I can’t stop!
Another trip to the sawmill another load of wood.
a six x12 x10 foot black walnut beam $60.00 oh and a couple of 4/4 boards tossed in one 12 inches wide and one six inches wide.
and 20 maple 2×10’s 10 feet long $50.00
I know I’m weak, But this is absolutely the last time I fall! I’ll be better..
Replies
Time to start another house, Frenchy!
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Forest Girl,
Not according to my city, they want me to finish the one I live in first!
Frenchy,
So is there a typo, or did you pay $0.15/bd ft for 8/4 maple? and $1.00/bd ft for black walnut (not counting the free 4/4 boards)?
Is there really that much difference in price of lumber at the mill vs lumber at a lumber co?
Is the wood you bought Kiln Dried?
Cincy
Cincinnati,
The prices are correct. I've written at length about sawmill wood before, basically wood is handled by 10 to 15 people who each add their markup to it once wood leaves the sawmill. There is even an industry newspaper that comes out weekly with prices and that's what I pay.
Not a particularly great deal, but typical of what sawmills should be charging.
I'll grant you if you wander into a typical sawmill and ask for a few boards, they most likely will up the price or simply not bother to deal with you. However the prices start once you establish yourself as someone they want to bother working with. That varies between sawmills.. Maybe you need to order a cube of sawn wood first maybe just a few logs.
My sawmill is great because I can go in there on tuesday or wednesday and wander thru their lot and select whichever log I want ask them to saw me up this log and that one and come friday I can pick it up.
I first got onto the low prices when I stopped there and saw a whole stack of railroad ties. (They are 9"x7"x8 1/2') black walnut that was going off to the creosote company. At the time they cost about $15.00 Now they are closer to $20.00
Pallet mills and railroad tie companies just want wood cheap and every single major city in the country has several places.
Kiln Dried wood adds another 50 cents a bd.ft. so I always air dry my wood.. air dried black wood has a lot more color vibrancy.. Kiln dried black walnut has this muted color because they can turn the early (white) wood brown with the addition of steam. Me, I'd rather saw off the early wood if I don't want it.
As to the rest of it I can get 8/4 hardwood to furniture grade dryness in a year inside my house, I can get it to furniture dryness ina couple of years outside.
Frenchy,
What's the name of the weekly industry newspaper?
I don't have room to air dry lumber. My shop is only 12 x 20 and there's no way I can store inside my home.
So I may have to pay an additional $.50/bd ft for KD. That would have placed that maple at $.65/bd ft. The lumber source I found in Florida wanted $4.65/bd ft. My local lumber yard wanted $7.12/bd ft. This is for hard maple.I thought I was getting a good buy at $4.65.
The few local saw mills I located either would not sell to me, or were asking about the same $4.50-$5.00 per bd ft for maple. This is for #1 selects.
Is the key to getting this at an economy pricing in buying the entire log?
Cincinnati,
I'm not sure how you'll do it. What I did was find the sawmill that sold to the pallet makers. A little reverse engineering is called for. Go visit the local pallet makers and ask them who their source is. Places that sell to pallet makers and railroad tie companies are your best source of modest priced wood.. Now once you find those places you need to convince them to do business with you. A few boards at a time is seldom worth their while.
My buddy in San Diego asked me to bring him a load of wood.. Now this is a guy who at most uses a few boards at a time. He'd never use the 800 bd.ft. I brought him in his lifetime but he hated paying the prices they charge for wood in San Diego.
What he did is get together about a dozen of his buddies who have similar interests as his and they had a little mini auction of the wood as I unloaded it from the truck.. Surprisingly the really nice wide boards that I'd grade FAS didn't command the premium price I thought they would instead boards 6 inches wide were most in demand.. I Paid a little over $400 for the load of wood and every body was thrilled with their purchases and the modest price they paid. It sold for slightly over $800 and they gave me $300 of it for the gas I used and the rest went into a treasury for the wood working club (formed on the spot) to buy specialty tools for the club. Six months ago another club member made a trip to Oregon and brought down some Cedar, redwood and douglas fir. The treasury now has nearly $400.00 in it and this November I'll be making another trip. (cherry and Birch)
THAT does it... enough's enough... there's gotta be some limits..
Frenchy..the next gloat's gonna see you in the dawghaus... with no supper..!
;P~~
Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
Frenchy,I was going to let slide the dog bones you owe me but after this one I WANT THEM NOW !!!C.
