"brocpuffs" wrote in message
...

Don't some of ya feel that the price of good wood is getting to be
dangerous!

Is this middlemen raking in their cut, inflation, demand, or what?
Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.

The middlemen that I buy from seem to be stable businesses, but the employee
parking lot is not full of luxury cars. The prices don't seem outrageous for
what you get and the cost of processing.

I've also used wood for heating for many years. Right now, cordwood is $120
to $170 a cord. When I look at the labor involved in felling trees,
dragging them out, cutting splitting, hauling, that is not a bad price. The
wood we buy for projects is most likely handled with more automation, but
there is still a lot of cost in the equipment, fuel, transportation, dollars
of inventory tied up during the drying process, etc.

There is still a lot of free wood available if you are willing to do the
work to reclaim it. Old furniture, crates, pallets, can have some rather
nice material. I've built outdoor tables from dunnage is containers from
Korea. My wife's sewing table is a scrap of melamine coated plywood from a
display house.