Splice together 2 x 4's for storage shed?

[Fred the Red Shirt]

Scarf joints _can_ be used to make longer horizontal beams and rafters out of shorter pieces of wood. Unless the challenge of the task is really, really, attractive, and you are very confident of doing ti well then I agree that you should just use whole stock

You can make longer studs from the shorter pieces using mortise and tenon joints. Cut the tennon on the lower piece and the mortice in the bottom butt of the upper piece. However half-lapping or just butting them with additonal pieces nailed to either side will do just fine.

Again, it is a question of how fancy you want to get in addition to being frugal.

Well, why didn't you say so before? You can saw the slats off in between the stringers and use those to overlap the splices on the studs. If you can seperate the slats from the stringers without breaking them (often it is easier to pund the nails through the slat rather than pulling them out) then you can use those for the rafters too.

You will need to plane them to uniform thickness and then laminate them face-to-face, staggering them so that no two places where they are butted end-to-end are accross the same section of the rafter. You will need to use at least three 'layers' of slats per rafter, and maybe four to assure that the minimum thickeness accross any section is 1 1/2". THis will also take a lot of glue.

Do you have a source of cheap glue?

But you get to select it.

[Jerry Gilreath]

Well, there you go! Several houses under construction + midnight = shed!!!

[Mike]

Once a month at our county dump they have hazardous waste disposal day. All the free paint you could ever use plus other bonus items like thinners, roofing tar, water proofing, etc. Worth checking out if available in your area.

Mike

[Lew Hodgett]

RE: Subject

Scarfing together short pieces to get a longer one is definitely a good solution, but hardly worth the effort for such low cost materials such as construction grade 2x4's.

Even if you have a supply of FREE small pieces, you can't get there from here.

HTH

[Broke]

Hey he could be that broke. I am doing the very same thing. That's why I am looking at this site. For your information a 2x4 stud is about $7.49 at Lowes.

[Michael Trew]

Wow, that's awful. I have a small hoard of 8' or so 2X4's in my cellar that I've been meaning to pull the nails from for years. I'm glad that I held onto them!

[pyotr filipivich]

Broke [e-mail] on Thu, 29 Apr

2021 02:36:40 +0000 typed in rec.woodworking the following:

I didn't follow the link. But, no reason to not make a shed out of 2x4s. Might not be the most "efficient" way to do it, but then again, if you have a "surplus" of 2x4s ...

I'm reminded of the story about the Amana colony which supposedly built a lot of buildings - barns included - of black walnut. Because they were along way from anywhere and there were a lot of black walnut trees on the property, which had to be cleared for farming anyway.

[pyotr filipivich]

The "joke" is that the Border Patrol found lumber with a street value of 1.7 million dollars concealed in a shipment of cocaine.

[Scott Lurndal]

The exterior walls on my Uncle's farmhouse in Wisconsin are made from oak and walnut 2x4's. Two story, balloon construction, but rather than modern studwalls, the 2x4's were laid flat like a log house to build up a solid, 4-inch (real 2x4's) thick wood exterior wall.

[DerbyDad03]

A few years ago SWMBO and I were driving through the countryside of Massachusetts when we came across a number of tobacco fields and their drying sheds.

We noticed that some were as old as the one in that image and some were practically brand new, right on the same property. We ended up talking to a local who explained what we were seeing.

It turns out that designers and contractors (city folk) from NYC and elsewhere were buying up the old wood so they can charge their clients big bucks for building things with "reclaimed wood".

They would negotiate with the landowners and come to an agreement based on the condition of the wood. At a minimum, they would build a new drying shed for the landowner and call it a wash. In some cases there might be an exchange of cash, usually in the direction of the landowner (in addition to the new shed) when the old wood was of top "reclaimed wood" quality.

It's kind of weird to call it "reclaimed", which I consider wood left over after a project. Taking a entire building apart and building a new one just because you want the old wood isn't my definition of "reclaimed", but using that term is a great way to get a higher price.

"The wood I want to use for your project was reclaimed when they tore down some tobacco drying sheds in Massachusetts."

It's not really a lie, but it does stretch the truth a bit.

[krw]

That's what I paid last weekend at the BORG. I needed two (always forget them) to slide a couple of sheets of MDF into the truck. I used to buy 10 or 20 at a time just because. Not until things turn around.

[pyotr filipivich]

DerbyDad03 [e-mail] on Thu, 29 Apr 2021 11:12:06 -0700 (PDT) typed in rec.woodworking the following:

And then there is the option to rip the planks in half and laminate the resulting thin planks to a substrate, and use them for "ambiance". The "old look" coffee shops etc.

[John Grossbohlin]

Hey he could be that broke. I am doing the very same thing. That's why I am looking at this site. For your information a 2x4 stud is about $7.49 at Lowes.

[DerbyDad03]

Since you said "resulting thin planks" I assume you mean resaw, not rip.

Ripping a 2 x whatever (once) results in two 2 x (0.5 * whatevers). You've ~ halved the width, but you haven't changed the thickness.

Resawing a 2 x whatever (once) results in two 1 x whatevers. The width remains the same but the thickness is ~ halved.

It would suck to take a bunch of really cool wood to a mill-work shop and ask them to rip it in half when you really want them to resaw it. I can only imagine the look on your face when you go to pick it up. Ouch.

[pyotr filipivich]

Well, they're not cutting across the grain, so 'rip'. But if 'resaw' is the term for when you make two 1/4 inch board out of a 1/2 inch board, then yeah, resaw.

Thanks for the tip. One of those areas where I didn't know there was a specific term for what I had in mind. I'm likely to do my own resaw work anyway.