Cheap Wood
Not an ED ad, this is a serious subject for amateur sawdust-makers. Where do you get lots of cheap boards so you can mess around without stressing about the cost? The solution is your local sawyer. Check the yellow pages, the classifieds, and anywhere else you can think of to get started. Then visit them and see what they carry.
Expect prices to be less than half what you’d pay at a good, local hardwoods store like this one. In fact, take notes on prices at the local store before you go. Remember that wood prices vary regionally; local species are always much cheaper, so price things from a local source. As a rule sawyers don’t take credit cards, so bring a chunk of cash.
And prices aren’t the only benefit. Usually all your wood comes from one tree, so the boards match much better than what you get from the store. It’s typically got more character–the interesting boards are grabbed first at the store, and this stuff comes from naturally grown trees, not tree farms. And best of all, it’s common to get bookmatched and even flitch-matched sets of wood that look spectacular when you use them together.
The biggest gotcha in buying wood like this is that it is probably not ideally dried. There are a few possibilities here.
Best case is the sawyer has a kiln and knows how to use it. If the wood was KD recently, it should be 6-8% moisture content. If this is true, you just need to leave it indoors for a week and it’s ready to go (and it’s probably fine if you use it immediately).
Second best is that the wood has been cut for at least 1 year per inch of thickness–that’s how long it takes to air-dry. It doesn’t matter how long the log has been sitting around, since the wood only really dries when properly stacked and stickered. Which gets to the second point–the wood should be stacked neatly, under cover (a sheet of plastic or metal is standard), and stickered with 1-inch spacers. Check for sticker stain where the stickers contact the wood. Bring a knife and scrape the stain off off to get an idea of how deep it goes. If it’s air-dried, the moisture content should be between 10% and 12%, although it can be higher. Again, a week or two indoors is a good idea before using it.
If neither of these is true, the wood is wet, and the price should be roughly a quarter of what you’d pay elsewhere. At that price, it still may not be a good deal. Not only will you have to store the wood properly for a year per inch of thickness, but there’s a nonzero chance that it’ll crack and warp badly over the course of that year. This is normally a risk the sawyer takes, but now you have to take it. Incidentally, if the sawyer hasn’t painted the ends of his logs, run-don’t-walk since he has no clue what he’s doing (wood tends to loose moisture faster at the ends of the log, causing splits there).
Also important to remember is that the average sawyer is an enterprising businessman, and as such, may well be lying to you, especially about the moisture content. The solution to this problem is the moisture meter, which I’ll write an article about as soon as I actually buy one.
For the moment, hit the Nickel Classified (or, if you’re in WA, drop me a line) and get in touch with a local sawyer. Cheap, great, local, high-quality wood… you’ll thank me for it!
(To give you an idea of how well this can work, I just bought 100 bf of airdried 8/4 maple for $0.70/bf, less than the cost of an equivalent volume of 2x4s.)
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