Where do you buy your wood?

[Justin Green]

In Waco, TX, here. I've done a little research but there's not a good hardwood dealer here in Waco.

I've found that the big box lumber is either overly expensive or warped enough for a spokeshaveless cooper to use. I did find a local lumberyard with some excess soft maple that is priced cheaper than Big Box's poplar. It looks like they've got about 30-50 board feet of it (not good at judging BF).

I'm looking to practice some dovetails this weekend, and was thinking about going to get two poplar boards. I'm tempted to buy maple, but from what I've read the poplar is easier for learning - and me practicing dovetails on maple just seems sacreligious. I have some pine in the garage that I might use instead, but it's pretty prone to tearout and it's easy to ding. He said their maple was leftover from a local cabinet job order and that they normally don't stock it. Some of it had some birdseye visable.

For future reference, does anyone mail order their lumber from the internet? I'm assuming that would be okay for turning-sixed pieces, but probably not common for larger pieces...

This might be in the wrong forum - not sure.

[Mark Roderick]

I would recommend practicing the dovetails on something harder than poplar. With poplar you'll get fuzziness around each cut, which interferes with the feedback you're looking for. Maple would be better. So would mahogany. Nothing wrong with using small pieces of those woods for practice.

Now, I'd begin practicing by making cut after cut just to see if you can track a line down the board an inch or so and 90 degrees across the end grain. For that, pine is fine.

[Michael Faurot]

In Waco, TX, here. I've done a little research but there's not a good hardwood dealer here in Waco.


Near me (in San Antonio), there's a McCoy's that stocks S3S Red Oak, Poplar, Alder and Maple, which is sold by the board foot.

From what I can tell by looking at McCoy's web site (http://www.mccoys.com/), store #047 located at 4236 Franklin Ave in Waco, sells Aspen, Maple, Oak and Poplar. I'm not certain if this store has S3S stock or not. Not all of the McCoy's carry it.

Another option would be to stop by the Homestead Heritage (http://www.homesteadheritage-woodworking.com/woodworking.html) wood working school in Elm Mott and see if they'll sell you any lumber.

[David Keller NC]

Justin - Depnds on what kind of pine. So-called "hard pine", or Southern Yellow Pine is the stuff they make treated wood out of, and it's a bear to work - the inconsistency between the soft earlywood and the hard latewood makes accurate paring to a line difficult. However, eastern white pine is a joy to work, though your tools need to be very sharp.

From the standpoint of drawer making, the traditional approach is a hard, "show" wood like mahogany, maple, cherry, or walnut, and a softer "secondary" wood like eastern white pine, poplar, cypress, aspen, basswood, butternut, etc...

You may find considerably more success dovetailing a wood like poplar, EWP, aspen, etc... to a harder wood like mahogany or maple than trying to join the two harder woods together. Particularly in the case of joining two maple boards together, your joints have to be exact for it to go together with the whack of a mallet; otherwise, one or both boards will split.

When you use EWP or poplar as one of the boards, the harder wood compresses the softer wood (within reason), enabling you to get a beautiful, tight joint. Were I to recommend two woods for someone to start with, it would be Honduran mahogany and poplar, if available. If mahogany isn't available, then my second choice would be cherry or walnut. While maple's a popular choice as a furniture wood, it's too hard to recommend for a beginner practicing dovetails.

[Justin Green]

McCoy's is where I found the Maple. I also saw the alder, but do not know much about it. The gentlemen told me in the store that they normally didn't carry it - I suppose he might have been mistaken. If it's something they normally carry, that's a nice bonus!

[Robert Parrish]

I buy all my lumber from the Internet. I just had a truck load delivered today (purple heart, padauk and ash). I have been buying from Wall lumber out of North Carolina for over 20 years with never a problem.
http://www.walllumber.com/default.asp

[Scott T Smith]

I buy all my lumber from the Internet. I just had a truck load delivered today (purple heart, padauk and ash). I have been buying from Wall lumber out of North Carolina for over 20 years with never a problem.
http://www.walllumber.com/default.asp


+1

Steve Wall is a super fellow and an honorable businessman, and he has some great products. I've been inside his warehouse more than once.

[Justin Green]

I might give them a try - but I bet the shipping is a bit more to Texas... I'll search for some online guys near Texas.

[Jim McFarland]

I might give them a try - but I bet the shipping is a bit more to Texas... I'll search for some online guys near Texas.

I've bought several of the Wall Lumber "UPS bundles": walnut, cherry, maple, mahogany and QS white oak. The UPS bundle price is the same anywhere in the Lower 48 (I'm closer to Waco than NC!). You get ~20 board feet and, IME, very good to excellent quality. Lengths are <=4 feet but not a problem for the projects I do. Prices and quality are better than I've found at my local Woodcraft (although I still buy from them, too, because I want them to stay in business!) I highly recommend Wall Lumber.

