Haven't been around much the past month due to a little rain we had on 12
July and 3 feet of water in the shop and about a foot in my walk-in
basement. My office is (was) in the basement and it certainly got trashed.
So far, 3 motors in the shop have been rebuilt and a couple of tons of
"basement stuff" trashed. Note - sealed bearings do not stop water...8-(

At any rate, I'm in the process of rebuilding the office and went looking
for some molding - colonial style. The borg's are outrageous right now on
wood prices. A lot of places in upstate NY had flooding the past month or
so and even finding materials to rebuild with can be difficult and damned
expensive. I'm sure a lot of their stock has been diverted to Katrina
rebuilding efforts and short supply etc. is driving the prices up.

Found some decent pine, colonial chair rail at a seconds place we have that
was stain grade for .69/ft so I grabbed what I needed. Plan on painting it
anyway so the blems don't hurt it for my application. I'm replacing the
lower 30" of sheetrocked wall (that was ruined) with plywood beaded
wainscoting. Need some colonial base and it's in short supply. The stuff
left at the borgs is really beat looking and at $1.39/ft - I'll mill my own.
Was planning on getting some rough-sawn poplar and making the base but I
spied some 1" x 4" x 8' lengths of solid vinyl boards at $6 per board. I
can't get a decent pine board at that price so I thought I would give it a
try - besides it's water-proof for next time....;-)

I'll need to mill this down so the thickness matches the door and window
casings and then route a colonial profile on the edge and should be good to
go. But... I've never worked this stuff before and was wondering if it's
hard on tools, any special precautions or other advice others may have that
have milled this. I expect just standard woodworking practices should work
well but thought I would ask.

Thanks,

Bob S.