There's a big dynamic range in pine. For example, I work with everything from big-box-store lowest-cost pine lumber (2x4s) to kiln-dried select pine.
The low quality stuff is full of knots, warped (with very high variable humidity- some beams weigh 2x other beams). The high quality stuff is.... not as nice as maple, but certainly it's dense, uniform, and doesn't warp. From what I can tell, it's because they select the high quality stuff, then kiln-dry it and mill it.
Also if you inspect cheap 2x4s, there are often some higher quality pieces (few knots, straight-ish, not too wet) which you can then trim and plane to get decent wood.
But yeah, pine is sort of an industrial product grown fast at scale.
Pine is well suited to its use, otherwise, well, we wouldn't use it!
It's by a massive margin, the most common lumber used in construction. Its strength and other properties are well understood and all you have to do is follow the specifications and it performs great.
I mean what would even be the advantage to using other woods for home construction? Using a "stronger" wood means what? You can make your structural members smaller than 2x4? What would be the point? Walls need space for insulation and wires and pipes, there's no good reason to use a more dense wood. And it would still be more expensive! Pine is perfect for what it does because it meets the practical and engineering needs at the least expensive price.
Woodworking. Tables, chairs, etc. You typically a want a hardwood for these crafts. However, it you're going to make cheap stuff that won't last... pine is fine.
This is a common misconception usually spouted off by “elite” (aka beginning) woodworkers. Pine (white pine in particular) is a great material for woodworking. Much cheaper and more forgiving than harder species, takes stain well, and looks incredible when properly finished. If you think it won’t last, go look at pretty much any barn built over 100 years ago in the eastern US that is still standing. More often than not you’ll find thousands of board feet of old growth white pine inside. Similarly, many heirloom pieces from the same region and period are pine. They used what they had.
The problem is that you can't get old growth pine, you can only get construction grade pine anymore.
I've been woodworking for decades and would never use it for furniture. It moves way too much with the seasons (fine for barns where you can build large expansion joints, but not for my chair), and it doesn't take stain well unless you take additional steps to prepare it beforehand.
Also many/most barns used whatever wood they had available. In my area the insides are mostly cottonwood and the outside is oak.
That's not an argument to use pine. It's an argument to use whatever you have at hand.
Lots of modern construction is well behind the times. Eg most new residential buildings in England are still brick instead of wood stick framing and insulation. At least they adopted cavities! But houses in England are correspondingly cold and damp and cost a fortune to heat up. If only they imported more pine!
Computers. We put a lot of work into keeping certain data scarce and that's at odds with the nature of a computer, which is much better at making copies than preventing them.
A lot of people seem to think my statement is a tautology, but it's not.
It's exactly my point that not every material is good for its use. Even ones used in the overwhelming majority of cases -- like leaded gasoline. The ensuing environmental disaster shows it was exactly the wrong choice of material to solve the problem.
True, although I’m not sure I understand the comparison. Are there negative externalities to pine framing that other types of wood wouldn’t have? Or is the concern with wood framing in general, as opposed to some other kind of building system?
