Getting decent wood for the projects
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27 April 2018 at 3:55 pm #534679
I find it difficult to source suitable wood for the projects, as I am sure many do. I generally get builders pine from a local timber merchant which works OK, but has its limitations. I recently made the chest of drawers with this material (which turned out fine but it does tend to warp a bit) but it still cost £100+ for the wood; but i would really like to make some pieces with better quality wood, I was looked at cherry for this project and it was over £500, does this sound right?.
I do have a local timber merchant who has several suitable species but it is expensive and even more so if it is cut to size. Buying “raw” timer and cutting it by hand then planing to size is very time consuming and hard work (though I have done it). My questions are:
1. What are the thoughts on buying a table saw and thicknesser/planer to prepare the timber so that it is ready as per the cut list for a certain project. Does anyone do this? Is this what Paul does? I would love to know; and if so what machines do you use?
2. Where do people get their timber from, I am in the NW (Preston), does anyone know of good timber merchants that will provide wood cut and ready to use? and do my prices above seem about right?
Thanks in advance.
Mick
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You must be logged in to view attached files.1. What are the thoughts on buying a table saw and thicknesser/planer to prepare the timber so that it is ready as per the cut list for a certain project. Does anyone do this? Is this what Paul does? I would love to know; and if so what machines do you use?
If you want to buy machines and use them, go ahead. If you think wood is expensive, just wait until you go shopping for woodworking machines and the requisite dust collection….and I hope you have plenty of room in your shop. Paul’s wood is run through a thicknesser, he has made this clear many times. Personally, it’s just so easy to dimension stock that I don’t see much of a need, plus I don’t want the noise, dust and safety issues, nor do I wish to dedicate the space for machines. But as Paul said in a recent video, for disabled individuals, the elderly, or just very busy people, machines might be necessary.
Mick,
Having collected over the years a shop full of machines (which I use for the purpose you specified), I would recommend the following:
Not a table saw. Sturdy cabinet saws are expensive, require a large footprint, generate lots of dust and are dangerous. Probably the most dangerous machine in the shop IMHO. There’s more to be said, but I’ll leave it there.
I would start with the best 14-16 inch floor model Bandsaw you can afford. Rip cuts are easily done without the danger of kickback and although not as clean as a table saw, are easily cleaned up with a hand plane. And, with a good selection of blade widths, curves of all sorts are possible as well as resawing.The other machine that will reduce the grunt work would be what I call a “lunch box” planer. There are lots of models to choose from, you’ll have to research this for yourself ( I’m in the US ).
Both will require dust collection. A large “Shop Vac” type for the bandsaw should do. For the planer you’ll need something bigger. I’m using a wall mounted 650 cfm collector from Rockler, with a shop made Thien Separator (Google search this).
For removing twist etc. you’ll still need to flatten one side of the board by hand before feeding it thru the planer.
Oh, and a pair of “shooting muffs” for the planer. At least ear plugs.
These are only the approach I would take if I were just starting out. Other may see the issue differently.
Best,
CraigI’ve had immense difficulty sourcing ANY wood other than Pine.
I wanted nicer woods for small projects such as; Mallet, Winding Sticks, Dovetail Box etc. but couldn’t find any. It’s daft to buy an Oak Kitchen-Cupboard door from B&Q for £30, to cut it up for a Tool-Cabinet door.B&Q stock only pine – Too knotted, too narrow, and warped.
Wickes Oak Newel Post – £55 each!
Travis Perkins – Pressure-treated pine only
7-Ply Plywood for Jaw-Liners – Impossible to find.
Birdeye Maple – Non-existent.I drove 30 miles to the largest Timber Merchant in the area, they didn’t even have a sheet of plywood!
I suggested to Paul that his Timber Merchants could supply ‘packs’ of the wood we needed for a project. With their industrial planers, thicknessers, and huge table-saws, it wouldn’t be much effort for them. I thought it would be an opportunity, given the high number of subscribers here?I bought a random box of misshapen hardwood offcuts online, but have given-up trying to find anything larger. Paul’s in a fortunate position. Buying bulk loads for the school, his merchants will cater for him, and deliver. He seems to be favouring pine a lot more now. Perhaps to keep us engaged?
Going to second the bandsaw over the table saw. It is just a better safer tool for a handtool shop. You can resaw thicker and wider stock easier than a table saw ever will. The few things a table saw might be better for, sheet goods come to mind, you can already handle with a good hand saw.
Lunch box planers can really speed thing up on thickness and let you get a way with buying 2x construction pine for painted projects.
