here's another one, Tony. Open web.
[00:46:30] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:46:32] Speaker B: Explain what an open web is.
[00:46:34] Speaker C: An open web is also a truss, and we'll call them floor trusses, which is exactly what we've just been talking about. Just like I joist or solid sawn joist, it holds up the floor that you walk on. And the open web is a top and bottom cord made out of wood, but in the middle it's made out of steel. And so the steel is kind of like a webbing that's in there. And you have little triangle shaped openings between the webs. And that open web inside there allows you to pass plumbing and electrical and h vac and stuff through that and then insulate around that, which keeps all of that stuff up in the insulation and keeps it from being exposed to the weather in the colder months of the year.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: Yeah. You can also get wood web, open webs as well. They're a lot more common these days in floor trusses. And that might be another term you would hear.
Let's talk a little bit. You mentioned green and. Or you mentioned dry. We should talk about that because you can come into the lumberyard and you're going to walk up to the front counter and you're going to say, you know, hey, I'm building this shed or I'm building this house and I want to, I want this material. And they're going to ask, you want green or dry, right?
[00:47:46] Speaker C: Well, what do you mean yourself?
[00:47:47] Speaker B: Well, yeah, what the heck are you talking about?
[00:47:49] Speaker C: First of all, I don't want it to be green and I guess I want it to be dry, but there's not what it means. Green. Here's green. I'll do green, you do dry. Here's green. Green lumber has not been dried. Green lumber was.
They talk about pulling green chain at the mill and that is lumber that was cut.
Sorry, the tree that was fallen and then it was run through a mill and cut and then it was cut into all of the little dimensions and planed and ready to go. But it remains green or wet on the inside and that has a ten that will shrink and changes dimension as time goes on. We gotta cover some more of this as soon as we come back. You're listening to Tony and Corey, your weekend warriors. Don't go away.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: You're listening to the weeknd warriors home improvement show built by parl Umber. Now here's Tony and Corey.
[00:49:08] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the weekend warriors home improvement show. Thanks for, thanks for sticking around. Today in the show we're talking about lumberyard lingo. But if you haven't already, go check out our instagram and facebook. We're ww home show. Or you can go check out our website. That's wwhomeshow.com. so it's kind of confusing. It's not www dot homeshow. Www dot ww.
Lot of w's there.
[00:49:38] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a lot of w's. Ww stands for weekend warriors. So it's weekend warriors home show or wwhhomeshow.com.
[00:49:45] Speaker B: Or you can type in HTTPs colon.
[00:49:50] Speaker C: No, don't do that.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: Don't do that.
[00:49:52] Speaker C: Just type wwh homeshow.com and it will bring us up. We're right there as all of our stuff is there. You can contact us and we love for you to check that out. Okay. So before we went to the break, I was talking about this apparently grafted wood or something that's out in the forest these days. One of the stamps that you'll see on some lumber is hem fir. I mean, I thought hem stood for hemlock.
[00:50:17] Speaker B: It does.
[00:50:18] Speaker C: And I thought fir stood for Douglas fir.
[00:50:20] Speaker B: No.
[00:50:21] Speaker C: So fur is not Douglas fir.
[00:50:24] Speaker B: Douglas fir is a tree. Yeah, Douglas fir tree.
[00:50:27] Speaker C: Okay, so you got hemlock, hemlock and fir in one piece of wood. I don't understand. Explain that to me. I think they're grafting trees.
[00:50:35] Speaker B: Hemlock is a fir tree.
[00:50:36] Speaker C: Oh, I see. It's a fir tree. It's not a Douglas fir.
[00:50:40] Speaker B: Correct. It's Douglas fir. Douglas fir is unique in that it only grows in one part of the world. Do you know that?
[00:50:49] Speaker C: I did not know that. Where is that part of the world?
[00:50:52] Speaker B: The Pacific Northwest. Oh, it only grows in the Pacific Northwest.
[00:50:56] Speaker C: Well, Doug must have been a pretty popular dude to get a tree named aphraim. And I guess, you know, sometimes when we get this wood from the mill, if it hasn't been planed, it is kind of furry. Furry, sort of Douglas furry hem fur. Hemp fur is actually just a type of fur. It's a hemp fur instead of a Doug fir.
[00:51:15] Speaker B: It's much less stronger. Do you feel much less stronger?
