2x2 lumber at Home Depot is now 1.28x1.28. Actual size is supposed to be 1.5
Blackout@kbin.run to 
I dont know why they have to lie about it. At $5/8ft board you'd think I paid for the full 1.5. Edit: I mixed up nominal with actual.
You are viewing a single comment
The 2x4s that have been sized this way do meet structural code. It was found that a full 2x4 is way over spec'd for what they were used for, so why bother wasting extra parts of the tree?
Pretty much everything built with dimensional lumber in the last century has been done with undersized 2x4s, and it's fine. The name stuck for historical reasons. Companies that build houses and order this stuff by the pallet all know what the real size is, and so do building inspectors.
Rough 2x4s were 2" x 4". Then we started finishing them for better consistency, taking about 0.5" from each dimension. Later we started using saws with narrower kerfs to have less loss due to saw blade width, better cutting and planing systems so the rough size could be smaller and still have the same finished size, then they lowered finished size some more.
These are even smaller than that. A standard 2x4 is 1.5x3.5.
Thanks for the explainer.
It's fine, folks. Nothing to see here.
It being ugly has absolutely fuckall to do with the structural integrity
What part of this has to do with dimensional lumber?