At 08:38 PM 4/17/2015, Karl Wolz wrote:
>Under the impression it was WWII.

Karl, my house in Providence was built in 1940 and the studs (and
presumably the rest of the "dimension lumber" have the old allowance
of a quarter inch on a side, hence actual size 1-3/4" x 3-3/4".  I
remember when the lumber association(s) changed the finishing
allowance from a quarter inch to a half inch; it was somewhere
between 1957 and 1963, and there was cynical comment about it in
Popular Mechanics magazine and the like.  I imagine you can still buy
rough lumber to full dimension; but it would be instructive to see
the rough size that a stud mill**, say, cuts to when producing
dimension lumber.

**A stud mill, Diamond International Company style, is a large
machine that takes in delimbed spruce trees with the bark on at one
end, and produces a) hammer-mill ground bark and bark-on trimmings
fermented as silage and used to fire the boilers for the kiln; b)
clean chips about maybe inch and a half by four by 3/16, used to make
toilet paper and such; and some quantity of 2x4x8-foot kiln-dried
studs.  I spent a month painting railings in one in '76.

Yrs,
d