"doozer" wrote in message
...
If you are going to do a fair amount of work or unusual shapes, it's
worth getting a) a table saw and b) a planer/thicknesser (or separate
planer and thicknesser.

This allows you to buy sawn rather than prepared timber and to machine
it to exactly the required sizes. There is often quite a price hike
for prepared timber even in standard sizes. If you want it machined
to size it gets very expensive.

So to some extent, if you are committed to making things from wood
then you can justify the machinery costs.

For example, over the weekend I was making a ramp with 2.5 degree
slope for my parents' garden. This involved cutting 2.4m joist
bearers at this angle along the length. I was able to do this on the
table saw pretty easily once I'd worked out a suitable jig. I needed
the same angle across the width oof a piece of board and was able to
do that in the thicknesser using a jig.

I still used a handplane to finish in a few places, though.


I feel like such a dip stick asking but where is the best place to buy
wood? At the moment I have been practising with the sort of wood that you
can get from the various sheds which pretty much means ply and pine but
obviously I don't want to always use that. This is like being 17 years old
again and going to buy your first car without the faintest clue what to
look for )



Probably a specialist hardwood importer/supplier is the best place to go.
As you say, it's a pretty esoteric world, so you've got to do a bit of
reading up on what you want before you get there, and then you may have a
bit of a chance when they ask you questions like whether you want boards
supplied waney edge, etc...

Best thing is to go down to a supplier and have a look around and discuss
requirements with them - I've found them to be quite accomodating in the
past. After walking through the normal sheds and BMs with rows of stacked,
machined softwood there is something quite wholesome about going to a
supplier seeing what are basically trees just sawn through and stacked.
Gets you back in touch with what you're creating stuff from - bit like
difference between seeing a butcher jointing up a carcass and seeing it
stacked in plastic containers on supermarket shelves (apols if you're
veggie - in that case it's like prepared salads versus a greengrocer's
stall!!!).

Whereabouts are you?

SL Hardwoods in Croydon were good for me when I had a big project underway.
I don't currently have tablesaws, planers, planer/thicknessers, etc (nor
have space for them at the moment) so had to get the timber machined by
them - this is unfortunately a very expensive way to buy hardwood. However,
they accepted a cutting list, pointed out where some of the specs needed to
be changed (outside the max widths of commonly available timber of the
species I was after) and then priced the whole lot up & supplied it machined
bang on spec.

They've got me hooked, and I'll be back to them. The Christmas card was the
icing on the cake!

--
Richard Sampson

mail me at
richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk