Doomed as a nation

Borzak

Borzak

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opiate82_sl said:
McDonalds does denote the quarter pounders as "pre-cooked weight." Guess lumber companies need to throw out a "pre-finished milling dimension" caveat.

In fairness, till I had to start building some of my own shit I just assumed the numbers meant actual measurements as well. My first woodworking project went quite awry because I didn't know this. I was very quickly edumacated by my local hardware store when I tried to return all my lumber because I thought was shorted. Later, when I tried to blame my Dad for not teaching me this shit he just looked at me with disgust and told me it was knowledge every man should know inherently. I felt shame.
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Even rough cut 2x4's are not 2"x4". It's not a piece of plastic or milled metal.

Measure twice, cut once.

It's the same people who complain that the 2x4 has sweep in it is because they cut trees too soon instead of "old growth" (LOL in itself) trees.

No, the reason you see a lot of 2x4's now with mass amounts of sweep in them they are cut on a sash gang saw, basically like a band saw blade attached to a frame where a bunch are side by side. The operator can follow the sweep of the tree. It doesn't matter if the tree leans over from 0 at the bottom to 45 midway up you can still cut a series of 2x4's out of it by following the sweep.

It's a natural product.

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iannis

iannis

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There really not anything wrong with it, but if you're buying lumber at Lowes it's the sort of thing that you should already know. It has never been intentionally misleading, which is the insinuation of the argument that "2x4's are not actually 2x4!!!!" That's all people object to, the idea that mills are trying to pull a fast one. No they're not. Consumers are just ignorant.

The 50"ClassTV shit is much worse. That one actually is intentionally misleading.
 
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Duppin_sl

shitlord
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Yeah, I don't think there's an intent to mislead. It DOES seem like the mills get a small advantage by being able to use the "extra" wood for other things, but it's marginal and nobody should care about it really.
 
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Simas_sl

shitlord
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Duppin_sl said:
See, I don't see anything wrong with this. You might think it's silly, but what's wrong with giving the customer more information?
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I don't see anything wrong with it.

Also, this was the DA's of five counties going after Lowes. If the voters in those counties don't like it, I assume they can elect new DAs.
 
iannis

iannis

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"2 by 4" is so much easier to say. That's how I've always thought of it at least. Maybe there's a complex esoteric explanation for it beyond that.
 
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Duppin_sl

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Well, Borzak was saying that it's the approximate dimensions of the rough cut before it's trimmed.

Calling it a 2x4 in common parlance is fine. I just don't see any problem with adding a little disclaimer of what the approximate actual size is going to be.
 
Borzak

Borzak

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They didn't sue to get a disclaimer. They sued for the cash payout. The disclaimer was added to protect thema gainst more morons in the future who managed to figure it out for the last 100 years.
 
Tuco

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If you didn't know that a 2x4 isn't 2"x4" then you should feel embarrassed.
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OneofOne

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Why should we feel embarrassed? I'm not. I've never built anything before. I didn't have a dad who did that shit, so no one taught me. I lived in cities my whole life and never built a wooden bumper or chicken coop. It wasn't until I was double checking the prefab fence pieces and 4x4s I had delivered for my new fence that I even realized a 4x4 isn't 4''x4'' - which mattered because it was a long fence with many 4x4s so the sum total of the "difference" came out to almost a foot.

Yeah the lawsuit was stupid and I have to imagine it would get overturned if it was appealed. That said, it's a very simple fix to note the actual measurements next to the products for people like myself who are like, why are my 4x4s too narrow, and 4 inches too long?
 
jooka

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Well, fuck me. All these years I thought I just had a fucked up tape measure :p
 
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Duppin_sl

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I feel zero embarrassment for not knowing the exact measurements, but I also am not going to be buying lumber anytime soon, so I'm mostly just amused by how angry this is making Borzak.
 
Chukzombi

Chukzombi

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i knew about this since i was a kid in the scouts working on one of my merit badges. i just assumed the lumber industry were a bunch of fucking crooks.
 
Void

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Duppin_sl said:
Yeah, I don't think there's an intent to mislead. It DOES seem like the mills get a small advantage by being able to use the "extra" wood for other things, but it's marginal and nobody should care about it really.
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I realize you're saying it isn't worth caring about, but they don't even really get a small advantage, because if they were forced to make the finished product 2" x 4", they'd just have to start with a 2.5" x 4.5" board, and end up with the same amount of "extra." Yes, you could argue that you'd get less extra from each tree, but I promise you that they'd just cut down more trees, since you aren't typically going to buy significantly fewer 2x4s, or any wooden boards of any size really, for your project just because they are a little bigger. Most 2x4s are used with space between them anyway and measured center to center, so you'd just end up with slightly less space. The only thing you'd really accomplish with changing the measurements is cutting down more trees and slightly driving up the price. Buildings wouldn't get built any better or faster because of it.
 
Qhue

Qhue

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While assembling supplies for home improvement last month I noticed that the sign at Home Depot actually read 2" x 4" and commented as such to my buddy. A better solution would be for Americans to stop measuring things by the furlong per fortnight and actually employ real units of measurement.
 
Lejina

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Figured that one out when I was like 8. Stole scrap wood to build a treehouse. It quickly fell apart, but was later recycled into a bmx jump ramp. Some kid nobody really liked nearly killed himself during the episode, so that helped sooth the pain of our treehouse turning out to be a terrible failure.
 
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Duppin_sl

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Vvoid_sl said:
I realize you're saying it isn't worth caring about, but they don't even really get a small advantage, because if they were forced to make the finished product 2" x 4", they'd just have to start with a 2.5" x 4.5" board, and end up with the same amount of "extra." Yes, you could argue that you'd get less extra from each tree, but I promise you that they'd just cut down more trees, since you aren't typically going to buy significantly fewer 2x4s, or any wooden boards of any size really, for your project just because they are a little bigger. Most 2x4s are used with space between them anyway and measured center to center, so you'd just end up with slightly less space. The only thing you'd really accomplish with changing the measurements is cutting down more trees and slightly driving up the price. Buildings wouldn't get built any better or faster because of it.
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Oh, sure, I don't disagree with any of this. But this being a "standard" probably started with some enterprising mill owner figuring out that they could get away with it without anybody noticing.
 
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