The Manufactured Housing Forums

Those crazy Amish at Dutch! A couple months ago while doing some renovations in the kitchen, I saw where they had pieced together 7 short pieces of 2 x 3 to make a wall stud. I was amazed (as well as disgusted). Now last weekend, I found a stud in the closet that consists of no fewer than NINE scraps of 2 x 3! The shortest piece was only a couple inches long. While I admire their pursuit of saving a buck, the extent to which they use these pieced together studs hardly seems like it could be cost-effective.
Ok, i can see maybe piecing together 2 or 3 pieces, but NINE?!?!?
I'm not too concerned with the structural integrity of this, as the home is a 1993, and hasn't fallen apart yet (in spite of it's previous residents). The seams where the studs are pieced together appear to be well constructed with finger joints and glue.
Is this practice common among other manufacturers, or is it just a "Dutch" thing? Sure hope they didn't do this to the exterior wall studs!

Actually, that finger-jointed stuff is pretty strong. I'll bet they have a machine they simply load with scraps, which arranges, joints, and glues the pieces automatically.

The quality of the joints appear to be very good, and in some cases very difficult to even detect.

This is a handyman job. In my perspective as a professional contractor/engineer
it should never be allowed. Go get a building inspector and show him this workmanship. See what he says.

Where did you find these ditchies?


Agustin

these are manufactured studs , ther are used in many homes. they are just as strong. they are no different than fingerjointed moulding. if you will notice they are used for up and down load bearing , straight up instalation. not for loads from side. sort of like and egg , will break from side but not ends