Madrone?

[Ralph Lindberg]

I got an e-mail from Rockler on some Madrone they are selling....

Are you kidding? 12 bd-ft of plain Madrone for $350?

A chunk of burl with honestly bad color and figure for $550?

Rockler

[Tracy Tame]

If I had to buy wood, I wouldn’t be able to by any tools.

[Ralph Lindberg]

Well, I still buy Madrone burl, but boy I don't pay anything like those prices...

But then I have to slab it up from the raw burl, put it to sleep (store in water), rough it out, boil, dry......

I have a chunk of burl right now I'm "hurrying", it had rocks and dirt in it. So I roughed it, boiled it, and am now microwaving it. I just dug most of the rocks ad dirt out. We will see if it turns out, I hope so it has some nice color.

[Steve Peterson]

Holy cow those are some outrageous prices. Some of the other prices are even crazier. 22" by 7" by 1.25" in a hard to use shape for $270. That's over $200 per board foot. Seems like they misplaced the decimal point when they calculated the prices.

Steve

[Russell Neyman]

I'm reminded of one of the better responses to my "You Know You're a Woodturner If..." thread:

The guy climbs into a $50-thousand dollar truck that gets 12 miles to the gallon, drives 100 miles to a remote part of the state, takes out a $400 chainsaw to cut down an old maple tree, loads several large pieces into his truck and hauls it back to his shop, cuts it into manageable pieces, cuts it roughly round on a $750 large format bandsaw, mounts it on a $2500 lathe, turns it to rough shape with a couple of $100 tools, boils it for several hours, dries it for months in a storage shed, then turns it into a finished piece, applies ten coats of lacquer which he meticulously buffs to a beautiful shine....then brags to his friends that the wood was free. Now, that's a woodturner!

So....I'm wondering. After add up all the hours you spend ($25 an hour?) and the wasted wood lost to splits and cutoffs, what is the madrone you bought at the burl sale down in Shelton last month costing us? I doubt it's as much as Rockler is charging, but it's probably more than we think.