Comment by skolos
8 years ago
> If your screws are longer than 2”, you’ll need different ones, otherwise they will poke out the top of the board and stab you in the foot.
Actually nominal 2 inch lumber has thickness of 1.5" [1]. So your screws should be shorter than 1.5".
[1] https://www.archtoolbox.com/materials-systems/wood-plastic-c...
> Actually nominal 2 inch lumber has thickness of 1.5"
And, as I've recently learned, two-by-four is in fact 1½ × 3½ inches.
How on Earth does that make sense? Why do people call things as if they were X, while knowing perfectly well they're not X? Is this an American thing?
2x4 lumber is cut into rough boards in the milling process which are actually 2 by 4. These are dried (at which point they shrink) and planed (the wood will warp a bit during the drying process, jointing and planing will help correct this) so the resulting boards are smaller than their original 2x4 size.
Some more surprising detail in reality :)
Heh. I feel that reality is just that beautiful, never-ending fractal of annoyance...
2x4 are 2x4 when they are rough cut. The ones you buy at a hardware store have been jointed/planed to the 1.5x3.5in size.