A Gloat or Did I Get Screwed?

[PM6564]

A guy came into work a few days ago. He's a scrounger. If you want something just ask and in a few days he'll have it for you. I asked him if he could get a hold of some red oak. He said to give him a few days. On Thursday he comes in and hands me a piece of barn board. It's 4 feet long and about 6" wide. I take it out to the shop and run a plane over it. Sure enough it's read oak. He says the guy has a couple of hundred of them and he wants a buck a piece. Quick calculation shows about .50 a board foot. It'll plane down to 3/4". I tell him OK

On Friday he shows up with a trailer loaded to the gills. HOLY CRAP!! Where am I going to put all that? Now this is the part where I think that I may have gotten screwed. The board he showed me was 4 feet long. The ones on the trailer are all 7 to 9 feet long.

Let's see...268 boards. Average 8' long. Average 6" wide. About 1078 board feet. $268.00 Hmmmm about .25 a board foot...

[Wolf Lahti]

Sorry to say, but there's little doubt that you got screwed. I'm surprised you were able to be taken in by such an obvious bait-and-switch tactic.

I suppose you could sue the scrounger for misrepresentation, but all the money would just end up going to the lawyers. I suggest you cut your losses and give the oak to me.

[Tom]

You got screwed. There's alot more stuff you can build with 4' boards. What the hell are you going to make that's 9' long?

[Dave Balderstone]

How the hell are you going to turn them over to plane the other side? You got 10 foot ceilings?

Tell ya what, out of the goodnes of my heart, and in the Christmas spirit, I'll take it all off your hands for what you paid for it.

No, no, don't thank me... It's the least I can do.

djb

[Mark]

[plugnickle]

Wait until you plane one of the other boards and they all turn out to be sweet gum. :) Just kidding. Sounds like a good deal to me.

[solarman]

I knew sooner or later the boards from my barn would surface.... I want them back... My cows are getting cold at night.

want

asked him if

days. On

over it. Sure

of them and

board foot.

CRAP!!

think that I

long. The ones

About 1078

[Bob G]

Which leads me to ask you guys what lenght you guys purchase (or cut) your lumber to when you store it...?

I have a cramped shop... and can store up to about a 6 foot slab without any space problems...8 foot is too long to "fit"... BUT most of the "wood" I do find seems to be in the 7 to 9 foot range also...

which means I have to cut it ..to store it !

4 foot is too damn short for some projects and 2 foot much too short for others...So It seems that I cut the slabs about 5 foot in lenght which lets me store 5 foot sections and 3 foot sections...

Bob Griffiths

[Swingman]

I would never consider cutting expensive hardwood to a random length, just for storage purposes, without some prior planning.

My philosophy, more or less forced by a small shop space and limited budget, is to let the lumber company store the lumber until I need it.

My personal experience is that it is better to buy on a project by project basis, AND use a good cutlist program when buying. A good cutlist program allows you to immediately chalk and rough cut for maximum utilization of materials, and makes storage, and waste, much less of an issue.

At the cost of furniture grade hardwoods today, the savings by doing so can be considerable, especially if you have to make a profit on the project.

Just my tuppence ...

[David F. Eisan]

Dear Steve,

Now if it were walnut, now that would be a gloat...

Good score!

Thanks,

David.

Every neighbourhood has one, in mine, I'm him.

Remove the "splinter" from my email address to email me.

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[Silvan]

It's a real dilema isn't it? I have a growing collection of odd little useless boards from where the place I cut it didn't work out quite right.

I'm thinking maybe laminate a lot of this together into turning blanks some day.

[Silvan]

I'll add to my last post... I don't just cut it at random for storage purposes. I make a plan, figure out what dimensions I have to have, and what dimensions I can use, and then I go shopping. I store only off-cuts.

My trouble has more to do with the nature of the material. I mostly use walnut now, and walnut comes in extremely random lengths and widths.

If my cutlist wants a certain width and length, I have to be ready to change it all around on the spur of the moment. Maybe I don't get the width I need, and the longest length I need is longer than half the length of any of the boards, so I have to get creative.

I don't see how a cutlist program would do me a lick of good. Not in walnut, particularly. With other species, I'm more likely to find a dozen boards that are within an inch of being the same size.

Besides...

[silvan@giganator] ~

->apt-cache search cut|grep list lslk - a lock file lister mingw32 - Minimalist GNU win32 (cross) compiler mingw32-binutils - Minimalist GNU win32 (cross) binutils [silvan@giganator] ~

->apt-cache search cut|grep wood [silvan@giganator] ~

->

Linux ain't got no cutlist program, Chief. If it did, Debian would have heard about it by now.

Maybe I should start one.

Agreed, but I waste practically nothing. When a piece gets down to less than one square inch, then it goes in the trash. Anything bigger than that gets used somewhere, or stored for such time as I can use it. (I'm getting into making wooden models of late, so small scraps are very useful.) This stuff is *expensive*!!

[David F. Eisan]

Hello there,

The last walnut I bought ($0.80 BF) was clear 4/4, 12" wide and 16' long, I had no choice but to lop some off to even get it into the garage sideways...

David.

[Swingman]

That's exactly what I was saying. Note my post did not address storing "off-cuts", it addressed storing material for a project..

Like most woodworkers, I experience the quandry of having a difficult time deciding what to keep and what to dispose when it comes to "leftovers" about every six months or so, when the pile gets too big to ignore.

Luckily (maybe not pricewise) that is not the case here. Locally, there is not much difference in lengths and widths available between walnut and most other types of hardwood. Good FAS, no matter the hardwood, is expensive!

I go to great lengths to recycle walnut ... I routinely take the scraps from a local sign company and joint and plane them into project useful material. I've basically paid for a jointer doing just that.

Ahh .. yes you should. A good cutlist program, as well as a good design/shop drawing, whether it be CAD or hand drawn, forces you to plan ahead ... to the benefit of the project, and the bottom line.

I use CutList Plus Gold, and it is very easy to juggle the size of inventory stock in just a few seconds to get maximum benefit. A truly valuable program if you do a lot of projects.

For some of us, including most hardwood dealers, there is no such thing as a "scrap", at least until it forces itself upon you in such a manner that there is no room left but to do something about it..

[PJS]

to state the obvious....

"YOU SUCK!" (You lucky dog.) ;-)

[Edwin Pawlowski]

board he showed me

You should have refused them. What can you build if the boards are all different lengths? You just can't trust to give an honest product anyone these days. Ed [e-mail]

[Glider Rider]

Can I have the phone number of your scrounger please? I promise I'll return him.