Hi all,

here is something that is bothering me. If one works with old beams or hand hewn beams you would ecpect them to not be square and/or straight in which case square rule would be applied.

Now if I am ordering beams from the mill and have size variations of up to 1/2" than I wonder why we are using saw mills in the first place.
Remembering back in Germany. If we ordered say a 10x20 (4"x6") than we received a 10x20. You could measure it whereever you wanted it was always 10x20. And those beams were not cut on a fancy mill. So does that means the saw mills here are so crappy or is it the mill operators? I doubt the beams would shrink that unevenly in a short period of time.

Maybe this should have been a seperate discussion but when I read Dan's post I could not help but ask.