Hi All,
Been following the discussions for a while, but this is my first venture into the fray. I am interested in gaining some insight into approaches for successfully selecting rough cut lumber. I am an entusiastic hobbyist, and have been trying to push myself to take on more challenging projects. With the escalating price of lumber, it is vital to make every piece of stock count. Lately, however, I have had some dissapointments, that looked fine in the rough, but after planing were not adequate (i.e unattractive grain, stains, defects….)
So in essence, what is the process used by others to pick the very best rough boards while minimizing the occurance of unusable stock.
Dave
Replies
dbrudd14 ,
Welcome , it is just my opinion many may disagree but I purchase 99% of my stock already surfaced. What you see is what you get . The savings of 10-20 cents a foot for surfacing can be easily eaten up by a few undesirable boards . Besides on large quantities quite a bit of time can be used before you can work on the project . One or two pieces of wood is no big deal to surface yourself but 200 or 400 BF of lumber can be a day or two work for a one man shop , not to mention the wear and tear on you and your machinery .Learning to read a board when surfaced can be a challenge but in the rough can be futile especially if you can't afford to buy a lot more then you need to choose through .
good luck dusty
Unattractive grain and defects are one thing, stains are another. Sounds like your source isn't being very careful with their process -- either selection or drying or whatever (I'm no expert).
Hit-and-miss surfaced lumber will save you a little money, but still show it's grain, etc. Might look for that.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Well, Frenchy's approach is to buy it by the truckload at the mill and then post gloats here and at Breaktime about how little he paid. It works if you have lots of storage space, but the gloating will attract widespread hatred.
Hi Uncle Dunc ,
With Frenchy it is more of an arrogant gloating of sorts . Here on the West coast hardly any graded hardwoods can be purchased in the full rough . The appearance may determine the grade given to each board. The other shortcoming of buying direct from the mill as our croney does , you may need a year or two per inch of thickness to allow the lumber to dry , anywhere close enough to actually use . The difference may be working on your own projects as opposed to working only by commission on custom ordered pieces as I do .
dusty
>> ... you may need a year or two per inch of thickness to allow the lumber to dry ...Yeah, I should have said "mill or kiln." I've seen him post about fantastic hauls of dried wood as well as green.
Unc, you've noticed Frenchy hasn't posted the location of his storage facility, eh?Leon Jester
Dave,
Welcome. And since most of the folks are having too much fun zinging each other to answer your question :-), let me take a crack.
I wouldn't go to a hardwood vendor without a good straight edge (you do not want to deal with warped wood) and a card scraper or block plane. The vendor shouldn't have any problem with you revealing some of the plain surface to see what you're getting. Also, take the most attractive pieces outside so you can inspect them in daylight. This will probably reveal a lot about the board, good and bad, that you may not have been able to see inside the warehouse. I know some people like to bring a spray bottle with water, but I'm not sure how much help that would be on rough timber.
Hope that helps,
Mitch
"I'm always humbled by how much I DON'T know..."
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