Thread: Undersized timber giving me the squits

It would be interesting to see what the standards say about size variations in DAR timber. From memory for rough sawn allowable variation was -2/+3mm. I would have assumed that DAR variation would have been more in the order of +/-.5mm. If the variation is really in the order of 3mm than unless the standard explicitly allows such a variation the retailer would be guilty of misleading advertising/labelling practices and is in effect short changing you on the timber. You could make a big fuss about it or you could just go to a real timber yard for your timber and a real hardware store for your hardware.

Mick

Originally Posted by AlexS

The trouble is that they bunnies, gunns etc wield so much clout that they have changed the Aus. standards so that what they are doing is now legal. Bunch of ace holes.

Too true Alex but as I have said here many times it is the customers many of which are forum members who allow these businesses to flourish and more importantly for the competition to fail.
Woodies need to stop buying DAR crap they need to patronize real timber yards like Trend, Lazaridies etc and not your local franchise hardware.
If these businesses fail there will be no one to replace them ever!!
Stop buying from these types of business you are just cutting your own throats.
Fine if you have no choice then buy from them but realize that there is no such thing as a bargain you always pay the full price in some way even if you dont see it.

Rgds

Ross

Different, I'd gladly patronise a "real" timber yard if there was one within 100km.

Let's see ... there was a bloke who advertised ironbark in Rushworth, he isn't answering his phone. Black Forest Timber has closed. The furniture guy in Talbot is down on his stock. That leaves Bunnings, Mitre 10 and Home Hardware.

And don't think that this is bargain chasing ... the price we pay for timber would probably make your jaw hit the floor.

I agree Ron, me being in southern Sydney there really isn't much in the way of timber yards around - there used to be on on our main road that closed 15 or so years ago, it was owned by the family of a girl I want through my school years and was friends with (gee she was a good sort) so I would have had good help and deals now I'm getting more interested - but we are stuck with the big hardwares too. Although I don't buy much other than what bunnings stocks, thats probably because I can't just walk into anywhere else easily and buy the stuff. Hudsons timber yard is now rubbish - funny its now called Hudsons Hardware, not timber yard as they now sell bigger rubbish than Bunnings, and the local Midcoast sells more along the lines of rough stuff - nothing I have the skills to turn into nice wood - plus DAR is so much easier.

Spot on, Ross. I'd rather drive to St. Marys or Kurrajong or Waitara to a good timber/hardware store than around the corner to Bunnings, 'cause I know Bunnies won't have what I want and I'll have to stand in a queue for an hour if I do buy anything.

Originally Posted by Ron Dunn

Different, I'd gladly patronise a "real" timber yard if there was one within 100km.

It must be very hard for you guys. What I would do is make a special trip to a timber yard once in a while and stock up as much as possible.

I know it is easy for me to say but just can’t keep making things out of Tas Oak and Radiata pine.

Funny you should mention that ... given that Vic Ash is my favourite timber, perhaps with the occasional highlight of Jarrah, I'm off to check out this link on Wednesday:

http://www.tradingpost.com.au/itemin...ing+Materials_

$800 per cube sounds pretty good.

Originally Posted by Ron Dunn

Funny you should mention that ... given that Vic Ash is my favourite timber, perhaps with the occasional highlight of Jarrah, I'm off to check out this link on Wednesday:

http://www.tradingpost.com.au/itemin...ing+Materials_

Bloke i knew there was the Jim Dwyer about 15 years ago (the boss). Great bloke and good to deal with. Dont know if he is still there.

Oh, some Messmate would be nice!

I have said in a previous post about this type of issue. The timber industry needs to take a long hard look at itself when it comes to quality. There is a definite near enough is good enough attitude to timber size and quality. This also applys to machinery and equipment.

The plumbing industry also has sizing issues, they sell "100mm" pipe, but in actual fact it is 104mm (4ins) but it is sold as 100mm. The attitude is well everyone knows it is 4 inches. If it's 104mm then tell us, it even has 100mm stamped on the tube, that's how stupid it is. By the way the ID is nowhere near 100mm either.

Timber is the same. You can buy and get delivered all the same size, or so you thought and you can get hugh discrepencies in dimentions. How about the office of fair trading stepping in. It's not hard to get the sizes right, it is lazyness of the industry.

At one time, "everybody knows" worked just fine. But it worked only because "everybody" was limited to people who'd had proper apprenticeship training, and the adjustments to "nominal" sizes was part of that training. Nowadays, "everybody" includes those who got their training from the tube, in hit-and-miss fashion.

With regard to pipe sizes, the nominal size was never the same as the actual size. Probably harkens back to the days of only cast iron pipe, with a fudge factor for pipe friction so that the nominal size was the equivalent smooth bore for the sake of flow calculations. Metric conversion from Imperial has also done its deed, sometimes with arbitrary rounding to varying numbers of significant figures.Yes, it's about time that the standards organisations comprehensively revisit all these issues.

Joe

Seem to recall re timber that a 2"x1" sawn or milled (depending on the timber) was approx that size, but a 2"x1" DAR was 1 3/4"x3/4" give or take a 1/16" which was the variation expected from drying. If a timber length was warped, woofed or checked -a la standard Bunnings offer - it was seconds, used for scantling or firewood, or dressed (by hand) by my father to a smaller size. And of course everyone who bought timber knew this, same as everyone in the timber business would price milled or sawn
in board feet.

Pipes now are a different matter though. They can be formed to an outside or inside dimension - depends on the manufacturing process. Then there is the wall thickness to be considered - this varies with the pipe strength, or pressure rating, or whatever is applicable for the different classes of pipe. When added to the problems of backwards compatibility of marrying new to old pipes (there would have to be such things as 2"x50mm threaded connectors), let alone the enormous cost to replace alshould al moulds, formers, dies or whatever is used in manufacturer, pipe sizes for good reason didn't change with metrication. They are still nominal, as they always were, and are well understood by all in the appropriate trades for each type. Which is as it should be - why should a working system be changed just because people who don't understand it don't understand it?

Originally Posted by Ron Dunn

Different, I'd gladly patronise a "real" timber yard if there was one within 100km.

Let's see ... there was a bloke who advertised ironbark in Rushworth, he isn't answering his phone. Black Forest Timber has closed. The furniture guy in Talbot is down on his stock. That leaves Bunnings, Mitre 10 and Home Hardware.

And don't think that this is bargain chasing ... the price we pay for timber would probably make your jaw hit the floor.

Ron I was not having a go at you or anyone else but I know from my own experience that the 2 most significant advances in my own woodworking journey were moving away from using commercial timbers the type you get in Bunnies and hardware stores and not buying dressed timber but equipping myself to dress it myself. As it happened for a couple of years I used to chuck a few bucks at the Timberyard owner and was free to dress it using his machines and my labour. I soon learned that even that is a poor option to dressing at home where you have time to do it right.

Ross