"Eigenvector" wrote in message
...
One other thing popped into my head while browsing the selection of
hardwoods at the yard - some of the pieces were separating or fraying in
sections. I don't know the technical term for it, but I would imagine it
is caused by uneven drying and having two halves of the wood crook in
different directions. Basically the edges of the wood are fine, its the
middle that has split apart.

So let's say you have 1 foot of that on an 8 foot board - would you
attempt to talk them out of making you pay for that 1 foot of useless wood
Here's a pic of what I mean - http://images.lowes.com/general/s/split.jpg
You can try to get a lower price, but good luck with that.
It is much easier just to take a better piece.

Which reminds me on an old story...
A particular Grossmans lumber yard simply stopped selling lumber; not on
purpose, just no one came into buy any.
They figured it out; they had stopped scrapping the crap, so the bins filled
up with crap and they thought they had a full inventory.
But customers discovered there was nothing purchasable, so they shopped
elsewhere.