[Clay Thigpen]

I was just going to ask the question in the OP earlier today when I was called away. I have trouble finding good wood locally too. But I suspect it's more to do with my budget than the local supply. Lately I've had a wild hair to work some green wood and I have a few trees that need to come down here as well as some nice looking "fire wood".

[Justin Green]

I've bought several of the Wall Lumber "UPS bundles": walnut, cherry, maple, mahogany and QS white oak. The UPS bundle price is the same anywhere in the Lower 48 (I'm closer to Waco than NC!). You get ~20 board feet and, IME, very good to excellent quality. Lengths are <=4 feet but not a problem for the projects I do. Prices and quality are better than I've found at my local Woodcraft (although I still buy from them, too, because I want them to stay in business!) I highly recommend Wall Lumber.

In that case I'll definitely check them out. Thanks for the link!

[Carl Maeda-San Diego]

I get mine at Wall lumber too. Been buying for about 4 or 5 years. Never any problems and low prices. The wood has nice figure usually.
eBay is cheap too but if you need it quick, walllumber is the place.
I buy from Craigslist too and I have found some real steals. I bought 200 bdft of white oak a few months ago for about $1.20/bd ft. It was air dried too.... very nice to work with.
My local wood working association has members selling lumber too and it is usually for fairly cheap but I'm always too late.

[Rick Erickson]

Wow, I see I'm not the only one that buys from Wall Lumber. I thought I found a hidden treasure :)

You can't go wrong with their lumber. The trucking company is a different story. I recently purchased 175 BF of Mahogany including two very large pieces. On both large pieces the corners were dented and I lost two of the edges. The truck driver told me it would be no problem to return it at their cost and have it resent but I liked the look of the wood so much that I just lived with it (I had more than enough so it wasn't too big a deal).

Give Steve a try. I don't think you will be disappointed.

[Bob Childress]

Just got back from yet ANOTHER trip to Wall Lumber. :D I was talking to Clarence about their business and they ship far more lumber than they sell to local pick up. There's a reason they're still in business. Good wood, good prices, and great service! :)

[Robert Parrish]

Justin, the shipment I received yesterday was over 800 lbs and the shipping to SW Fl was only $140.32 via motor freight.

[Justin Green]

Justin, the shipment I received yesterday was over 800 lbs and the shipping to SW Fl was only $140.32 via motor freight.


That seems pretty reasonable. A trip to Dallas or Austin would cost me that much in time, gas, and frustration!

[David Keller NC]

One comment about motor freight. Obviously, it's priced by the pound (one of the advantages - no length restrictions within reason), but the per pound price isn't linear.

I think this is common to all trucking companies, but you can actually pay less in absolute terms for a 4000 lb. + shipment than you will for a 3500 lb. shipment. I don't pretend to know the ins/outs of the shipping business, but the way it was explained to me is the "spot quote" system. If your load qualifies as a "spot quote" (4000 lbs. plus), it will be at a substantially cheaper rate to a given destination than if it's less than 4000 lbs.

That sort of makes sense - it costs the trucking company more to fill a trailer with several different customer's stuff than filling it with one customer's stuff.

[Jim Koepke]

A lot of my projects are made with inexpensive pine that can be had just about anywhere.

When living in the San Francisco area there was McBeath Lumber in Berkeley. They had a good selection and one of my favorite aspects of their store was the random cut off bins with scraps of wood priced by the pound.

Now, we live about 60 miles from Portland, OR. There seems to be quite a few purveyors of wood in the area. Even found one with scrap bins, mostly burl, but that works for me.

There are a couple of lumber stores in town along with the big box stores. Their main focus is on builders and not artisan lumber. Though they do carry some variety. Then there is a Builders liquidation store that has all kinds of stuff that changes all the time. Bought some 2X2X10' pieces of cut offs for $5 each. The manager said it was some kind of mahogany. Not sure if that is what it is, but it is hard and will likely make some good tool handles.

This is a move up from my first wood working project so many years ago. I wanted some chairs for our back yard. None of the stores had anything to my liking. Went to the library and found a book published in 1937 and written by a high school wood shop teacher. The book was mostly just working drawings of how to make a lot of different projects. One was an adirondack chair. It look to be just the thing for my yard chairs. My wood came from breaking up old pallets. That was so much fun and worked out so well, that I actually started buying wood to make up what couldn't be acquired from pallets.

That is was my first acquaintance with the slippery slope.

Since then, quite a few of those chairs have been made, some even have been sold. Expanded the dimensions to make benches. Shrunk the dimensions to make "doll" and children's chairs.

Making a few more chairs is on my to do list.

Some pallets are made of hard woods that are of a lesser quality. My dad owned a furniture store many years ago. He was a great one to meet and converse with people. One of the people he knew was a man who was always collecting hard wood pallets to disassemble. He would then mill the wood and make roll top desks.

Now, one of the lumber stores here in town puts out pallets for free. So we have picked up a few and one of my next outside chairs will likely be made from a dismantled pallet.

Full circle?

So, I guess the answer to the question is: where ever it can be found and sometimes it needs labor, not money, to get it.

jim