Currently it's a headache from banging my head on the desk after reading all your gloats strung together in one long gloat-a-thon.
Sleep.
Pretty soon.
I don't know where all these people with the free/cheap wood deals are. I suspect they're with the people with the good used woodworking equipment that they need to get rid of having a grand ol time.
It's been so long since I had a wood gloat that I no longer believe in them. Pretty much what happened with the Tooth Fairy, too, IIRC.
Right now I wish the wood fairy would gide me to a really super deal on some 1/2 or 3/4 Baltic / Finnish birch plywood or, better yet, some nice solid stock in those approximate dimensions.
It's all about networking. The more people keeping an eye and an ear out for wood and woodworking tools, the greater the chances of becoming aware of a deal. Clubs can be an excellent way to network.
Also helps to have maybe a grand of Wild Hare money around - deals don't last long and cash can sometimes reduce the price even more.
No cabinet shops in Detroit? Cabinet shops often have to pay to dispose of cut offs and are more than willing to let you take it - if you take it all, on a semi-regular basis
Boy, you are not kidding there. While I understand that life is hectic, and not everyone has the amount of time they'd like (myself included) to spend in their own shop, it's hard for me to understand why someone doing this for fun feels the need to work as quickly and efficiently as a factory assembly line.
My rule of thumb is- Sure, I could whack it together with pocket screws in a half-hour, but why do that when I could spend a few weeks whittling? Fast is for when you don't want to do something and rather have it done and gone, or when your livelyhood depends on it. Part of the charm of the home shop for me is that I can putz all I like, and nobody can say a word about it.
A couple of online places to check for possible deals (US):
Is there a FreeCycle group in your area?
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The concept of FreeCycle is to keep useable items out of landfills. You're more likely to find old furniture than pristime wood, but you never know what might be available from tools to office equipment (desks, bookcases). I have an ancient but functional LaserJet III printer and a desktop copier that came from FreeCycle - great for printing manuals from PDF's and for printing small plans to scale. Freecycle recently had used tin roofing and oak 2x4 framing (chicken house tear-down, probably not for those with sensitive noses).
Is craigslist active in your area?
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There are wanted, for sale, and free sections (there were more than 50 new 5' x 7' oak pallets listed in the free section the other evening - I was too late :-( The for sale section in the Atlanta area has a tools section that puts all tools in the same listing, from saws to routers to generators (175KW trailer mounted unit, anyone?) to tractors and forklifts. Last week craigslist had the materials (flooring, trim, etc) in a 103 year old house that was to be demolished.
In the networking area, make it known if you're willing to help with demo jobs in exchange for materials - I saw a set of cherry kitchen cabinets that someone else had gotten when an older house was to be demolished so a new one could be built on the lot.
Ditto ... unless you have a good use for 3 left over jars of strained carrots. The little size.
The wood I have gotten from Freecycle was donated to avoid the effort of throwing away logs that were too punky and insect filled to burn... by people with fireplaces.
I DID get a microwave for drying wood once. And some used tights for tying my tomatoes up. (And donated a boot load of tomatoe plants / veggies.) But the beg-a-thon (from people with nothing to offer in return) got to be waaaaay over the top.
I gave away my old pine dining room set to a real nice family. A few tools I didn't have use for, some firewood, an old laptop (not that old, it ran Win 2000), and some bike parts also went to good homes on FC.
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