where to find wood

[Zed Rafi]

Hello all,

I am a relatively inexperienced woodworker, and would like to know where, and in what form, do most of you get your wood.

Do you pros buy logs or roughly cut timber and turn it into squared-out slats using bandsaw, planer and jointer? Where do you get your wood? The only place i can think of to buy wood here in Montreal (Quebec, Canada) is at the hardware shop (Home depot-style), where they only sell overpriced, pre-planed/jointed slats of wood.

thanks

[Joseph Smith]

Do an advanced search at EBAY for lumber within so many miles of your postal code. If you find a guy selling within a reasonable distance from where you live drop him a line and see if you can purchase and pick up at his location to negate shipping costs. Another way is to go to woodfinder.com and do an area search for a lumber dealer.

[Charlie Self]

Zed Rafi asks:

Rash assumption since it has been 30 years since I've looked at a Quebec phone book: Yellow Pages. Check under "Hardwoods." If that fails, go talk to a local cabinetmaker. I guarantee you they're not buying from a big box store.

Charlie Self "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." H. L. Mencken

[J T]

Wed, Nov 10, 2004, 4:37pm [e-mail] (Zed=A0Rafi) claims: Hello all, I am a relatively inexperienced woodworker, and would like to know where, and in what form, do most of you get your wood.

Yeah, woodfinder is good. Check the telphone book too. Go by your local hardeware store, and ask if they know where you can buy wood. Dumpster diving, often fun. Check appliance stores, etc., that dump pallets, and ask them if you can have them. You can get some good wood that way, free. Check your version of bargain shopper papers too. Or just ask around, friends, neighbors, whoever.

JOAT Viet Nam, divorce, cancer. Been there, done that. Now, where the Hell are my T-shirts?

[Dave in Fairfax]

Ask around or go for a drive and look for sawmills. I buy my red oak for $ 0.65 a BF at the local sawmill. Air dried, but I can live with that.

Dave in Fairfax

[Silvan]

From dead trees, mostly. Pity, I agree, but that's where wood comes from. :(

You got trees aintcha? Now alls you need is an axe and an adz and some hand planes. :)

(Or you could ignore my insane babbling and follow the good advice in the other posts. I'm in a strange mood today.)

[Keith]

I have the extremely good fortune to live 20 minutes away from a place called Condon Lumber in Stormville, NY. They stock just about anything you could want in wood, all at reasonable prices. You do need a planer & Joiner to work with it though, as it's all semi-rough. (mostly skip planed )

[MikeG]

I usually use dried rough cut stock from hardwood suppliers. The suppliers were found by opening a local phone book and looking under hardwoods as well as various other suitable headings.