Lumberyard Lingo

After deciding on the type of wood, the cut, and you know what to look for and what to avoid, you need to select lumber of the correct size and condition to fit the project and your shop tooling. Here it helps to know some of the terminology used at the sawmill or lumber yard. After allowing for dressing and joinery you will require stock of a certain thickness. Raw lumber is sold based on multiples of a quarter of an inch, and usually not thinner than a full inch thick. A full inch is 4/4, pronounced four quarters, thick but lumber is available in thickness’ of 6/4 or inch and a half, 8/4 or two inch, or 12/4 which is three inches thick. Other combinations are available based on the mill the wood came from or how it was ordered by the lumber yard. I have seen some very quirky thickness’ available when a special order fell through and the lumber yard had to take what they could get. Deals can be had that way.

As mentioned before most lumber is sold in random widths so you have to decide which widths will give you the cuttings you need with the least amount of waste. Generally speaking, the lower the grade of lumber you select, the wider the pieces you will need. If you are milling some smaller pieces, like drawer fronts or apron pieces for a small table, you don’t need to buy the best grade of lumber. Providing the price is right you can easily find a lesser grade, hopefully at a savings, and take perfectly satisfactory cuttings from there. In this case it will pay off to have your plan with you. However, turning blanks used for table legs should be taken from the best grade.

There are other considerations as well. If you want to save time surfacing the face side of your lumber, you will probably want S1S or S2S lumber which has already been run through a planer to smooth it out. S1S stands for ‘surfaced one side’ while S2S stands for ‘surfaced two sides. You can also get boards that are S1E or ‘surfaced one edge’. You can even get S2S1E, or any combination thereof up to S4S which is ‘surfaced four sides’. You have to realize that 8/4 lumber, for example, is only 1 ¾ inches thick after surfacing the faces, as in S4S lumber. The same applies for the width if you have the edges surfaced.

For dressed, or surfaced, lumber you have to know whether you are buying an actual or a nominal measurement, nominal meaning what it was before they ran it through a planer. Typically you will be paying for lumber that is two inches thick even if it is surfaced. Lumber with surfaced faces is actually a quarter inch thinner that its nominal thickness while surfaced edges remove a half inch form the nominal width. Different yards may have special prices or peculiar methods of measurement so you must familiarize yourself with these before buying. Also realize that you probably want to plane the boards to a finished thickness after you get them to your shop as you will not be guaranteed a uniform thickness with surfaced lumber from the yard.