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

I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.

It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-

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.

curses-

James

Someone must be rich if they can afford to buy the lumber and the tools to
work it, much less have the free time to do so.

Go to some other countries and see if your opinion remains unchanged.

"brocpuffs" wrote in message
...

Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.

curses-

James

brocpuffs writes:

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

I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.

It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-

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.

To make you feel even better about it, consider that woods like greenheart and
purpleheart among others are used in some general construction in their native
areas.

Wood processing, though, is complex, transport costs are high even within the
U.S., and ecological consideration here and overseas add to the cost. I doubt
anyone is getting rich on selling wood to the consumer, when you consider
buying it either by traveling to an area, or taking a chance on sight unseen,
either drying it at its native site or drying it in the U.S., or whatever part
of the U.S. native American woods are transported to, handling it again to
stack it in storage, handling smaller amounts to place in retail displays, skip
planing to show grain (or S2S for those who want it), downgrading probably half
of each log's output because of faults that take it out of FAS, advertising it,
handling it again when it is bought.

And part of the problem is that wood is not all that easily handled each time.
Weight may be excessive, lengths are often unwieldy, thicknesses or variable,
as are widths, and most of it will give you a severe case of the splinters if
you're not careful.

And the tools used to prep it for sale aren't cheap. For kicks, see if you can
find an estimate of a modest size kiln for drying wood along with automated
gear to make sure the temps stay correct and the wood doesn't dry too quickly
or too slowly.

I think wood is about where it should be, given the general increases in prices
for everything else in the past couple decades, with some emphasis on the cost
of fuels.

Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken

The price of red oak has been stable for years, cherry bounces a bit but is
stable too. If any wood you are buying comes in from overseas, consider the
USD has slid 45% against the Euro.

--

Rumpty

Radial Arm Saw Forum: http://forums.delphiforums.com/woodbutcher/start

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


"brocpuffs" wrote in message
...

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

I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.

It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-

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.

curses-

James

Where are you from?

I live in South Central Kansas. While prices have increased some during the
past few years, they are really pretty stable. I buy a fair amount of Oak,
Maple, Walnut and Ash from a couple of sources one is a hardwood dealer
(http://www.woodsworksqh.com/index.html)about 30 miles from home. If you
look at the site you will notice good discounts at various quantity levels.
The biggest increase we have seen from them is in Walnut and Cherry and they
are as likely to go down from time-to-time as up. I can beat most of his
prices by $1.00 or more/bf by going 150 miles east to Southern Missouri or
Northern Arkansas, and I do if quantity warrants. A local woodworker also
handles hardwoods at a price competitive enough to keep us from driving
south for smaller quantity.

Exotics are another story. The local shop handles some Purpleheart, Paduk,
Birdseye Maple, and limited quantities of Burbinga and others to those
willing to pay $10 to $25/bd ft.

"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.

I think wood is about where it should be, given the general increases in
prices
for everything else in the past couple decades, with some emphasis on the
cost
of fuels.

Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken

I remember reading an article that said a pretty fair amount of our best
wood is shipped overseas to places like Japan. We get the leftovers on
Native hardwoods.

I have a friend who builds picture frames in there shop, they import most of
there wood because the cost of domestic is so high
George wrote:

Someone must be rich if they can afford to buy the lumber and the tools to
work it, much less have the free time to do so.

Go to some other countries and see if your opinion remains unchanged.

"brocpuffs" wrote in message
...

Sometimes it sure doesn't feel like this is such a rich country. Sure
I know it is, but EVERYbody is after it.

curses-

James

Was searching the net and found this site:
http://www.oshealumber.com/specials.html

If you buy in bulk you can get 8/4 poplar for $0.08/bft, 4/4 Walnut for
$0.27/bf, and 4/4 ash for $0.09/bf.

All substantially less than I pay my supplier. Of course I only buy a few
board feet per month not the thousands advertised on that site. Still gets
you thinking about how the price could jump so much. Or makes you think you
should be selling the wood instead of working it.

"brocpuffs" wrote in message
...

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

I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.

It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-

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.

curses-

James

Richard Clements writes:


I have a friend who builds picture frames in there shop, they import most of
there wood because the cost of domestic is so high

I'd love to see that wood your friend supposedly pays less for than he would,
for example, for cherry or walnut or one of the oaks. Mahogany? Padauk?
Satinwood?

