Indeed! I've found air and kiln dried wood at local sawmills for 25% of 'market price' or even less. Rough sawn. Sometimes even well-dried 3x3s and 4x4 (maple, cherry, ash). Once even a 16/4 slab of dry beech 14" wide and 8' long for almost nothing.
The exotics are even worse….some you can’t even find! It’s a sign of the times!!
Way back ('80s & '90s) when I used to do shows I used a lot of Cocobolo. At the sawmill I would root through the piles of 8/4 &12/4 and pick out the best boards. $6-7 bf. I saw the same dealer at a woodworking show about 8-10 years ago .... 4/4 was about $70 bf.
Yikes!!!
Wish that was an option. can't find anything like that here. We have two places for quality domestic and imported hardwoods , both in Little Rock (an hour from me) .
my next door neighbor was semi- retired and worked part time at A sawmill.
I don't have direct experience, but my son had a small load of 16/4 hickory and oak dried recently by iDry in Barre, VT with apparently good results. They did it as part of their schedule development program. I believe it took less than 3 months from green but don't know exactly. iDry
Yes, wood has gone up a fair bit since covid. Where I am, Near Kingston, Ontario, Canada, We live in the country and there's plenty of wood to be had. I heat a bit with wood and that gives me some stock for sure, but also members of our wood turning club will occasionally have a friend have a tree go down and want help getting rid of it. So, a few of us show up with tracks, trailers and chain saws and our wood stock slowly grows. Also, members occasionally have extra wood and it shows up at our 50/50 draw table at a monthly meeting and if your number is called, you get to choose a piece. Personally I only use dead wood so there seems to be more available.
Maybe it's because we've cut most of the exotics, and they don't grow back very quickly.
I heard that there's an exotic importer that only deals with sustainable suppliers. Can't find them though.
Fire wood size pieces are difficult to mount on a band mill due to the mill not being set up for clamping short pieces. I have sometimes screwed crotches to a plank then clamped the plank to the woodmizer bed then halving it.
Funny you mention this - I have successfully done this with a lot of "firewood". It has worked great for many types. Anything much larger than 10" or 3' long is about my limit solo, but still quite doable otherwise. Some of the firewood we get here is really curly maple, or full of ambrosia stains, and sometimes spalted. Always worth setting aside like this - but never thought of it for segmenting, thanks Don!
I recently had a customer want me to make walnut rolling pins for christmas- this was mid october and the tree was still growing-i told them i couldn't dry the wood in time but i had heard of vacuum kilns- gave them a name and let them talk to the sawmill directly and decide - they chose to have the wood felled- brought to the sawmill (with vacuum kiln) and dried it (and paid quit dearly for it)- they brought me the wood "dry"- the wood looked beautiful all 4x4x24 blocks- visually there were no end grain checks or any visible defects- once cut into the pieces on the inside looked like they blew apart with Dynamite- every piece of curly walnut had splits the entire length, some as wide as 1/2"-No visible defects were present in the wood until cut into- i would recommend doing your research- I have NOT- but have seen some costly mistakes with the vac kiln-I question drying wood in any manner "quickly"-
David, over the years, I made it a point to meet local tree surgeons and showed them pictures of the various bowls that I did and asked them if they were interested if they would like me making one for them, especially if they shared some of the local nut and wild fruitwood. Surprisingly enough, over the years, they would be dropping off in my driveway a variety of beautiful crotch wood, burls as well as shallow stump cuts. And I really never had to buy wood unless I was doing a segmented turning. I guess as an old Yankee bartering and making friends with a good tree surgeon has always paid off for me.
That's termed Case Hardening - result of drying wood too fast - outside dries before inside has had a chance, so when inside finally dries, it shrinks, of course, but as the outside wood is already dried and "set in its ways" , inner wood has no choice but to crack, split and separate.
have done the same. I have relationships with several local tree surgeons who bring me stuff frequently. So for green wood I'm all set, but for many projects kiln dryed wood is a necessity. this project is for segmenting so I didn't really have a choice and is why the surprise 'cause I haven't done any segmenting for 3-4 years. I posted because I hadn't seen anyone else mention the cost of wood but not surprised at all by the number of responses, it is what it is!
