Lumber at Home Depot, is the "#2 & Better/Crown" pine/safe?

[ChinChin3]

My homedepot sells select pine ($ and what I use to build furniture with) and they also have boards labeled as "#2 & Better/Crown" as seen in the photos below, I know it's kiln dried but is it pine? No one there seems to have any idea.... I'm making ledges/shelves & boxes for them.

Thanks!

 

[Amethyst]

Well since it says mixed wood, I would think that a variety of wood is used, so it could be pine, but could be something else too and varies from board to board. I'd just stick with the ones that are actually labeled as pine, or poplar or any other of the chin safe woods.

In case you were wondering the "#2 and better" is referring to the grade of the lumber, #2 is the most common general building/woodworking lumber grade, the better the grade the less defects the wood has. Select grade would have the least amount of defects (knots, holes, cracks, etc), so the prettiest, then comes #1, #2, #3, and so on down.

 

[ChinChin3]

So are most of you using the select pine or poplar boards? I've made myself crazy checking HD & Lowes and the only less expensive alternatives are what they call "whitewood" at Lowes (which they tell me is pine, but reading online it isn't necessarily pine) and this other stuff at HD (which again, I'm being told is pine but *might* be something else. The people at NOLA (http://nolachinrescue.webs.com/gatheringsupplies.htm) assure me either is safe, but again... how do I know for sure? Ugh! Guess I'm going to suck it up and spend the money on the select pine.

 

[Amethyst]

I just use the basic #2 grade pine, it doesn't have to be top quality in my opinion since the chins just chew it up anyway. Some places will also let you pick your boards (from the stack you bought from) when you pick up the wood in the lumber yard. I just get pine boards at the local hardware store and building centers, white wood is generally spruce, which as far as I can tell is safe so long as it's kiln dried, I've used kd spruce myself with no ill effects. I think spruce might be on the unsafe list just like pine because it's toxic if not kiln dried. Also I think I read somewhere that the bark of spruce is toxic, so no spruce chew sticks but the wood should be fine.

 

[ChinChin3]

Ugh... wish I would have read this before dropping another $80 on poplar boards today They better be slow chewers because I have no desire to replace the things I'm building anytime soon!

 

[LGarl]

My homedepot sells select pine ($ and what I use to build furniture with) and they also have boards labeled as "#2 & Better/Crown" as seen in the photos below, I know it's kiln dried but is it pine? No one there seems to have any idea.... I'm making ledges/shelves & boxes for them.

Thanks!

Sweden typically has two types of wood they market for building, pine and spruce. I couldn't find anything specific on 'mix wood' but they (uncertain whether this means the direct sellers from Sweden or HomeDepot) are certified with the FCS (C023232 is the certificate number). You might be able to find out more at https://ic.fsc.org/