Just WHAT wood does he pay less for than he can find a similar wood for here in
the U.S.?

Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken

Ron Short writes:


Was searching the net and found this site:
http://www.oshealumber.com/specials.html

If you buy in bulk you can get 8/4 poplar for $0.08/bft, 4/4 Walnut for
$0.27/bf, and 4/4 ash for $0.09/bf.

8 cents a bf for poplar and not much over 3 times that for walnut? How? It
costs more than that on the frigging stump!

Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken

Ron Short writes:


Was searching the net and found this site:
http://www.oshealumber.com/specials.html

If you buy in bulk you can get 8/4 poplar for $0.08/bft, 4/4 Walnut for
$0.27/bf, and 4/4 ash for $0.09/bf.

Checked his poplar prices for the listed 4/4 2000 BF, at $770 per 1000 BF,
which works out to 72 cents a BF. Reasonable, but it ain't nowhere near what
your calculator gave you. And my check of the 8/4 gave $1.26 a BF.

One of us needs a new calculator.

Are you forgetting that when you're buying 18,000 BF at $1260 per M you need to
multiply that M by 18?


Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken

Ron Short wrote:

Was searching the net and found this site:
http://www.oshealumber.com/specials.html

If you buy in bulk you can get 8/4 poplar for $0.08/bft, 4/4 Walnut for
$0.27/bf, and 4/4 ash for $0.09/bf.

Now that's interesting. I haven't been by the wood store in a year now for
assorted reasons, but the last time I bought walnut there, it was $4.70/bf,
and it had O'Shea Lumber Company on a piece of paper stapled to one of the
boards.

Crikey.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/

On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 13:41:28 -0600, "RonB" wrote:

Where are you from?

I live in South Central Kansas. While prices have increased some during the
past few years, they are really pretty stable. I buy a fair amount of Oak,
Maple, Walnut and Ash from a couple of sources one is a hardwood dealer
(http://www.woodsworksqh.com/index.html)about 30 miles from home. If you
look at the site you will notice good discounts at various quantity levels.
The biggest increase we have seen from them is in Walnut and Cherry and they
are as likely to go down from time-to-time as up. I can beat most of his
prices by $1.00 or more/bf by going 150 miles east to Southern Missouri or
Northern Arkansas, and I do if quantity warrants. A local woodworker also
handles hardwoods at a price competitive enough to keep us from driving
south for smaller quantity.

Exotics are another story. The local shop handles some Purpleheart, Paduk,
Birdseye Maple, and limited quantities of Burbinga and others to those
willing to pay $10 to $25/bd ft.

Whew... $10 or more a bf for Birdseye Maple? I bought a bit of that
a few weeks ago at $4.25 a bf- it's a domestic hardwood, fer cripes
sake! It's a nice looking wood, but for that price it's like a punch
in the stomach...

Overall, I get a good price for wood, considering the quality of the
stock the local place carries and the enjoyment I get out of it. When
you start talking about pine 2 x 4s from the hardware store, then
yeah, it's outrageous- but I expect to pay a little more for quality
and beauty, so nice hardwood usually seems like a bargin to me. If
you consider what it costs to get one of those crappy particle-board
and contac-paper pieces of furniture compared to what you'd spend on
the wood required to make one out of a decent material, they're often
comparable if you've got a decent supplier.

Of course, all of that can mean very little to someone on a tight
budget- but I suspect that what you're seeing is just about where it's
at. Everything is getting more expensive these days!



Aut inveniam viam aut faciam

On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:45:49 GMT, "Edwin Pawlowski"
wrote:


"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.

You actually can get some nice stuff out of pallets- I see wood that
makes my eyes bug out a little every once in a while at work. Most of
them are junk, but every so often an odd bit of black walnut or an
exotic hardwood I couldn't name if I tried to shows up in the stack.
The bad part is they are usually already soaked with grease and banged
up a lot, so I just let them go on their merry way, often with a
little regret...


Aut inveniam viam aut faciam

On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 12:32:36 -0500, brocpuffs
wrote:


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

I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.

