Replies

1. 
   AJinNZ | May 22, 2004 12:04am | #1

   Frenchy,

   Compared to what I am used to and the species you have available, yours looks cheap.

   I get all non-native timbers direct from a small sawmill near home. Mostly he does macrocarpa ( one of my favourites ) larch and douglas fir. It's all sopping wet straight from the tree, but I can wait.

   We get 8 X 1 macrocarpa boards from his that are his lowest grade for raised garden making. $1.50 per metre. There are always several in each batch that are almost clear. Those go into my stash to dry. Getting quite a pile now. :-)

   Buying dried is way more pricey here as well. I try to avoid it if possible. Am building a large old style carport at the moment, and using douglas fir and marcorcarpa direct from the mill. Considerably cheaper, can get some pretty big timbers with no struggle and it is all in keeping with the style. cant complain at all. The timber is all wet so will dry and shrink at the same rate all around.

   Just got out a price list for another mill.........

   Macrocarpa, dry dressed , clear 8 X 1......$12.72

   Douglas fir, dressed                                 $3.12

   Rimu, dry rough sawn sapwood,              $14.10

              Heartwood                                     $21.14

   These are all per metre prices. Thats 3 feet 3 inches in your money. ;)    

    

   Everything, 100% of it, depends on how you look at it.

   DW

1. 
   fdampier5 | May 22, 2004 12:37am | #2

   Thanks neat bits to know!

       By the way is that NZ bucks or American?'    What is the new Zealand exchange rate anyway? 

     How long does it take you to air dry wood there?  

1. 
   SgianDubh | May 22, 2004 01:30am | #3

   frenchy, probably about NZ$20 for a single grain of west Texas valley desert sand, ha, ha. Slainte.RJFurniture

1. 
   fdampier5 | May 22, 2004 04:11am | #4

   Now Sgain,

     I wouldn't pay 20NZ for all of west Texas, and only a little more for all of Texas.. ;-)

2. 
   UncleDunc | May 22, 2004 07:26am | #5

   >> Compared to what I am used to and the species you have available, yours looks cheap.

   Of course it looks cheap. That's why he posts these things, to make the rest of us grind our teeth. He's been doing it as long as I've been reading Knots and Breaktime.

1. 
   macalex | May 22, 2004 11:11am | #6

   Where are you, AJ?

   Here in the deep south (well, Central Otago) the only mills I know do nothing but NZ oregon and p radiata (Douglas Fir and Monterray Pine to you northerners).

   How fast does fresh-sawn timber dry? Too fast! Where I live is the driest, hottest and coldest part of the country (not all at the same time, but it is nearly always very low relative humidity) and the challenge is to slow down the drying rate.

   There's a guy with a license to fish for native floaters in the Sounds. He hauls the logs back to Invercargill and saws for the furniture trade. Heard of him?

   Go Frenchy, you stirrer!

   Edited 5/22/2004 4:14 am ET by kiwimac

1. 
   AJinNZ | May 22, 2004 02:41pm | #7

   Mac,

   I havent heard of the Invercargill fella. I am about 40 minutes north of Christchurch.

   The Larch is nice. I used it at Xmas for board and batten on a new workshop I built for a guy. Some was really tight grained, so tight I thought it would make nice furniture. Cheap too at 3 bucks a metre.

   Drying time here varies. In summer with a strong Nor' Wester blowing, it takes a few days. Not so good for the wood though. I put all the wet stuff in the barn and let it get on with it. It is out of the wind and direct sun and so far everything dries out with minimal fuss. I put a heap of macrocarpa 4X1 in there this year that was to be used for a deck. After I nailed it all down nothing moved. As macro has a large shrinkage rate from wet I was pretty happy with that.

   The native prices came from Halswell Timber, just on the south side of Christchurch. They have a lot of dry stock in various grades. Good to deal with too. As I said though, I prefer where possible to get wet wood cheap and wait for it to dry if I can.

   Rimu I never buy, WAY too pricey. I get mine for nothing when I rip it out of an old house and the owners want it taken away. :-)

   Frenchy,

   Like Mac said, you just love to rub salt in a fellas wounds doncha?

   The exchange rate at the moment is around 63 -64 cents to the US dollar. It is slipping slowly however. It was up to 72 cents not so long ago. ( very cool ). I still have time to dust off the credit card and do some shopping before it slides to the ridiculous again.

