So all week I've been anticipating this auction...
The pitch:
"Tools - Native Lumber ... [long list of power WW tools] ... Several thousand board feet of rough cut native [Indiana] cedar, oak, and other miscellaneous lumber in widths of 6 to 18? and lengths up to 20-ft"
The reality:
The tools were mostly 20+ y.o. Craftsman. Those that weren't Craftsman were Black & Decker. All were entirely rusted up, and looked to have seen no maintenance since they were new.
There might have been seven or eight *hundred* board feet of firewood masquerading as lumber. Two or three boards actually were close to 18" wide, but nothing was anywhere near 20' long. Four of the boards were cedar. A good half of it was labelled "Popular". Some of the stuff labelled "Oak" actually was, but an unhealthy portion of it was "popular", some of it was beech, and a few of them looked like ash (although it was hard to tell under all the dirt). A lot of the wood was *used* (nail holes, staples, clinched-over nails, etc), all of it was so filthy that I feared for the health and longevity of any tools I might use to surface it, and it's just barely possible that a lumber grader in a particularly generous frame of mind might have graded the best parts of it as #2 common.
I didn't stick around to see what it would sell for. I already have three cords of well-dried firewood, and when I need more I can cut it in a nearby State Forest for three bucks a pickup load.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)