It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-

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.

curses-

James


interesting question...
after my last couple of trips to the borg, I was going to ask a
related question:
Are the hurricanes in the south what's raising plywood prices so
fast??

On my last 2 projects, both involving several shop drawers, I was
going to use 3/8" or 1/2" plywood for the drawer sides and backs
because it was the less expensive way to go..
On both projects, plywood had gone up so much, it was cheaper to buy
fairly nice quality Douglas Fir than it was to use pine plywood... wtf
is wrong with that picture??

I know that you're talking about REAL wood, but my budget and skill
level doesn't allow that yet..

On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 21:54:21 GMT, "mark" wrote:


I think wood is about where it should be, given the general increases in
prices
for everything else in the past couple decades, with some emphasis on the
cost
of fuels.

Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken

I remember reading an article that said a pretty fair amount of our best
wood is shipped overseas to places like Japan. We get the leftovers on
Native hardwoods.

Actually premium softwood is more likely to go to Japan. They get most
of their hardwoods from the tropics.

The traditional Japanese house is built using post and beam
construction with a kingpost in the center to hold the whole thing up.
(This was true even of their castles. The kingpost for a castle took a
huge tree.) In house construction the kingpost is left exposed as a
critical design element and is very carefully chosen and even more
carefully trimmed.

These days almost all those kingposts come from northwest North
America. Personally I think the ones the Japanese favor look kinda
knotty and even a little crooked, but I'm just a dumb gaijin.

--RC
You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes

Prometheus responds:

Whew... $10 or more a bf for Birdseye Maple? I bought a bit of that
a few weeks ago at $4.25 a bf- it's a domestic hardwood, fer cripes
sake! It's a nice looking wood, but for that price it's like a punch
in the stomach...

Not too long ago, I read about a guy who makes his living searching out
patterned maple in log form for, IIRC, Martin. You can bet that kind of
emphasis is what drives the prices of any domestic up.

Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken

On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 06:52:30 GMT, mac davis
wrote:

On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 12:32:36 -0500, brocpuffs
wrote:


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

I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.

It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-

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.

curses-

James


interesting question...
after my last couple of trips to the borg, I was going to ask a
related question:
Are the hurricanes in the south what's raising plywood prices so
fast??

The big factor seems to be the increasing worldwide demand for
plywood. I stumbled on a site that tracked world lumber consumption by
country or area on a monthly basis and the current report indicated
supplies are tight and prices firm to rising in all areas.
(Unfortunately I didn't bookmark the site.)

On my last 2 projects, both involving several shop drawers, I was
going to use 3/8" or 1/2" plywood for the drawer sides and backs
because it was the less expensive way to go..
On both projects, plywood had gone up so much, it was cheaper to buy
fairly nice quality Douglas Fir than it was to use pine plywood... wtf
is wrong with that picture??

I know that you're talking about REAL wood, but my budget and skill
level doesn't allow that yet..
--RC
You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes

Charlie Self plantation Richard Clements writes:


I have a friend who builds picture frames in there shop, they import most
of there wood because the cost of domestic is so high

I'd love to see that wood your friend supposedly pays less for than he
would, for example, for cherry or walnut or one of the oaks. Mahogany?
Padauk? Satinwood?

Just WHAT wood does he pay less for than he can find a similar wood for
here in the U.S.?

Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
Christianity has made them good." H. L. Mencken

First this is Idaho, we don't have any comershal hard wood here, so we have
to import it from other parts of the country. Most of it's plantation
stuff rubbertree, Philopine Mahogany, and the like, but they have a spray
finishing process, that he keeps promising to show me, still hasn't, that
can make it look like just about anything they want, with in reason

Ron Short wrote:

Was searching the net and found this site:
http://www.oshealumber.com/specials.html

If you buy in bulk you can get 8/4 poplar for $0.08/bft, 4/4 Walnut for
$0.27/bf, and 4/4 ash for $0.09/bf.

All substantially less than I pay my supplier. Of course I only buy a few
board feet per month not the thousands advertised on that site. Still gets
you thinking about how the price could jump so much. Or makes you think
you should be selling the wood instead of working it.

Ron, I think you have a misconception about that table. The number in the
first column is the quantity they have on hand, the one in the third is the
price per thousand board feet. The price in the third column is _not_ for
the entire quantity in the first column.