   When is that solid black walnut raft coming down here? Will even trade you Rimu for the walnut. Even swap.

   I'm gonna be rich I tell ya.......................haahaahaa 

   Everything, 100% of it, depends on how you look at it.

   DW

1. 
   macalex | May 22, 2004 03:30pm | #8

   Thanks

   I'm going to be in Christchurch Tuesday week to pick up a new Minimax Eurosaw! From Gabbett.

   The prices Frenchy is quoting make the point - that you've picked up - that recycled timber is becoming more attractive all the time. I'm chewing my way through a truckload of 1880s kauri floorboards (130 x 30mm), and just a few of weeks ago bought the complete ceiling from the old Alexandra railway station - 300mm by 14mm clear kauri boards, each about 5m long, paid the recycler $NZ50. It'll be panelling, and when trimmed and run through my thicknessor is faultless.

   50 x 100 (2 by 4 to you non-metric guys) recycled rimu is still affordable, but I have the better part of a cubic metre of west coast chainsaw milled heart rimu sitting in my wood store, along with a couple of cubes of black pine (matai), so I only take recycled when it comes my way, and is cheap.

   There's nothing in the US equivalent to either kauri or rimu, but in terms of use and buyer preference, I'd rank kauri with walnut, and rimu with cherry. Matai? Maple or beech I suppose.

   Edited 5/22/2004 8:34 am ET by kiwimac

2. 
   fdampier5 | May 22, 2004 10:33pm | #11

   This is cool! you're sending messages to someone in N Z via a tauton press in  Newton Connecticut USA. 

      A couple of nano seconds later it's there!

3. 
   macalex | May 23, 2004 02:34am | #12

   Way cool!

   We don't do it often, us Kiwis, but there's so few of us, and we're soo far apart ...

   Makes the points that FWW is an international product ... when I was learning to make furniture in the UK in the 70s and 80s FWW was my teacher, mentor and inspiration. I guess knots still does that for a world-wide audience.

   If you're looking for a premier NZ native, go for kauri. It's not flashy, it'll seem a bit soft if you are accustomed to US hardwoods, but it is very rewarding to work with.

   Edited 5/22/2004 7:35 pm ET by kiwimac

   Edited 5/22/2004 7:35 pm ET by kiwimac

4. 
   fdampier5 | May 23, 2004 06:49am | #13

   So what's rimu like to work with?  Does it ever have any wild grain etc?

5. 
   macalex | May 23, 2004 08:57am | #14

   It's a bit variable - quite a lot of difference in colour, in figure, and between heart and sap. Colour varies from very pale straw or honey yellow to dark red, almost black. it doesn't have 'figure' the way you understand figure, the colour tends to be streaky, and not closely related to the growth rings. It's not ring-porous. Sometimes the grain is quite hard to pick up by eye.

   Machines well, takes a nice lustre from a sharp plane, will sand to a very nice finish and takes any of the conventional finishes. I tend to use just wax, or a thinned sanding sealer followed by steel wool and wax.

   Can move a bit - especially if used with the moisture content a bit high - and if heart and sap are used together they tend to move differently, which can be a problem.

   It's a premium wood - terribly undervalued here in the past (used wet as a framing timber, for example), now hard to come by because of severe restrictions on milling native timber.

   J Arno can probably provide the tech details!

   Edited 5/23/2004 1:58 am ET by kiwimac

6. 
   fdampier5 | May 22, 2004 10:25pm | #10

   I need to find someone to band it together for me.  Once that happens I'll haul it to the post office and it'll be on it's way.   (post is much cheaper than fed ex or UPS)

     I'd love to have a little of your rimu but that's not real important, just gotta take the time to do it..

2. 
   fdampier5 | May 22, 2004 10:19pm | #9

   Actually I post it so other will go out and buy some of the wood that goes to waste..

        I still knash my teeth when I see what is tossed into the slab wood pile to be sold as firewood!  

     when I first started to post here I begged others to come and get my cut offs.. (large pieces, some of them  6x12's as long as 5 feet long some walnut some oak some tamerack) they've went as firewood but I really tried..

     I've told everybody where my sawmill is so if you want you can go there directly and I'm certain that if they publish those prices in magazines and send them out every week, they don't do it to fool Connie Johnson so only I get a good deal..

     It's really simple!  If you want a good price on wood you need to get it before others get their hands on it.. Stop buying in stores etc. and start taking a few trips!