BORG Wood desirability

[David Ragan]

The soft wood manufacturers association and their engineers have a pretty specific set of categories for the different grades of lumber, each one has its own associated span charts which are important when framing a building, not so important for building a shave horse. SPF is a combination grade that can include a lot of things, and while fir is in the name DF is almost never one of the species marked SPF. I'd say a good piece of DF is equal to a good piece of SYP, but regionally what is available may vary by species, and certain sizes are only available in a #1 common structural grade. Take 2x12, that's a serious framing member for rafters and long span joists, maybe stair stringers, they don't stock that in SPF which has much less span rating. Add engineered products into the mix, no telling what you may find locally.

Aside from all that, if you are looking for good material in framing lumber I think you are on the right track, rip down wider material that is generally of a higher quality to begin with and has less knots to cut around.

Thanks so much Peter, that and the other answers is exactly what I was looking for.

[lowell holmes]

The legs on my workbench are doug fir 4X4's from Home Depot. They are straight and stable.

[Steve Collins]

Please don't do this unless you re-stack it when you're done. You're not inconveniencing the store employees, only the next customers. I hate it when I go to get some lumber and it's a jumbled pile.

It is supposed to be construction lumber not furniture-making lumber.

...and a certain % of it can't even be used for construction lumber. I've been picking through lumber my whole life either at a store or a stack delivered to a job site. The unusable lumber on the job site is placed in a stack and is picked up by the lumber yard and I'm given credit for it. At the store I pick through the lumber and restack, unless the board is so warped up that it has no useable function even on a construction site. This gets layed in the floor next to the stack so that the store can get credit from their supplier. The way I figure it is that by picking through the lumber I'm actually doing the store a favor by culling out the crap that their supplier tried to stick them with.

[glenn bradley]

Gee, guys I know it aint for furniture, OK?

I think the overall negative tone is probably from folks like me. I tried to save some money by using BORG KD Doug-Fir for parts of my bench. I would have actually saved money going to the lumber yard and buying properly processed poplar instead; the waste factor on the BORG wood was so high. I am currently building a new bench. The base is poplar and indeed cost less than I wasted on BORG wood years ago. ;-)

That being said, another member had good success here.

[Tom M King]

If you are looking for decent Yellow Pine, find some Weyerhauser Framer series. It's graded out better than stuff you find in big box stores, and if you pick through it, it's easy to get all clear. It costs some more than YP you find in the tight racks in the box stores, but worth it to me not to have to pick through those racks. I used to buy clear boards from Lowes and HD when I saw some on top of the stacks when we were in there buying something else, and save them for later use. Now I just go to Probuild and the Framer series stacks that I can pull my trailer up beside.