[00:51:18] Speaker C: Do you feel like hemp fur is an inferior species?
[00:51:22] Speaker B: I do, yeah. Hemp fur is a lot less. It's much weaker than Doug Furnace. It's softer. So in my opinion, Doug fir is a much better building material.
[00:51:36] Speaker C: Does it also tend to be a little less expensive?
[00:51:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it's less expensive. You'll see. Pressure treated lumber is typically made out of hemp fur. Because of its soft qualities, it does absorb more treatment. But to be honest, the design values in that Hemphir lumber is far less than Doug firm.
[00:51:56] Speaker C: Interesting.
[00:51:56] Speaker B: You have to be careful there.
You can't build the same things out of hem fur that you can Doug fir, just because you'd have to go closer on center or larger wood than you normally would with Doug fir.
[00:52:08] Speaker C: Interesting. Very interesting.
[00:52:09] Speaker B: So let's talk a little bit about some terms that you're going to hear when talking about lumber.
[00:52:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:52:16] Speaker B: You're going to hear things like sapwood, heartwood heart center s, four s, eased edges, pet board footage. Wow, that's a lot. Yeah. All of these terms are used to describe lumber. A board foot is one inch thick of wood by twelve inches. By twelve inches. That's a board foot. And that's how we buy and trade lumber on our end. We sell it by per thousand board feet. But when we sell it to you, it's by the piece or by the.
[00:52:51] Speaker C: Very confusion sometimes by the lineal foot. Yeah, depending on what it is.
[00:52:54] Speaker B: Linear.
[00:52:55] Speaker C: Linear lineal.
[00:52:57] Speaker B: I've gotten into this argument so many times with people.
[00:53:01] Speaker C: Here's the thing. Both are acceptable.
[00:53:03] Speaker B: They're acceptable, but the one is wrong.
[00:53:05] Speaker C: I went into this whole long history lesson with you about linear and lineal.
Ultimately, in the end, it's about communicating, and if the people listening to me understand what I'm saying.
[00:53:16] Speaker B: No, you're right.
[00:53:16] Speaker C: It's basically lumberyard lingo, folks. Lineal is acceptable. Do not let Corey tell you otherwise.
[00:53:22] Speaker B: You could say, you know, hair. I need a hair of lumber.
[00:53:26] Speaker C: And people would understand that's a pretty small piece of lumber.
[00:53:30] Speaker B: Cut a hair off of this board. Yeah. People would notice it.
[00:53:32] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:53:33] Speaker B: So. Yeah. But lineal or a blade flex? Yeah, blade flex.
[00:53:36] Speaker C: Just take a blade flex off.
[00:53:38] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a Cory ism right there.
[00:53:40] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a good one.
[00:53:40] Speaker B: But, yeah, no, linear. So we buy and sell lumber by the board foot, and it's, to you, it doesn't really matter as a normal person. I mean, if you're in the lumber industry, you can, you know, if you know how to convert board footage to linear footage, whatever, it's fine. But that, that is the term. So sometimes people will get their invoice.
[00:53:59] Speaker C: And it'll say, you know, $345,000 a piece.
[00:54:03] Speaker B: Yeah, 3450.
[00:54:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:54:06] Speaker B: So people are like, $3,450 for a two by six.
[00:54:11] Speaker C: Right.
[00:54:11] Speaker B: Well, what that means is it's 34 $100 per thousand board feet.
[00:54:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:54:16] Speaker B: So you have to do the conversion on that math to find out how much.
[00:54:19] Speaker C: Even though you only bought four board feet. Yeah, yeah. That's what it would cost if you were buying that much.
[00:54:25] Speaker B: Board footage is weird, and it goes back to, you know, the logging days. So I don't know the full story behind it. One of the. These days, I'm going to look it up and we'll talk about that. But don't worry about it.
[00:54:35] Speaker C: Pet stands for precision and trimmed. We talked about studs earlier. Stud links, they pre cut stud lengths to give you a predetermined height of wall. If you're building an eight foot wall or nine foot wall or something like that, the stud plus the bottom plate plus the two top plates results in the height of wall you want. And so to save from having to cut all of those studs on the job site, we sell precision and trimmed.
[00:55:00] Speaker B: Lumber, and you'll see those typically in, you know, 88 and 5892 and 58104 and five eight.
