Caroline Evans
09-03-2015, 11:50 PM
Hi,
I've been scratching my head about this for a while, so I figured this forum would help me out a little. Where do you guys typically buy your wood for your laser cutters? I have a 40 Watt Epilog laser, and I love to make wooden earrings and other fine detailed items. I've started to go into a few larger items, but I've found that my supplier for wood (I buy them from the distributor I bought my laser cutter from) is far too expensive for me to make my products profitable if I were to sell them since they take up a few sheets of wood and each 12"x24" sheet of wood with 1/8" thickness is $25 and 12"x24" sheet with 1/4" thickness is $30 (do you think these are reasonable prices?).
I live in Canada, and shipping from the USA is almost impossible and I've been to Home Depot, Lowes, Rona, Lee Valley, P J White Hardwoods, etc, to look around for cheaper material, but every sheet of wood I get is either too solid for it to be able to cut, it burns more often then cuts, or the sheet is too flimsy/brittle to use for detailed work.
Do you guys have suggestions for where I should go to get my wood? Is there a specific type of specialty shop I should look for? I've also been having trouble asking for the specific type of wood. I know maple, alder, cherry, red oak, walnut and others are good for cutting, but when I show the wood I get from my laser cutting shop to other suppliers, they generally don't know what style of wood it's made from. I get answers like "veneer plywood", "hardwood", "layer plywood", "solids", "domestic solids"... etc, so I'm very confused.... What type of wood do you normally use? I would love to know so I can figure out how to ask my suppliers on the phone before driving across town to find out they don't carry what I'm looking for.
If necessary, I can take a photo of the material I have to show you what the wood looks like.
Thanks so much,
Caroline
I've been scratching my head about this for a while, so I figured this forum would help me out a little. Where do you guys typically buy your wood for your laser cutters? I have a 40 Watt Epilog laser, and I love to make wooden earrings and other fine detailed items. I've started to go into a few larger items, but I've found that my supplier for wood (I buy them from the distributor I bought my laser cutter from) is far too expensive for me to make my products profitable if I were to sell them since they take up a few sheets of wood and each 12"x24" sheet of wood with 1/8" thickness is $25 and 12"x24" sheet with 1/4" thickness is $30 (do you think these are reasonable prices?).
I live in Canada, and shipping from the USA is almost impossible and I've been to Home Depot, Lowes, Rona, Lee Valley, P J White Hardwoods, etc, to look around for cheaper material, but every sheet of wood I get is either too solid for it to be able to cut, it burns more often then cuts, or the sheet is too flimsy/brittle to use for detailed work.
Do you guys have suggestions for where I should go to get my wood? Is there a specific type of specialty shop I should look for? I've also been having trouble asking for the specific type of wood. I know maple, alder, cherry, red oak, walnut and others are good for cutting, but when I show the wood I get from my laser cutting shop to other suppliers, they generally don't know what style of wood it's made from. I get answers like "veneer plywood", "hardwood", "layer plywood", "solids", "domestic solids"... etc, so I'm very confused.... What type of wood do you normally use? I would love to know so I can figure out how to ask my suppliers on the phone before driving across town to find out they don't carry what I'm looking for.
If necessary, I can take a photo of the material I have to show you what the wood looks like.
Thanks so much,
Caroline