 buying hardwood. Thickness terminology explained. Hola woodworkers, Paul Carlson here, old workshop guy. I think I just said old workshop guy. Small workshop guy, that's what I meant to say. I'm building some saw horses from some plans that I downloaded from the Samurai Carpenter website, and they were free. And I'm hoping that these will be sort of heirloom quality saw horses. So I'm using hardwood instead of plywood. I'm actually using red oak, black walnut, and some white maple. That's the same thing that the Samurai Carpenter workbench is being built with. I'm not done with that by any means. Because I decided to do the saw horses to enhance or perfect some of my skills that will be used in building the workbench. When you go to an actual store that sells hardwood, there's some terminology that you need to know. And that relates primarily to how do you describe the thickness. This piece here is slightly under two inches. It is called eight quarters. The most common dimensions for hardwood at your hardwood store are eight quarters, six quarters, and four quarters. There are obviously other dimensions, but those are the three most common ones. And you refer to it as eight quarters, not eight fourths, or four fourths. The thing you need to know though is that the eight quarters, which would normally be eight divided by four is two, is not really two inches. In my hardwood store they have milled a face, they have milled an edge, and they have milled another face before I buy it. And so that's taken off a little bit of material. And that's why when they mill those two faces it's no longer two inches. It might have started at approximately two inches, but it's no longer. The fact is it's a little over one and three quarters. So the eight quarters is one and three quarters approximately. The six quarters is a little over one and a quarter. And the four quarters, you think that would be one, but that's really a little over three quarters of an inch. So when you go to the hardwood store and you walk in a door and he says, what are you looking for? And you say eight quarter red oak. He'll actually think you know what you're doing. I hope that helps you. Small workshop guy, signing off.