[00:55:07] Speaker C: And really, we don't call two by four eight and two by six eight studs.
[00:55:11] Speaker B: Correct, because so in our world, a stud is gonna be pet. It's gonna be precision and trimmed.
[00:55:19] Speaker C: Or me a stud. Also me a stork dork.
[00:55:25] Speaker B: But no a Pete. Yeah. A stud is gonna be. They're all gonna be the same exact length. They're all precision and trimmed. If you come in and buy, you know, 22 by four eights or 52 by four eights to build, say, a shed, those two by four eight might not all be the same length.
[00:55:44] Speaker C: Right.
[00:55:44] Speaker B: They will be within what they call tolerance standard. Yeah. You could potentially have one that is, you know, five eight of an inch shorter than another one because they don't precision end trim them to 96 inches.
[00:55:59] Speaker C: Right.
[00:55:59] Speaker B: It's not an eight foot exact piece of lumber, so be careful of that. You know, if you're building a wall and you're coming in and you're just buying a bunch of eight footers and you think you're building an eight foot wall, that top plate could be pretty wavy.
[00:56:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:56:11] Speaker B: So something to consider there.
[00:56:14] Speaker C: Uh, so here's another few. Um, obviously, the grade of lumber. Uh, we talked about grades. There's a. There's a select. You've got select struct written there. What does select struct stand for?
[00:56:25] Speaker B: Well, you know, in lumber grading. And that's super confusing. It has to do with the. The grain of the wood and imperfections in the wood and knot holes and all of those different things that a professional lumber grader does for a living. They can look at a piece of wood and tell you the grade of it almost immediately.
[00:56:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:56:45] Speaker B: Right. So that's super. I'm not going to get into that. But, you know, typically what you're going to find at a lumber yard is what's called number two and better. You know, and better. So sometimes you'll see one in better select struct. That is a grade that is above number one. It's a very high grade, so there's a lot less imperfections in it. And it's going to mean that it's much stronger in physical strength, structurally structural strength, than, say, a number two or a number three or a utility or a stud grade. There's a lot of places that mill what's called stud grade, and it's good enough for structural, but it's not very nice at all. You know, it might have a lot of wane on it or even bark, you know, so you'll see Wayne. We should probably describe that. And it's not Bruce.
[00:57:38] Speaker C: Aha. Bruce Wayne. Wayne is actually spelled w a n E. Wayne.
[00:57:45] Speaker B: What that means is when they cut a piece of lumber out of a log, you know, a log is round. And I tell you right now, the logs that they're sending out to be milled into two by four and dimensional lumber two by six, are very small. So you're going to get to the outside edges of that Sapwood and even bark, where you're going to get some curvature. And that's called weighing on a piece.
[00:58:10] Speaker C: Of lumber two by four typically will be graded standard and better.
[00:58:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:16] Speaker C: And then two by six and up is generally graded two and better.
[00:58:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:20] Speaker C: So.
And that's really what you're gonna be dealing with most of the time.
[00:58:25] Speaker B: Yeah. In the Pacific Northwest over here, we don't have a ton of stud grade. It's a lot of two and better and standard and better.
[00:58:35] Speaker C: Right. We gotta take a quick break. We'll be right back. Don't go away.
[00:58:54] Speaker A: You're listening to the Weeknd warriors home improvement show, built by Parl Lumber. Now here's Tony and Corey.
[00:59:08] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the Weeknd warriors home improvement show. Thanks for staying with us today in the show. We're talking about lumberyard lingo, and we've been talking about lumber grades. Yeah, lumber grades. There's a lot in there that is kind of confusing. You know, you hear words like select struck or kiln dried, you know.
[00:59:28] Speaker C: One we didn't. One we didn't cover was appearance grade.
[00:59:31] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, appearance grade.
[00:59:33] Speaker C: And they don't really. They don't really have a grade stamp for appearance. But you would pick something out if you were using it for that purpose. So if you were, say, putting barge boards on your house. Right.
[00:59:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:59:49] Speaker C: Then you would want something that's sort of an appearance grade lumber, so it looks nicer.
[00:59:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Or if you were maybe doing a timber frame or a pergola or something like that, made out of dug fur, you'd want appearance grade.
[01:00:02] Speaker C: Right. Exactly.
[01:00:03] Speaker B: Also going along with that, you would probably want FOHC, which stands for free of heart center.
