page_title: Lumber
section_title: Dimensional lumber
hierarchical_section_title: Lumber / Dimensional lumber
caption_attribution_description: This 2 by 4 is a piece of dimensional lumber used in construction in North America. The nominal size is 2 by 4 inches but the actual size is 1.5 by 3.5 in (38 by 89 mm) In American folklore it is often used as a club to get someone's attention. During the anti-trust case, United States versus Microsoft, Judge Penfield Jackson gave this analogy to reporters for the New York Times. He had a trained mule who could do all kinds of wonderful tricks. One day somebody asked him: "How do you do it? How do you train the mule to do all these amazing things?" "Well," he answered, "I'll show you."He took a 2-by-4 and whopped him upside the head.The mule was reeling and fell to his knees, and the trainer said: "You just have to get his attention." U.S. v Microsoft, United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia, June 28, 2001 [1] The photo by Michael Holley, June 2008. Taken with a Canon PowerShot A630 (1/60 second and f/2.8) with on camera flash. The image was touched up with Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0.
context_page_description: Timber, also known as lumber in North American English, is a type of wood that has been processed into beams and planks, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for structural purposes but has many other uses as well.
  There are two main types of lumber. It may be supplied either rough-sawn, or surfaced on one or more of its faces. Besides pulpwood, rough lumber is the raw material for furniture-making and other items requiring additional cutting and shaping. It is available in many species, usually hardwoods; but it is also readily available in softwoods, such as white pine and red pine, because of their low cost.
  Finished lumber is supplied in standard sizes, mostly for the construction industry – primarily softwood, from coniferous species, including pine, fir and spruce, cedar, and hemlock, but also some hardwood, for high-grade flooring. It is more commonly made from softwood than hardwoods, and 80% of lumber comes from softwood.
context_section_description: Dimensional lumber is lumber that is cut to standardized width and depth, often specified in millimetres or inches. Carpenters extensively use dimensional lumber in framing wooden buildings. Common sizes include 2×4 (pictured) (also two-by-four and other variants, such as four-by-two in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK — though the term has fallen out of fashion in the U.K. with the move to metrication), 2×6, and 4×4. The length of a board is usually specified separately from the width and depth. It is thus possible to find 2×4s that are four, eight, and twelve feet in length. In Canada and the United States, the standard lengths of lumber are 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22 and 24 feet (1.83, 2.44, 3.05, 3.66, 4.27, 4.88, 5.49, 6.10, 6.71 and 7.32 meters).  For wall framing, precut "stud" lengths are available, and are commonly used. For an eight-, nine-, or ten-foot ceiling height, studs are available in 92 ⁵⁄₈ inches (2.35 m), 104 ⁵⁄₈ inches (2.66 m), and 116 ⁵⁄₈ inches (2.96 m).
caption: A common 50 by 100 mm (2 by 4 in) board
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