long leaf pine - good deal or not?

[Charlie Fox]

i have little experience with pine, and am not sure of what to look for in this wood. i am assuming i would want the tightest rings possible - correct?
looking at these photos i am just not sure if this is a good deal or not - i see some tight and some not so tight rings.
he wants $7 per lineal foot, 2"x9". claim is it is from a 1905 house - so wouldnt that be all old growth? thats why i am wondering why some rings are pretty wide....thoughts??

http://images.craigslist.org/00q0q_lj7oxNlzYNJ_600x450.jpg

[John A langley]

That's about five dollars a board foot that sounds a little high you also need to Buy a metal detectorall you got to do is hit one nail

[Charlie Fox]

right, its $4.66 bf, it is guaranteed rot and metal free. so it sounds like its not a deal, yet not a rip off either? its for a client piece, so the cost is passed on......if they agree of course

[Mike Henderson]

That's not a bad price based on what I see reclaimed wood going for around here. I don't understand it, but some people really like that old distressed wood.

Mike

[Peter Aeschliman]

That's not a bad price based on what I see reclaimed wood going for around here. I don't understand it, but some people really like that old distressed wood.

Mike

That, and they like the story. "this isn't a table you can just get at pottery barn! The wood used in the table was reclaimed from a 1905 home built by hand in an Amish community in Pennsylvania" etc.

There's also the premium because it is reclaimed, and thus green.

Even if you milled that wood to make it look "new", people would pay more for the story behind it.

[Mel Fulks]

Some of the ends look like good heart wood. Don't think its the really old growth. There is a place in town that is a big
dealer in heart pine and I doubt they have any as cheap as the wood you're looking at. Their top grade stuff was over 15$ a
board foot a long time ago.

[Tom M King]

Looks like Loblolly to me. At least, with that age on it, it should be nice and stable. I'd make sure termites haven't been through the sap wood. Hit the sap wood with a plane, and if it's dusty, or you see the little termite air holes, I'd pass. I work with Long Leaf Heart Pine almost every day, and live in a 163 acre stand of mostly Loblolly.

[Charlie Fox]

excellent comments my friends, you reinforced my apprehensions. i guess someone somewhere is buying this stuff and thinking they are gettin what they are not.

on a side note - about 24 yrs ago i found two 14"x14" old growth beams - 10' long each - washed up on the beach. my wife thought i was nuts for all the labor it took to get them home. nobody wants that crap she said.

her mom still has the 2 3' chunks i made as tables for her, and wants the two i still have in the garage.

aint happenin'.... ;-)

[Kevin Bourque]

I know a guy who deals in long leaf pine he cuts from old beams. He told me recently that the market has fallen dramatically. $7 bd.ft. seems really high.

[Jim Matthews]

I dunno...

I can count rings in a board this thick?
I can see pith, shakes, cup and twist?

At $1.50/board foot - maybe.

Board foot = (Thickness inches x Width inches) x Length in feet = x X/12 = total board feet

Whenever I hear someone pricing in running feet, and it's not flooring - my BS detecting antennae deploy.