Midnight,
Ain't a gloat, it's a plea for help! I'm a sucker for a great deal and that would be fine if I sold stuff but since I tend to simply hoard it untill I find a use for it, things are outta hand..
Plea my lilly white........
admit it... yer just showin off....
just when I think I got a great deal on some 36" sycamore at $50/cube... you come out with THAT....???
herrumphs....
I hope it warps on ya.. ;P~~~~Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
the sycamore is pretty likely to warp actually. sorry!
not if it behaves like the other half ton of sycamore I have..
it's quartersawn too....Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
Mike,
I'll bet all that heavy walnut has boxed in hearts, and is full of knots and checks. Probably half sapwood or more, too. He'll be able to use that wide stuff for his hog trough, after it finishes cupping and bowing.
Or as Aesop's fox said, as he looked longingly up at the grapes, just out of his reach,"I bet they're too sour to eat."
Cheers,
Ray
joinerswork,
At least! Actually all I really get is a pile of sawdust that came off the boards, not very high grade sawdust either!
;-)
Ray, definitely you are a scribe of note....Philip Marcou
Thats just terrible:) I recomend time in the shop with a jointer, bandsaw and planer. Our you can load it all up and drive it out to me in California.
Troy
Troy,
Where in Calfornia? I regularly visit Temecula.
Alameda which is next to Oakland and the location of the Japanwoodworker store. A very dangerous place for me:) Troy
Troy,
I should go thru the San Francisco area some time. Just for variety.. It's a short hop tthru Salt Lake City to San Francisco and then down 99 to LA where I can hop over to temecula easily enough (as long as I do that at 3 in the morning and not during the day)..
Funny I drive all around the country and still manage to hit most cities right during their freeway parking lot time.. (I refuse to call it rush hour) Does everybody in America keep track of where I am and when they hear I'm coming decide now would be a perfect time to go park on the freeways?
As far as traffic goes if you are going east to west in the evening you will avoid a lot of traffic if you are heading to the bayarea from the central valley.Troy
well my friend mr. frenchy if you want to feel even better. i bought an 8ft. 2x4 piece of wormy chestnut for $50. just a little over 3 bf. see i knew you could feel even better.
gmoney,
I can't find enough chestnut around here to do anything with so it's my turn to envy you..
Is it prime timber ?
I know nothing about wood prices but that all sounds beautiful and a great buy!! Congratulations!!Gretchen
philip.
It's mill run. I pick which log I want and they saw it however I ask.
Sounds more like you are a foxey investor than woodaholic.
Cadiddlehopper
cadiddlehopper,
That's like encouraging a drunk to have another.. How creul ;-) seriously I need to stop this.
In the last 9 years I've bought over 50,000 bd.ft. of hardwood. (no I don't have a business).
that's funny about the 50,000 bf! i can see that. i bet when you decide to build a project, you go through your wood and think to yourself "oh, this wood is too good for this project" and wind up buying more. i do that all the time!
gmoney,
I at least am disciplined enough to not do that.
If you look at my house pictures the detail is too small to show it but the Facia board on the right hand side of that steep 27/12 pitched roof is this wonderful tiger stripe black walnut board nearly 20 feet long and 12 inches wide. I mean we are speaking about show quality wood here and you can't see the fabulous grain because it's too far away (and slowly fading as the UV light attacks it and causes it to fade.) There are timbers with fantastic flame or crotch wood and some with neat burl in it.. The south wall has another piece of that same tiger stripe.
I have 9 burl timbers in the house in various spots to show off their figure. Those I expect will not fade as wood on the outside will.
Frenchy
Ever since you told me about the lumber prices you pay for white oak and walnut in another thread a while back, I have been quietly envious. This just adds to the walnut envy. Even if the wood you buy is not graded select and better, I am pretty sure it is not, it is still an amazing price. Are you permitted to post the name and number of your supplier, or is that against the rules of the secret society the two of you belong to? What is the grading of the wood in question? JL
Gotta admit..I'm a sawmill junky like Frenchy. I drive from the DC area to upstate NY and PA and get great deals, but remember, this is hot off the saw, in other words still wet. I both air and kiln dry the stuff...and like Frenchy....slather it up with some 1# cut shellack!!
See Jimmy!
We have it great! Most of these guys buy wood at greatly inflated prices and think that's normal. Someone selects out the great cuts for them to pay extra for and they feel lucky.
