"C & S" wrote in message
.. .
I have the opportunity to purchase some American Beech, sawn last spring
and
stickered since at the dirt cheap price of $.40/bd/ft. I've never used
the
stuff before. Goolge tells me that it is prone to twisting an splitting
when
being dried, also not particularly dimensionally stable.

My question is: I can just expect 25% less yield out of a pile, or is the
stuff just ill-behaved and likely to **** me off. I'm looking for a
completely subjective qualitative 1st-hand opinion on this stuff. I would
probably just use it as a secondary wood or painted (yes I do that from
time
to time) furniture. I'm guessing that "not dimmensionally stable" means -
dont even think about it for shop fixtures.

So should I pick up 100-200 bd/ft becaue it's cheap and I'll eventually
use
it, or should I steer clear?

Expect a LOT of waste. Fred might get beech that behaves, but none such up
here where it's pretty abundant. American beech was used in the past for
flooring, but even nailed and T&G couldn't tame it. It'll do the Borg 2x4
trick when ripping like as not. It's pallet lumber mostly.

The big boys up the road are steaming the stuff to try and equalize the
stresses, but I didn't notice an awful lot of difference when we worked with
their donated experiments at the school. Might have found the formula by
now, but yours is air dried, so no help from new technology. European
beeches are much better behaved.