First......I am not a knowledgeable wood guy. I know the basics and good quality wood. Having said that, I have a question about Pine. Our local big box stores,  HD and Lowes carry mostly Pine of differing quality. Their top quality is some really great looking wood. Straight grain, knot free, etc. My questions;

  Is this fine Pine the same type Pine that all the rest of their (not so good) Pine is?

  Is it sourced from the USA?

 

Thanks

Local Lowes carries some clear pine which is mostly slab cut.  To me straight grained Douglas Fir is quality pine. 

 

        

Pine is in the eye of the beholder as far as new lumber is concerned stay away from cathedral grain unless building boxes for utility use or shelves. The grains Dan showed are good for anything and will make a great looking project , problem is it usually costs more and may not be in the widths you need. Also higher grades will usually have tighter grain and therefore usually is stronger. 

Back when I worked for a small furniture manufacturer, we bought a car-load of Ponderosa pine. Beautiful wood, and twice the weight of the White pine we usually get around here!

John

Gerald said that tighter grain makes for stronger wood. Don't each grain indicate a years growth? Therefore more rings indicate a different variety of Pine than the wood we see at big box where rings are far wider?

 

 

 

Be wary of buying construction grade pine for furniture.  Typically it is only dried to 20%.

3 hours ago, Gerald said:

The grains Dan showed are good for anything and will make a great looking project

I agree, the face frame and door frames were made with the same Clear Pine from Lowe's.

 

I've found at HD that "select" pine, if I pick through for the straightest, works really well, even for stained projects.  The "common" pine is in a different section, and seems mainly to suffer from a lot more knotholes, which puts more crooks and bends in the boards,  but for some cheaper versions of projects (esp painted), it works just fine.  Of course, the largest stock of wood is construction grade, which I think is labeled "fir" of different types.  Fir can be used for some things (2x4s work well for shop/outdoor legs), but it does tend to warp after you buy it (when you buy it, it's no longer in this big "brick" of lumber, and it starts to rapidly dry).  A subset of Fir is "KD" (kiln dried), and those are much better pieces to use in woodworking.  Fir especially has problems when you sand it because the (darker) grain is harder than the (lighter) inner wood, and that can show up through a finish.  I like it for outdoor furniture though.  

I don't know if the US uses the same designation, but up here, construction lumber is usually stamped "S-P-F", or spruce, pine fir. It's probably hard to identify logs of sub-standard quality, but good enough for 2X4'S.

jOHN

5 hours ago, PeteM said:

but it does tend to warp after you buy it

This is the source, hence the problem with warping.  

 

10 hours ago, PeteM said:

  Of course, the largest stock of wood is construction grade, which I think is labeled "fir" of different types.  Fir can be used for some things (2x4s work well for shop/outdoor legs),

In the south it is SYP (southern yellow pine) . Different areas of the country use different construction grade lumber based on what is prevalent in that area

On 3/13/2020 at 7:03 PM, Ron Altier said:

Gerald said that tighter grain makes for stronger wood. Don't each grain indicate a years growth? Therefore more rings indicate a different variety of Pine than the wood we see at big box where rings are far wider?

 

 

 

The rings are different for different species and based on the growth rate of that species. Wider spaced rings show a faster rate of growth and may indicate a slight difference in the strength. Although that is not the only criteria because you have to be comparing apples to apples and if there are different species to achieve tighter grain that also changes strength of the wood

5 minutes ago, Gerald said:

Different areas of the country use different construction grade lumber based on what is prevalent in that area

Yup, and here is a picture of how they grow them, must be cheaper, bet someone gets a bonus for this idea.  So what they warp they were straight when they were strapped to the pallet.  

 

Spent a week in rural southern MS a week ago (more later).   I was surprised when I noticed most of the pines there (and there were lots of them), had branches and needles on only the top 10 or 15 feet and all the rest was branch free and fairly straight.  One of the locals told me it usually went into pulp wood.   Saw a few trucks with pulp logs about 60' long.  When I worked for Kimberly-Clark back in the '70s, we had a pulp mill in Coosa Pines, AL.   A few of the guys I worked with had to do plant visits and said it was pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

Riding back with one of the locals one day, he pointed out some trees along the road with large white blossoms and a bright red pistil.  He said they were tung trees and the area used to have large plantations of them from which they got tung oil.   That market fell through and now they are just feral.

6 hours ago, kmealy said:

Spent a week in rural southern MS a week ago (more later).   I was surprised when I noticed most of the pines there (and there were lots of them), had branches and needles on only the top 10 or 15 feet and all the rest was branch free and fairly straight. 

Those other limbs dropped off because they plant very close together perhaps 2-3 feet . Then when it is large enough to thin the thinned "logs" , well actually up to about 8 inch , are sent to pulp mills. Trees grow more and another thinning for pulp. After that they grow for maybe 20 to 30 years depending on the county and they are poles or saw logs. I have loosely interpreted what I have been told in this paragraph.

 

A forester in Warren County (Vicksburg) told me in that county a hardwood tree that takes maybe 30 years in other counties to get 20 inch diameter will do that in maybe 15 to 20.

All the fir and pine I have tried to turn chips very easily.  It is really hard to have complete sharp edges.  And, I had just sharpened my chisels, but must not have been sharp enough.  

123 different kinds of pines there is....

 

 

Most of the stuff in the big box stores is fast growing farmed pine. Very wide grained and usually not dried right, susceptible to twisting and warping because of the greater distance between yearly grain rings.

Lumber yards will usually have better stuff and more expensive. Tighter grain and less trouble.

Me personally I don't buy from big box stores unless I absolutely have no choice.

When I purchase pine material from the box stores, I usually purchase 8 and 10" widths and then cut the middle out.   Danl

I do not care to turn pine but it can be done . If you can turn other soft woods like basswood then yes pine can be turned. Yes sharp tools but also approach the grain properly by always cutting downhill.