Cant help but to share this ultra-wide Cherry

We get these packs in pretty regular but every once in a while a wicked one lands. We were culling these from a pack of 16' 4/4 FAS Cherry s2s to 13/16" SLR1E so they didnt go in the racks. 19" on the widest, and culled a bunch of 14"-18"
wide. Bummer that a handful of the 19" wide boards have pretty hefty end checks. But all pretty much dead clear for 14-15'. There was a pack of #1 Common hard maple in this load that had similar boards at 15/16" with miles of figure. I wish we did more work that could use stock like this.

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Nice looking wood except for the checking. Are all the boards like hat?

Everything in the pack is dead clear of course because its FAS. The only bad end check is one 19 that is about 20" deep. The other end checks are short. The mere chance to see 18-19" wide dead clear over 14' in Cherry is mind blowing.

These are bread and butter packs mind you lol.

To. Die. For.

I have a few 8/4 pieces of cherry that are 16 feet long and 25" wide, no sap.

Boy, I'll bet that's heavy!!

Thats some material you just dont see too often anymore. The kinda boards you keep forever for something special and that something never comes along lol.

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Originally Posted by Mark Bolton

Thats some material you just dont see too often anymore. The kinda boards you keep forever for something special and that something never comes along lol.

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Thats funny. I have a few 8/4 walnut boards that are 11-12' long and 21-22" wide. I set them aside because they were too big to handle by myself, and i kept saying they would make a great dining table one day. They arent anything special, but they are book-matched.

I have to wonder--and superb material btw--but why did that sawyer cut those logs to 4/4? I might lack creativity here, but what situation calls for something that wide and long at 3/4"? I have to wonder if it was better served to be cut thicker.

This material comes from a production mill that ships 98% of its material overseas to china, taiwan, philippines, and so on, to be made into furniture and shipped back to us. One of these places with a couple million board feet on the yard at all times. They dont do any custom sawing and are sawing for grade. Most of this material, wide or not, likely just gets chopped up into very small pieces with no appreciation for its size. Im super lucky to have access period and make a decent bit off culling this big material out and selling it off though there are times when the job calls for the footage in the pack and it breaks your heart but you just chop it up into whatever you need.

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Originally Posted by Mark Bolton

there are times when the job calls for the footage in the pack and it breaks your heart but you just chop it up into whatever you need.

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I wish I had a nice paid off barn or warehouse to stash all of the amazing boards that sneak through in otherwise mundane shipments. As it is, unless the grain is wild enough to set your hair on fire, I can't save much of anything. It does harden your heart after a while...

You and me both. You would go broke stopping/slowing production to say "wait, set that board aside" lol. The last job before this one was similar. A lot of really juicy boards that I would have culled and saved to sell but the job wound up needing the entire pack and more. So the handful of really wild ones that got set aside simply had to be cut-up regardless otherwise we would have had to bring in another pack, leaving us with a large inventory, and it sucks but it is what it is.

These 19" boards would have went to some production facility overseas and possibly been chopped up into cherry kitchen wood utensils for all I know. 19" boards broken down into toothpicks.

Its the woodworkers nightmare. You would wind up with a warehouse full of drops, or crazy grain, that no one (including you) can touch because they are for something special lol.

Its a painful process.