Thread: Precut, dressed timber sizes.....

has anyone else had the same experience as me?

I have been planning a set of drawers for my ranger and several months ago I decided to utilise a qty of snaplock aluminium as the frame (I can't recall the name for this stuff) and drew up some basic plans and then went and looked at available dressed timber to make the sides , drawers and tops.

That's ok , as most do , spent an hour or so humming and harring about what to use and wrote down the sizes available and prices and went home.

The project was shelved while I went bush and other things got in the way.

This week I conscientiously attacked it , made up the base frame to my previous measurements , then went in to buy some of the timber.

I am dead set certain that when I went in before the timber sizes for the sides were 200mm height x 1800 long which was going to be perfect for that part.

Blow me down , when I went to get the timber it's 184mm, ie 16mm shy of the frames I have already cut.

Thats ok I thought , I'll let the sides sit on the base which is 14mm thick and 1mm ally angle tie ins will close it up. Nice.

Bull****! the base size cuts are 897x1200.....what hell is 897?

I spoke to a guy in the store who was having the same problem, trying to understand how the strange sizes of the dressed timber can fit into his home project.

Anyway It looks like I might have to recut a lot of my ally frame or cut sheets of 2400x1200 to suit and have heaps of offcuts lying around.

I'm sure a few months ago these sizes were 200, 900 etc......anyone else comments?

Den

I've noticed this myself and been caught out too. It's a relatively new situation I think, all timber boards and sheet materials used to be imperial sizes and are still based on this ie: 900mm sheet would actually be 915mm or 3 foot. And boards would be 85 - 90mm or ex 4". I suspect the board manufacturers may have "metricised" their sheets and the 897mm is from a wider board and loses 3mm to the cut? The other option is the amount of imported material from China et al, would account for weird sizing.

I had needed an infill panel in a kitchen where a dishwasher used to be, the modular kitchen cabinets were all 915mm wide, was a real pain and added expense having to cut down from 1200 mm to get what used to be a standard width
The annoying thing is every shop is different, depending on where they source from, which can also change depending on who has the best deal at the time. And don't get my started on imported MGP 'pine'.
I spent ten years working in real timber yards and it always used to be very straight forward.