Jack, have you bought from local mills, or guys that do their own wood.
I buy from guys that are not your traditional lumber yards.
More like mills.
Some advertise on the side of the road... hardwood for sale.
at first when I moved here I thought these guys were selling firewood.
Then it dawned on me it doesn't say firewood.
Stop going to the HD for hardwood. Awful stuff. And no it's not high
quality. High Quality is straight and not twisted. These HD crap are
already surfaced on four sides. How can you clean them up if they are
twisted like pretzels.
So I have never bought from a lumber or HD quality wood. I have seen it
in old pieces of furniture that I have refinished.. tight growth rings.
Beautiful looks. What I buy from HD is ply or 2x4. But even that I am
reluctant too lately. All the ply I got from HD twisted like a pretzel.
How stable is a piece of ply that has a huge bow in it... Pretty stable.
I can't get it flat again.
I have gotten some decent wood from these small mills. So I'll
respectfully disagree.
On 4/10/2012 12:10 PM, Jack wrote:
On 4/10/2012 10:59 AM, Dave wrote:
On Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:49:31 -0400, wrote:
Price is high but is the true cost any different? I heard somewhere
that in 1920 you could buy a gallon of gas for 2 dimes, and if you
melted the silver out of those two dimes today, you could still buy a
gallon of gas with them. Wood is probably no different.
Sorry, can't agree with that viewpoint. The big difference these days
is the fact that the availability of quality wood has diminished
greatly.
Depends on what you mean by quality wood. Certainly wood from rain
forests is scarce, or illegal to buy, so the price is high. I just went
to my shop and found some papers on stuff I made in 1978. I had paid 42
cents a foot for #2 2x6 pine. Looking up at HD today, the same wood is
63 cents a foot. Going to http://www.westegg.com inflation calculator,
that same board should cost $1.39 in 2010, the last year they had, so
it's even better than that. And yes, the quality of the wood is the same
or better than what I got in 1978. This may not be true of all species
of wood, but is for the most commonly used stuff. In fact, I remember
big stores like Busy Beaver sold #4 junk graded as #2, so I would
generally buy from a higher priced yard where #2 was #2. HD, at least
mine, the #2 is mostly pretty decent stuff, no complaints from me.
Sure, top quality wood is still available if you've got the
bucks, but even the high price hasn't kept up with the loss of quality
wood products. This is evidenced by the vanishing of lumberyards and
the companies who specialize in reclaimed wood.
Lumberyards have just about disappeared from my area. I need to buy some
hard wood and don't even know where to go. HD sells super high quality,
select #1 oak at like a $million a foot. Rockler sells all sorts of crap
at unbelievable prices. There is one lumber yard left in my area and I
hated that place 40 years ago because of high prices and lack of
selection, so won't go there.
Hell, it's pretty obvious when we see plastic composites replacing
deck boards. Sure, much the demand for this counterfeit cedar is
driven by people wanting material that doesn't decay.
Every time I stain my deck, (every other year) I wish I would have used
plastic instead of real wood.
But, a great
deal of that demand is also driven by the high cost accompanied by the
lessening availability of the real product.
I don't think wolmanized decking is any more expensive now than it was
25 years ago, adjusted for inflation. I don't have prices for when I
built my deck, so can only guess, unlike what I did above.