Reply To: Sawhorse as makeshift workbench for the balcony?
Welcome! / Forums / General Woodworking Discussions / Sawhorse as makeshift workbench for the balcony? / Reply To: Sawhorse as makeshift workbench for the balcony?
I agree with Philipp J, especially about looking for sawmills or proper lumber suppliers. I assumed that the huge home centers would be the cheapest for lumber, and perhaps for 2x4s they are, but if you want pine boards, walnut, poplar, then I found out that they are vastly more expensive than my local lumberyard.
My local Home Depot charges by the linear foot, not the board foot, and their thickest stock is 3/4″. Surfaced 4 sides, sure, but even that needs to be planed to be suitable for furniture, and so you’re down to 65/100 or 7/10 ths of an inch by the time you’re fully flat, square and parallel. Not thick enough for many applications. Also, for their “common” grade of pine boards they get between 2 and 6 dollars per board foot, knots and all. Then I generally have to glue them up into panels (because the widest stock my Home Depot sells is 11.75″), which costs me time and materials, plus I lose more thickness because very few glue-ups remain perfectly flat.
I can get clear, 15″-18″ wide, 5/4 poplar at my local lumberyard for about $2.83 per board foot, and it’s also been surfaced on 4 sides. For me as a hobbyist, there’s no comparison in terms of value. Skip gluing up panels, skip the knots and I have a full 1″+ in thickness hardwood to use when I’m done planing, instead of some starvation-skinny softwood panels. And just like Home Depot, they’ll give you a couple of free cuts on their panel or radial arm saws so you can fit the lumber in your car.
Other hardwoods are similar. My Home Depot gets between $5.55 and $9 bucks per linear foot of 3/4″ hardwoods, and some hardwoods they have nothing wider than 5.5″! The lumberyard is about half that price for 4/4 stock in hardwoods, except their price is in board feet, so it’s an ever greater savings, and they have everything up to about 8″ in width, and almost everything up to 12″, and some few woods up to 18″ wide. And let’s not even get into the availability of things like quartersawn and rift-sawn woods…Home Depot stocks nothing of the sort, whereas my lumberyard has at least a few species of each.
Love me some Home Depot for many things, but for lumber, my experience has suggested that you’ll save a lot of time, money and hassle by going to a quality lumberyard, so check it out for yourself. You can probably call your local lumberyard on the phone and get board-foot prices for various species, so you don’t even have to risk the time and gas to drive over.