Wanna again welcome you to The 405 Coffee Break. Guys, get your cup of coffee, glass iced tea, bottle of water. I think it's Friday. Let's see what's happening. Spring wheat $5.98 a bushel, 550lb steer calf $5.02 a pound all the way to $5.15 a pound, and a 100lb fat lamb in Billings at $2.89 a pound. But guys, there's more, much more.
Okay. Have to admit, I accidentally drank invisible ink. Now I'm in the hospital waiting to be seen. You know, Thea came home the other night telling me, I'm leaving you, Orvin. You're too obsessed with baseball. I looked perplexed and said, wow. That completely came out of left field. Oh, yeah. Since I'm in the hospital waiting to be seen, this other guy comes in shouting, doctor, doctor, I'm shrinking.
Doctor says, now calm down. Calm down. You'll just have to be a little patient. Time for a bible verse. Proverbs 17:22 A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Again, where was it found? Proverbs 17 verse 22.
And we like joyful hearts. So today, something new that I just learned. I like to share with you the things I learned. If you have a tape measure pull it out and see if you notice black diamonds on it. Black diamonds not red, black. The 1st one will appear right near the 19" mark. The 2nd one will appear near the 38" mark.
Now we know that 16 and 32 and 48 are red because most often when you put studs in your walls, they're 16 inches apart. Right? And the red lettering helps you see it quickly. But what in the world are those black diamonds there for? And have they always been there? You have to understand that in some departments, I'm a slow learner. Why? It was just within the last 5 years that I understood that the space between the studs is called the stud bay. I like that. I like words.
But when I learn, I strive to retain. So what's the deal with the black diamonds on the tape measure? First off, like I said, I just learned of it on Monday, so this is newfound knowledge for me. But as I do the research, I learned that they were not always there. Boy, that's curious, but now they are there.
So here's the deal. During the 1970's the cost of traditional solid finished lumber skyrocketed. Builders all over needed a way to use fewer wooden beams without sacrificing the floor's strength. The desire was to save money with less lumber but not compromise the structural integrity. This is when structural engineers popularized the 19.2" spacing as the perfect middle ground between 16" and 24" spacing.
So lay your tape measure down and pull it out to 8'. That's how long a sheet of plywood is. Right? 8' long. It used to be either 16" spacings or 24" spacings. Well, 24 was too wide for floor joists, so the engineers figured out 19.2 inches or about 19 3/16th of an inch. But if you have to measure each space one by one, that's a lot of work. So the tape measure company like Stanley put the diamonds on the tape measure somewhere around 1980 or 1981 give or take a year.
And remember the sheet of plywood is 8 foot long So you want it to come out right on either end or this end covers only half of the 2 by and the next sheet still has the other half to make it solid. So looking at your tape measure, if you had 16" spacings there would be 6 spans when if you use the black diamond method you only have 5 spans.
You can save some lumber, the spans are all equal, structural integrity preserved and you still end up perfectly at the end of the 8' sheet of plywood. But guess what? If they're not multiples of 8 you end up wasting a lot of material. Just thought you'd like to know and Ron Scott I bet you didn't know that, I didn't either. Now we both are aware. As we all understand, it's important to get knowed up. So until next time, as you go out there, remember now, don't be bitter.