Between the 2 you would be set for stock prep.
My foray into woodworking started with power tools–because most were given to me. I have a table saw, mitre saw, band saw, circular saw, power router and benchtop planer (and a drill press)–none of them are the thousand dollar pro versions–rather small/amateur sized machines. But still, they are loud, space consuming relics of my days using power tools (I almost never use them, they just gather dust). The planer was the last power tool I bought. It scares the bejesus out of me, is loud as hell and makes a TON of dust. Kickback will make you crap your drawers. If I had choose a tool, I would agree with others to get a band saw (and take care to make sure you set it properly). The blade choices are myriad, kickback is minimal (though you could easily cut your finger off if not paying attention), you can resaw and cut curves…by far the most useful machine I have. The only reason I would use a table saw is for making end-grain cutting boards (and it is definitely useful for that because of the amount of straight-edge sawing needed. A band saw can and will be prone to blade drift so just be aware of that.
I enjoy using hand tools to prepare stock, even if it is more energy and time consuming. It is good exercise and it really engages the senses and builds the relationship with the wood. And cleanup is so much easier–sweep up the shavings and the non-airborne dust from handsaws.
Add me to the list of band sawyers. I don’t own a thickness planer and am exploring whether the bandsaw will do it all for me: Plane a face by hand to be good enough to ride the fence, then resaw. I’ve only done one project with it, but it seemed to work. Keep in mind for ripping rough material that you need a way to get your first straight line.
One comment on kick back. The bandsaw has its own form of kickback. If you aren’t thinking, you can cut something that isn’t supported which then gets slammed into the table. Cross cutting a cylinder is one example. Cutting something that is unsupported on the edge is another. You will see people rip posts for cabriole legs with the posts up off the table. This will easily cause this. My daughter has a lot of bandsaw experience and is a careful person but fell into this trap in an unexpected way. When the slam down happens, you can be drawn into the blade. It’s too fast to react. It’s also easy to try to cut without an outfeed table when you really need one and get in trouble that way. Blades break and blades wander out of the side of the resaw. Band saws are great tools and safer than many, but there’s no free lunch here. It’s a blade with high sfpm and a couple HP motor. Go read what can happen so you don’t have to make it be a discovery.
30 April 2018 at 1:29 pm #537188Thanks everyone, I do already have a band saw and use it for dimensioning. My query came about because I saw Paul just take some lovely wood all prepared and square ready to use and I thought how nice it would be to get the material ready dimensioned but it was soooo expensive. The pine I was able to get was 1 inch PAR which ends up being almost 3/4″, then because it is warped after I have planed it flat and square (which takes me a very long time) is getting close to 1/2″. Further, when I put several boards to gather to make tops and sides it becomes very warped at times and I end up having to bend it as I fit it and force it into the joints. I never see Paul have these issues so I was just looking to see how I might start from the same place as he does on the videos. Hard wood is very expensive and the pine I can get seems to have several issues. I will persevere and see how it goes and check out a few timber merchants that have been suggested. Really appreciate everyone’s input – thanks
Mick
I’m just starting out in the Working Wood book and have a similar problem as @shudokan and @alan141. I can get some oak and warped/cupped “white wood” that is as soft as putty. I can shape it almost as fast with 120 grit sand paper as with most tools – give me a bit of time and the right incentive and I reckon I could cut boards to length with sandpaper wrapped on a stick because this stuff is so soft. Building model planes as a boy, I remember some balsa wood being tougher!
My B&Q offers a little waney edge Oak and a smidgen of small chunks of beech. My nearest seemingly ‘proper’ timber merchant (ie they offer stuff like elm, birch, ash etc instead of just pine and mdf) is 70 miles away (140 round trip) and they don’t open on a Saturday. I haven’t yet made the trip as I can’t justify the time and cost at my level of experience – not to mention being at work during the week.
Like you Mick (@shudokan), I resorted to forcing the boards straight (as they would have been far too thin after planing). The joints are holding the wood straight and so far nothing has blown apart (but it is so soft I doubt the stress in the finished piece is all that much). Most of the wood dimensions specified in the projects can’t be had from the finishing wood section in B&Q (where there appears to be pine more akin to what Paul is using) so you have to get the building trade stuff which looks straight while it is held tight in its plastic wrapped and nylon banded multi-board pack, but as soon as you take a single unconstrained board home it turns into something resembling a twisted gutter. I expect timber to shift but this is plain daft. I store it flat but perhaps I should store it clamped to something or under heavy weights until I can use it (always within days of buying – it bends that fast).
