Stuart Noble wrote:

I can get oak for less than that..a lot less.

Its about £30 a cubic foot. That's a raw lumber price at say 25mm
thickness (planed to 19mm) of around 75p a sq foot. Or maybe £7.50 a
square meter. OK sawing and planing takes it up a LOT, but not that much.


But oak isn't to everybody's taste aesthetically. Visually I find it a
bit bland (yes, even quarter sawn), plus it reminds me of schools and
official buildings.

So buy NEW pine. Its even cheaper, if you must. I don't like it. It
reminds me of schools and official buildings. But then I am of a certain
age..

Or how about Maple? Iroco? Sapele? Tulipwood? ... there's a hundred
better woods than Pine, which really only has one virtue. It grows
relatively fast, so its cheap.

BUT since a large part of the cost is machining, not the actual wood, it
doesn't make an appreciable difference to the price.

A typical 'Naice door' in solid wood is between £150 and $£250 for e.g.
a Victorian style panelled door. Wood cost pre machining might be £15
softwood or £30 for top class hardwood.

Now if the company that makes them takes wood cost + labour cost times
margin, - say 45%, that should mean a real oak door is only about £25
more than a pine one..

Of course if you buy RETAIL, it all get marked up according to how
stupid they think you are.

Pine is the best of the softwoods, but all softwoods are crap really.
They all move around under humidity changes immensely, and they all
suffer from extremely variable density across the summer/winter growth
rings, leading to a very uneven wear pattern in time.


In reality, wood tends to cost what it takes to get it cut down and
transported and kiln dried and seasoned. Mostly its between £20 a cu ft
and £40 a cu ft for the more common species, with higher prices for the
exotic and rare stuff. A felled tree on site is *almost* worthless.
Unless its elm yew, walnut, cherry..even oak and beech are not worth
collecting for a single tree. You want a forest full to make it worth while.



As I said a cu ft of wood, sawn & planed with no wastage, is around 40
square foot of boarding. or 4 square meters. take out wastage (cracked,
split, knotted stuff) and its 1.5-2 square meters, but even so, the
actual wood cost of a planed 19mm board is only about £10-£20 a square
meter *if that*. Yet typically its sold at £30-£40..because people
believe it costs that! Well it does if you don't have the right
machinery and pay staff stupid wages, but it can be got for a lot less.

My point is, why bother with rubbish wood, when good wood is almost the
same price, and if its being sold to you higher, go somewhere that
machines raw lumber, and buy there instead.