For anyone wondering what this is, I'm pretty sure it's the Crooked Forest in Poland.
A few months ago I was following an Instagram page about sustainability and they posted this pic and claimed the trees grew like that because of a "sideways gravitational pull" 🙄. This was on what's supposed to be a page about science. And of course there were tons of people who believed it.
There was a big storm around 2009 in the south west of France (where there are a lot of pine tree plantations); an entire generation of trees ended up looking like this.
Basically, strong continuous winds flatten very young trees without killing them. They then keep growing, with a permanent kink in trunk, near the base such as these. Not great for sawing into planks, but they work just fine to make paper and agglomerate.
It's incredible how resilient trees are!
strong continuous winds flatten very young trees without killing them. They then keep growing, with a permanent kink
That's what happened to Chuck Berry
Not great for sawing into planks, but they work just fine to make paper and agglomerate.
are you saying you're willing to cut these majestic fellas down??
TFW the “good” pile is the same as the cull pile
There's some in saskatchewan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crooked_Trees
/shock
why cant we use something else like extruded polystyrene for lumber? or bearboard plastic lumber?
My parents had a deck made out of some kind of plastic that looked and felt like wood at their old house. It looked good and didn't seem to have any issues after like 15 years. Haven't seen that stuff anywhere else. Maybe it's too expensive.
It cost a fortune but it works better especially in harsh climates.
I just made a deck with that a few years ago. There are actually two types: composite (wood covered in plastic) and full plastic. The boards are perfectly straight and it'll never need stain. It was definitely more expensive, but it's nice up here in Michigan.
i wonder if anyone is recycling plastic for it
I forget what its called. Its nice though
We could use loads of different materials but it's just they all have their pros and cons. With price being a big factor.
You ask me, we'd all use concrete all day erryday. Even more than we do.
Funny meme aside, there's usually no good reason to pick up each and every 2x4 in the store and close one eye to stare down it to judge how straight it is before buying.
It's wood. It bends. You attach it at both ends. If you attach it straight, it's gonna be straightly attached.
When you actually need a straight piece of wood for finer woodwork like making a guitar fretboard or similar, you make that piece of wood straight yourself by buying a large piece of wood directly from the sawmill and shaping it yourself.
I'm going to whole heartedly disagree. Does it need to be perfectly straight? No. Am I going to eyeball each one to make sure I don't spend half the project with prybars? Yes.
Also I'm deep in American Pacific Northwest timber country and the mills don't do business with individuals in my experience unless you're bringing your own trees.
And I'm not paying money to get the equipment to plane my own 2x10s nor am I going to be able to pressure treat my own lumber.
It's insane to me that the response to the decline in lumber quality is make your own lumber.
OP is mostly correct, the construction grade boards the home centers sell are going to have some level of warping. If you don't want to deal with that you need to go to an actual lumber store. There's one in most cities. In Seattle (well Ballard...) Limback Lumber is a great place to visit.
I have nothing against warped wood, but when it makes a 45° bend halfway in I grab a different one
Yeah sure, I doubt anyone would try to sell that as a 2x4.
Anyway the point is that the professional carpenters don't give a shit about it, so neither should DIYers. Once the 2x4 is put up and covered in drywall, nobody will ever know if it has a mild curve.
The actual thing to watch out for are the edges if they are visible in the end project and also cuts that position the knots poorly. I've seen 2x4s where a knot went halfway through the width, which would would only hold half the weight that it's supposed to.
If your wood for your wall is bowed, and you match the bows, your wall will have a slight bow or cup depending on which side you're looking at. If you don't match them, it adds strain on your drywall and may cause deformations. The taller the wall, the more obvious this will be. If your wood is doglegged, it will be almost impossible to match that. Twisting is more of a problem because if it's bad enough you're either going to spend a lot of time and fasteners correcting it or you're going to have a board that doesn't line up with the rest of them since a board on the diagonal has a greater depth than a square board. This can also cause problems when attaching drywall.
It's less hassle, and possibly less time wasted picking better boards for your project than it is correcting those defects during your project. It also doesn't cost any more.