[01:00:09] Speaker C: Oh, I want my wood to have a heart.
[01:00:14] Speaker B: The heart center of the tree, especially with Doug fir, will cause it to warp, you know, our cup, a lot.
[01:00:21] Speaker C: More than not having that heartwood, it's a loose cannon.
[01:00:25] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:00:26] Speaker C: It's a rebel.
[01:00:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:27] Speaker C: Those heartwood timbers are rebels, gonna go.
[01:00:30] Speaker B: All over the place.
[01:00:30] Speaker C: They want out, I'm telling you.
[01:00:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:32] Speaker C: So that's a really good tip. If you're. If you're picking out a four x four for your fence and you're going to replace a four by four that broke or whatever, and you go in to buy a four by four, take a look at the end grain. If you look at the end grain and it looks like a sort of broad grain that's spanning all the way from the left to the right with a little bit of an arch, that's a really good four x four to choose. It's outside, away from the center of the tree. But if you pick one up and it's got a bullseye right in the center of the end of the four x four. That's a volatile board. It doesn't mean it's gonna go south, but it could.
I'm telling you, it's a loose cannon. You just don't know.
How about this, Corey? Sapwood and heartwood, I don't even know.
[01:01:15] Speaker B: Yes. Well, Sapwood is the outermost rings. That's where the tree, SaTurn, that's where the tree is going to draw up all of its moisture from the ground and draw it up to the tippy top and all of the branches, it's calling through the. The SAP wood. And that's where the SAP lives. You know, when you cut into a tree or it gets damaged, that, you know, that SAP drips off, it's coming out of that SAP wood. The heartwood is exactly what it sounds like. It's the heart of the tree, the dead center. And you don't hear too much of that when dealing with framing. You'll hear a lot of sapwood, heartwood talk when you're talking with more finnish material like hickory or redwoods or things like that, where it. It does matter what you're buying.
[01:02:00] Speaker C: Okay, here's some letters and numbers all mixed up that could really confuse somebody. How about s one s two e? This is actually a very common term.
[01:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. S one s, two e, or even s four s. That typically what that means is s. It means surfaced in an s, four s, or smooth so surfaced four sides or smooth four sides. That means that it has been milled down on all four sides, and all four sides are smooth as glass. S one s two e means that it's surfaced on one side, so then the other side is rough. And then you'll have two e. So it's surfaced on one side and two edges, and then one side is rough.
[01:02:41] Speaker C: That's actually very important to note because a lot of stuff that you do in a remodel or new construction or even carpentry work, sometimes you want to have the character that comes with a rough surface on your wood. We sell s one s two e, cedar. So you have knotty cedar. One side is planed down smooth, and one side is a rough texture. And that rough texture, honestly, folks, is beautiful. I see a lot of rough sawn finished lumber out there that is not been painted. It's got a really nice, clear finish or stain on it, and it's beautiful. I love that look.
[01:03:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:03:21] Speaker C: So you wouldn't mix too much with the surface face and the rough face if you were trying to get a specific look. So it's notable. How about an eased edge? What's the difference between an eased edge and a quarter round?
[01:03:34] Speaker B: Well, an eased edge is, is just a, an ease. It's kind of like a half round or quarter round on that edge versus a square edge. You know, you're easing those edges. That's all you're kind of doing is.
[01:03:47] Speaker C: Making them not sharp, just knocking that corner off.
[01:03:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So it's very easy. Edge.
[01:03:52] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah, I got it. It's ease. It's very easy. How about a random length? Random length really is a term that we use all the time.
[01:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:04:01] Speaker C: And there's a few different meanings for it, actually.
[01:04:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Typically there are specific sorts of lumber that you can buy. Random length. And that's what you, that's exactly what that means is you buy, you know, 700 linear feet of one by six cedar and you're going to get it in a bundle of 812. You're going to get a bundle of maybe six footers. You're going to get a bundle of twenties, 16s. It doesn't matter because it's random length. Sometimes, you know, cabinet makers will go in and buy lumber that's random width, random length. So you go and buy board footage. So you would say, I need, you know, 100 board feet of maple and they will sell you 100 board feet. And it doesn't matter if it's, you know, four quarter, five quarter, eight quarter by. You'll get ten inch wide pieces, two inch wide pieces. It doesn't matter. It's random width, random length.
