Eric wrote: "Some people might live under rocks...."; and Mike amplified "Oh
Lordy! I just discovered my 1X4s are only 3/4 inch thick! Who'dathunk it?"
Yeah, but...
I've got bookshelves I built in my house in the late '60s, when a 1x8 was about
1/32" rank of 3/4". I've got older shelves where they are closer to 7/8" of an
inch. The recent bookshelves are definitely scant of 3/4". Don't get me started
about the full-size 2x4s the house was built of in 1903, and the shimming needed
for earthquake upgrades thirty years ago. And for as long as I can remember the
lumber industry has been boasting about how new equipment and techniques allow
them to take a thinner kerf and save wood, and reducing the real thickness
slowly but steadily.
What about plywood.? Some of you all will know better than me, but I've been
told that when safety codes were written around here, plywood was sold in actual
sizes, not nominal, and that's what the code assumes. Nowadays, although plywood
too is in nominal sizes, the safety codes and enforcement of them haven't been
adjusted to reflect that. Two years ago in my town, a balcony on a new apartment
building collapsed during a birthday party, killing six Irish students and
injuring seven others. That was apparently due to bad design and neglect leading
to dry rot; but I wonder if that difference between real and nominal thickness
might have helped the balcony to stay up a moment or two longer, maybe saved
another life or two.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_balcony_collapse
Looking up the account, I'm reminded that that happened on my sixty-third
birthday. Not that that has anything to do with the price of fish in Reykjavik.
Even if "everybody" knows about it, nominal sizing of lumber is a shoddy,
deceptive practice. Maybe it wasn't a century and a half ago when a thick,
wobbly sawblade really took an eighth of an inch out of every inch; but now? Its
high time someone blew the whistle.
Tom Conroy
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