The bowl and spoons I made out of firewood I had lying around so I could get small chunks of hardwood at virtually zero cost. I reckon that the cost of the timber (oak – I am sick of trying to do good work with B&Q ‘white wood’) for the chair-side table will be about £90. I’ll be using using four square stair spindles as blanks for the legs – that worked well on my stools and B&Q does oak spindles for about £8 each (you can get two milking stool legs out of one spindle – the hemlock ones are currently £6 each and I twinned that with a beech top). It was the only way I could get wood of the right thickness for the legs. I looked at getting timber delivered (taking a risk by not being able to assess its quality in person) but the delivery cost is sometimes more than the wood, which rockets the price of any project!
I think the pine available in B&Q will do for the workbench as that project uses chunkier/industrial dimensions and finishing oil seems to toughen up the surface enough. I am currently using a tiny B&Q greenhouse potting bench with a very small clamp-on vice as my workbench… and learning a lot about making do and getting by! I have got very creative using G-clamps, sash-clamps and a baby Black&Decker workmate (which mostly holds one leg of the potting bench in its jaws to stop it wobbling away from me across my garage floor. Once the workbench is built (joy!), I think I might be able to claim I am serious enough about woodworking to justify making a pilgrimage to a proper timber merchant (but may have to take time off work to do that!).
As for power tools… my neighbours would not thank me for the noise. Add to that the cost and again, as a beginner there is no way I can justify buying an armoury of table saws, band saws, planers, router tables and all the other industrial gadgets that 90% of woodworks on YouTube rely on to do everything. I must use hand tools for these reasons and that was what drew me to Paul in the first place. So far I have not needed any powertools (though I did succumb to once using a sander I was given as a present years ago for my oak chair). I’m not against them but for me, woodwork is Occupational Therapy from a day job of computer-wrangling (I hate computers) so I want peace, hearing the birds outside with the swish of the plane etc. I also don’t need to turn out two dozen chairs by last Tuesday.
I don’t know if any of my experience is helpful to you, Mick, or others also starting out. Like you, I would also love to know how other beginners source wood and get by.
11 May 2018 at 2:59 pm #543579Sounds like you already got lots of advice and I agree totally with most of it but I do have a “portable” table saw sometimes called a jobsite saw that I use. They can be dangerous, no doubt about that, but every power tool has that aspect to some degree or the other. I use sleds I’ve made for mine for the purpose of getting a reasonably straight edge to start from and it’s also pretty handy and quick for donkey work (as Paul would say) like ripping stock to rough width. Bands saws aren’t very good at that task. They like to drift around in the cut a bit. On the other hand, nothing replaces the band saw when it comes to resawing stock which I like to do that on my projects when I can. It helps cut down on the amount of material the thickness planer has to deal with. If you want to resaw stock, look for one that can handle up to 12″ in height because that will handle almost any raw material you get. Most rough boards are in the 6″ to 10″ wide range and many of the smaller band saws can’t resaw a 10″ wide board. So those three power tools are my choices. I’ve got lots of other power tools for carpentry work but I don’t use any of them for woodworking.
I think it’s all a matter of your personal goals and philosophy. If you like, the process can start will felling the tree but most of us don’t take it that far. And there isn’t anything these three power tools do that I can’t do with hand methods. In fact, I do some smaller projects like jewelry boxes completely by hand starting with rough sawn lumber. But when you start talking about resawing and thicknessing 50 board-feet of wood for a larger project, that’s where I draw the line. I’m pretty sure the guy that sells me the 10/4 stock didn’t get it to that point with hand tools so what’s the difference if I take it just a little further with my power tools. I figure I get more than enough exercise with my hand saws, scrapers, and planes as it is. So those are my thoughts.
Back to your original question, I can tell you that here in the states cherry isn’t all that expensive. I can get it for around $6/board-foot and never more that $8/bf. Maybe that’s a point of reference for you. Cherry over here is only slightly higher in price than hard maple and maybe a little easier to work with – not so much wild grain but it does tend to want to be a bit blotchy if you stain it. Hope this helps.
17 May 2018 at 8:49 pm #547911Forget buying wood from b&q etc. Start thinking differently. Spend time doing research. search around for local guys with mobile sawmills (I guarantee there is one nearby). Contact local tree surgery companies / arborists / foresters (I run a tree company). Contact wood turning clubs. And so on. Where does the wood come from and where does it go. There’s plenty around if you go looking and find the right people. There are small scale sawmills all over and they will dimension wood for you. But it’s hard work because like me they don’t want people to know. wood workers are like dragons, they won’t part with their gold and we won’t part with our wood! When you find a good source guard it with your life.
