# Tongue and Tongue, Groove and Groove Lumber

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tongue-and-tongue-groove-and-groove-lumber/808173
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [February 4, 2018, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tongue-and-tongue-groove-and-groove-lumber/808173 "2018-02-04T18:20:38Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Batano](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b487fb/32.png) [@Batano](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Batano)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2018, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tongue-and-tongue-groove-and-groove-lumber/808173/1 "2018-02-04T18:20:38Z")

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I was at a construction site in Eastern Europe and saw two stacks of boards. One was groove and groove, and the other was tongue and tongue. In the US I’ve only seen boards with tongues on one side and grooves on the other.

Any idea why these boards were done this way?

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### Author: ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2018, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tongue-and-tongue-groove-and-groove-lumber/808173/2 "2018-02-04T18:30:32Z")

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Seems odd and I can’t imagine why.

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### Author: ![Sasquatch\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8491ac/32.png) [@Sasquatch\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sasquatch_1)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2018, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tongue-and-tongue-groove-and-groove-lumber/808173/3 "2018-02-04T18:36:57Z")

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I guess it has a benefit in that you can swap ends, if for some reason grain pattern matches better one way than the other. Aside from that, got nothing.

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### Author: ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2018, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tongue-and-tongue-groove-and-groove-lumber/808173/4 "2018-02-04T19:04:00Z")

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Acquired at a steep discount as they were cut incorrectly!

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### Author: ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2018, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tongue-and-tongue-groove-and-groove-lumber/808173/5 "2018-02-04T19:20:42Z")

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All I can think of is to join two sections of tongue-and-groove which are aligned different ways.