[01:04:59] Speaker C: This is notable because sometimes when you're specifying lengths for a project, you can be upcharged for specifying links. This is correct because a lot of specific links are more popular than other links. Here's a primary example. Fourteen s and eighteen s don't get used a lot. They just aren't. They're oddly not divisible by the numbers that are very popular. So we end up with a lot of extra eights and tens. So if you were, say, random links, you're going to get some fourteen s and eighteen s in your bundle. If you don't say random and you say, I want sixteen s and twenties, there is a premium for that typically.
[01:05:35] Speaker B: Yeah. In, you know, things like cedar. If you buy cedar decking, you know, those longer lengths, people always want the longest lengths possible, of course, so they can get the fewest amount of seams. Well, you're going to pay for that. Cedar, 20 footers, sixteen s, eighteen s and twenties. They come at a really high premium.
[01:05:52] Speaker C: Right now, Corey, I want to order six pieces of two by six clear, tight knot cedar. Can you get me some of that?
[01:05:59] Speaker B: That doesn't exist.
[01:06:00] Speaker C: Yes, it does not exist because clear and tight knot are polar opposites. You either have knots, folks, or you don't have knots. It's either a knotty piece of wood or it's not.
[01:06:12] Speaker B: Well, you know, there's, it's actually interesting when you talk about clear and tight knot, because cedar is one of those things that is not structural, it's not structurally graded. You don't go out and buy a select struck piece of cedar. You don't buy a number one or a number two. It's all visual. Every grade for cedar is visual. So a lot of times they'll call a cedar. You know, a clear cedar can be a D inveter clear. And a D in better clear means that it's going to have a few knots. I don't know if you knew that.
[01:06:44] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I do that.
[01:06:45] Speaker B: Yeah. But some people come in and they say, I want clear cedar. Well, it might have some knots in there that are smaller than a nickel.
[01:06:50] Speaker C: And they be few and far between.
[01:06:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:06:52] Speaker C: It's got to be a certain percentage of the board has to be clear. But some knots are available.
[01:06:57] Speaker B: If you want zero knots, you're going to be paying for what's called a and better or premium or I've even seen it called what? Super, super grade. I mean, there's all kinds of weird appearance grades out there, but that's what you're paying for. You're paying for the knots in a tight knot. What that means is there's knots in that wood, but they're not falling out. That's all that means.
[01:07:19] Speaker C: Yeah. And when you're buying cedar to trim out something on the exterior of your home or on your deck or on your patio, it matters what you're doing with the cedar after you get it. You could be ordering cedar that is bare cedar or raw cedar, or you can be ordering cedar that's primed. Primed cedar is very common because if it's going to be painted, then the priming process, you can save money by not having to buy primer and do the work yourself and know that the primer that's on it is a really good quality product. So. But oftentimes if you're buying primed trim at a building material supply store, very commonly it will be finger jointed.
[01:08:00] Speaker B: Ooh, we should talk about that finger jointing.
[01:08:03] Speaker C: This is going to be probably the last term we get for you during this show. But finger jointed is another type of really engineered wood product.
[01:08:13] Speaker B: Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. They take lengths of lumber that are normally unusable. They're six inch pieces or ten inch pieces that they have a bunch of. It's fall off. So they have all of this lumber that they run through that you get in full lengths, you know, but if you have a 16 and a half foot piece or a 17 foot piece, you typically would sell that as a 16 footer. So they would chop it down and then you have that little fall off. Yeah. So what they do is they take all of those little pieces, they put them together, and then they run through a blade called a finger joiner. And all that does is cuts little v notches on the end of one piece and matching v notch on the other piece, a bunch of them. Then they spread glue in there and they stick them together. There are actually quite a bit of benefits to buying finger jointed lumber. It stays straighter, you can buy consistent, long pieces. Most of our finger joint and lumber that we stock is in full 20 footers.
[01:09:11] Speaker C: And after it's primed, you can't see the joints hard enough. And once you paint it, it just looks beautiful. You know, folks, it's all the time we've got. Thank you so much for tuning in. We are going to pick this topic up again soon because there's so much more to talk about. This has been another episode of your.
[01:09:25] Speaker B: Weekend warriors right here on the weekend warriors radio network.
[01:09:28] Speaker C: Have a great weekend.