28 May 2018 at 9:19 am #548228I had the same problem sourcing good hardwood but eventually found a great timber merchants called Duffield Timber in Melmerby nor Ripon which is about 46 miles from me(about 69 from Preston). I know it seems a long way to go but they have a big selection of woods, staff are really helpful. They also do off cuts and bundle deals.
As for using machines, Paul has had his timber initially thickened on a machine, well he did when he was based for a short time at the craft centre before moving to his new premises, as his leaving video showed. Whether he now has his own machine or still has it done for him, I don’t know. He also uses a band saw and has a video coming out soon I believe showing us how to set one up etc. I know to many using machines of any kind is sacrelidge, but sometimes age or physical ability means concessions have to be made.
29 May 2018 at 3:24 pm #548250One thing that will help with the warping is to pick your lumber. Sort through the bundle if they allow you to. Look at the end grain and stay away from center cut boards.
If they let you sort for boards be sure to restack neatly to ensure future good responce from the merchant.
Establish a relationship with your lumber/timber provider and life gets a lot easier.
Buying 4 square lumber will always be expensive because your sweat equity in the wood is replaced with very expensive machinery to accomplish the result.
You also notice paul wraps his wood in plastic until its time to use it and sometimes even then it moves. Woods nature.29 May 2018 at 8:32 pm #548257I’m relatively new to “hand tool woodworking” is it seems to be termed. I’ve been woodworking for a long time though. I love working with hand tools and I’m getting better at it. My primary projects are boats though. I’ve built a canoe and I’m working on a small rowing/sailing dinghy. The plan is to build a schooner to retire on. I’ve already purchased the plans. Accessing quality boatbuilding wood is hard. I keep an eye out for Black Locust (my favourite wood) anywhere I go. I have had ads in local online buy and sell sites such as Kijiji and managed to land myself a few 18 foot logs about 18 inches at the butt end. Had them sawn up into stuff I can use and I got a keel out of one piece. I’ve got a line on a few more logs and hope to pick them up and get them milled this summer. There’s a quality timber store nearby and they have an incredible selection. East Coast Specialty Hardwoods if you wanted to google them but they’re here in Nova Scotia so useless to many of you Brits, sorry. I drove by a landscaper about 10 doors down from my house who was taking down a large Manitoba Maple. He said he was going to be trimming some BL soon and would drop it off at my place. I got him to dump his truck load of Manitoba Maple in my driveway and spent yesterday turning it into useable lumber and firewood. I didn’t think I’d try to use it for anything but heat but after ripping one log in half I thought I might get some useable wood from it. It’s Manitoba Maple which is soft and virtually useless but for a rough and ready workbench that I build with my son, it might be perfect. If not, I can make winding sticks or other random pieces with it. Good luck in your search for decent lumber, I know it’s one of the most frustrating things about our hobbies. The wood to the left in the wider angle shot is firewood that seems to have seen too much rain. Behind it under that plastic vapour barrier is my prized Black Locust. In front is the Manitoba Maple logs the arborist dumped off for me. And the loader bucket to my new Kubota tractor to the right.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by Daniel Willis.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.13 June 2018 at 5:14 pm #548521There are several UK based on-line retailers that offer most of the popular sorts of wood used in woodworking, with prices reflecting species and the degree of processing. Prices are lower than in continental Europe, I believe. They are clearly lower than in Scandinavia, and very much higher than in North America. The latter is a bit surprising, I think, as much of what is offered is of North American origin.
Most of the companies I’ve looked into do not provide quarter sawn stock, and those that do are not afraid to charge for it.
I’ve often found it hard get hold on stuff with grain very suitable to hand tools. More than once has obstreperous grain made the stock preparation anything than pleasant and the results far from what I had imagined. Buying planed all around and (very occasionally) cut to dimensions brings pleasure back. I haven’t had much problems with warping of planed wood.
Perhaps I’m not the only one living in densely populated urban Britain, who at times find posh hardwoods make woodworking a tad expensive.
Scandinavian Scottish Red Pine of joinery grade has been used by in the videos on this site, and can be had from UK suppliers. It is quite a lot better than construction softwood. When chewed on, it should taste of resin. Both it and Siberian larch are loads more benevolent, though perhaps not as visually appealing as North American white oak rich in extractives.
/soj
https://www.timbersource.co.uk/
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