Understanding Wood Sizes

When visiting your local home center or woodworking supplier, you'll notice that stock comes in varying wood sizes. Additionally, softwood sizes differ from hardwood sizes. While the numbers may seem logical, they can be a bit deceiving, as you'll soon discover.Hardwoods rarely come in standard dimensions like softwoods. Instead of finding a 2x6 in hardwood vareties, you'll find that suppliers sell hardwoods in random varieties measured by the board-foot.

Additionally, hardwood may be sold in quarters. Each quarter refers to a 1/4-inch in thickness, meaning, a 5/4 board is roughly 1-1/4". If your project calls for a piece that is exactly one-inch thick, you'll want to purchase a 5/4 board and mill it down to the proper size using a surface planer.

Plywood us available in 4'x8' sheets, but once again, thickness sizes can be deceiving. The most common sizes of plywood are 1/2-inch and 3/4-inch, but in actuality, this corresponds to 15/32-inch and 23/32-inch in thickness respectively.

Plywood is graded in A, B, C and D grades, depending on the sanded finish of the two sides of the sheet, A being the smoothest. A sheet is graded on both sides: for instance, a sheet of BC plywood is grade B on one side and C on the other.

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