(Pssst. how do you keep from overdoing it?)
jeanlou,
It's mill run which means I bought the log and what comes off comes off.. Some is FAS some is various grades and sometimes I get junk (about 5% of the time). The cool thing is sometimes I great really astonishing pieces of burl or fiddleback whatever..
I buy my wood from Johnson Logging in Cannon Falls Minnesota Ask Connie or Dan they are nice people (Seth runs the firewood department) I'm amazed at the number of great drug dealers (er, wood is my drug of choice)
Thanks for the info Frenchy.
Do you need the name of a good therapist to help you out with your addiction? They charge $150.00/HR. and you get the whole thing, junk included. By the time your therapy is done, you will have no more money, won't be able to buy anything, and then your problem will go away all on its own. :-) JL
Trustmejeanlou,
I'm already broke, which as you know for most addicts is the point where they finally seek help. But I've looked and I've looked and there just isn't a woodaholics meeting anywhere near me. ;-)
What I seek now is a theripist who accepts wood as payment. "here this session will cost you six black walnut planks 12 inches wide"..
You are dreaming in Technicolor Frenchy. At the price you pay for lumber, you are looking for cut rate therapy...they do not work for cut rate...you will need to offer many more boards than that, and probably dress them to boot.
By the way, when you buy a tree, does the mill give you the wood marked consecutively, or do you simply get a pile that came from the same tree? JL
jeanlou,
I can have the wood plain sawn or sawn for best face (most common) or quarter sawn. Usually I just let them do whatever they want. Dan will never admit it but he's very proud of the wood he saws and will always go for whatever is best in the log. Since he grew up sawing wood for his dad (Connie) I'd trust his judgement a lot more than mine..
That pride is a wonderful thing because when they get some boards that are really worthy, I get them.. same price! I'm afraid if I stop going there I'll lose that connection and you know addicts and their dealers!
Frenchy
If you continue like this and develop a worthy collection of incredible boards, you can sell them over the internet to dumbos like me, who pay crazy prices for figured hardwood. This will give you the revenue you need to continue feeding your habit and allow you to continue your relationship with the sawyer. JL
jeanlou,
OH I thought since all phsycologists were these neardy people who pay way to much for stuff since they don't know the value of anything ;-) I'd be able to get to heaven for a bag of magic seeds.. (or a few planks of wood)
Approx .15 cents a board foot for the maple? Am I figuring that right? And approx a buck a board foot for the walnut? Am I figuring THAT right? Wow. I'm speechless. I thought I was getting 'decent' prices for wood, but nowhere near that good. What's the catch? You shop with a six gun or something??....;->)
Jeff
Jeff100
Wouldn't work! Connie has this shot gun that is at least 7 feet tall with two barrels each over an inch! (It's actaully a gag) but you see that thing prope in the shack and you'd think twice about pulling your little pistol.. ;-)
LOL!!! I understand. I was kidding anyway, I've worked with a fair number of folks from your neck of the woods, and they were a stout bunch, not to be intimidated!!! As for the wood, I'm not in your league yet, but I'm headed in that direction...BTW, at some point you're going to run out of room to store more wood, THEN what are you gonna do???? G'head, tell me you have twenty acres...Jeff
Jeff100
According to the city I darn well better have most of it gone by labor day when the permit is set to expire..
I can keep it indoors and I'm probably down to 15,000 bd.ft. right now so I think it's doable. I expect to be down to my stack of fiddleback maple and my stack of Black walnut by labor day. I'll have used up my stack of Maple thins by then so the only wood I will really sweat is where will I stack a couple thousand bd.ft. of black walnut this winter..
On the other hand I did saw some 18 foot white oak timbers up into firewood simply because I needed to get them out of the way. It really hurt because several people wanted them and I could have used the funds, but either I stopped right now and opened up the front of the house to get them out or they becme firewood. The former wasn't really an option since we've been known to get blizzards this time of year.
I'm glad no one can see the tears running down my face. White oak firewood!! But I understand. Sometimes you have to do, what you have to do. I think back often, of all the alder, maple and cherry I've burned for firewood, a couple of decades ago, before I got into woodworking. Dozens of cords of wood. Back in those days I was trying to save money using wood to heat my house. I was raising a family, living paycheck to paycheck. I went out of my way to burn hardwoods because they put out the most heat. Like I said, sometimes, you've got to do...
Jeff
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