Further, on another page of the site, they say that their minimum buy is 500
board feet, not "thousands".

"brocpuffs" wrote in message
...

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

I mean, I have had to cut back on making the Really Nice Creative
Things I like to do so much, because of the prices of wood! I plan to
use mainly ash nowadays. Pretty decent stuff.

It's getting to be as bad as health insurance, or coffee, where the
growers get (if I remember right) one cent a pound for their produce-

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.

curses-

James



--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 12:32:36 -0500, brocpuffs
wrote:


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

Er, I think I was feeling a bit depressed when I sent that to the NG.

Late on a cold, dull gray afternoon is bad for me.

Also, I do have a fixed income, and my ideas often far outstrip my
resources.Lastly but not leastly, I am feeling myself beginning to
slow down from being 62. Memory and shoulders both. I could throw un a
few more but who needs to read all that negative stuff- maybe more
inventiveness will come of this?

So I emitted a carp and got my response.

James

OK, I was wondering how they could sell it so cheap. What does the "M" stand
for?


"Charlie Self" wrote in message
...
Ron Short writes:


Was searching the net and found this site:
http://www.oshealumber.com/specials.html

If you buy in bulk you can get 8/4 poplar for $0.08/bft, 4/4 Walnut for
$0.27/bf, and 4/4 ash for $0.09/bf.

Checked his poplar prices for the listed 4/4 2000 BF, at $770 per 1000 BF,
which works out to 72 cents a BF. Reasonable, but it ain't nowhere near
what
your calculator gave you. And my check of the 8/4 gave $1.26 a BF.

One of us needs a new calculator.

Are you forgetting that when you're buying 18,000 BF at $1260 per M you
need to
multiply that M by 18?


Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken

Ron Short asks:

OK, I was wondering how they could sell it so cheap. What does the "M" stand
for?

1,000.

Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken

Mille - Latin for a thousand. Also Frog, if memory serves.

"Charlie Self" wrote in message
...
Ron Short asks:

OK, I was wondering how they could sell it so cheap. What does the "M"
stand
for?

1,000.

Charlie Self
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
Christianity
has made them good." H. L. Mencken

Charlie Self wrote:
Ron Short asks:
OK, I was wondering how they could sell it so cheap. What does the "M" stand
for?
1,000.

Oh! You mean "k"!

On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 14:13:03 -0800, "Brett A. Thomas"
spake the words:

Charlie Self wrote:
Ron Short asks:
OK, I was wondering how they could sell it so cheap. What does the "M" stand
for?
1,000.

Oh! You mean "k"!

No, K is 1024, exactly. No mas, no menos, señor.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poverty is easy. * http://diversify.com
It's Charity and Chastity that are hard. * Data-based Website Design
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Larry Jaques wrote:
No, K is 1024, exactly. No mas, no menos, señor.

Yeah, yeah, tell it to the company that manufactured my hard drive...

Prometheus wrote:

The bad part is they are usually already soaked with grease and banged
up a lot, so I just let them go on their merry way, often with a
little regret...

Not much point in regret. Pallet wood is sort of like a bowl full of
plastic candy. It looks good until you taste it. Spiral nails, embedded
grits, knots, splits, and it's usually too thin to mill down into anything
useful besides. I don't even look through the pallet pile anymore. It's
too frustrating. So much work, so little useful wood.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/

Silvan responds:

Not much point in regret. Pallet wood is sort of like a bowl full of
plastic candy. It looks good until you taste it. Spiral nails, embedded
grits, knots, splits, and it's usually too thin to mill down into anything
useful besides. I don't even look through the pallet pile anymore. It's
too frustrating. So much work, so little useful wood.

I've got to agree. I picked up a tool yesterday for a test, and looked at some
of the discarded pallets at the trucking company. Yuk. The ones that weren't
filthy were made of some 3/8" scrub oak, with what grain was showing through
the rough really ugly.

You'd spend hours getting enough wood for a small box, and then, more often
than not, the box would end up ugly.

I used to use pallets for kindling with wood heat, but quit when my ash
cleaning chores brought up so many old nails. Too much hassle to get them out
of the grates.

Charlie Self
"Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy."
Edgar Bergen, (Charlie McCarthy)

On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 17:28:53 -0800, "Brett A. Thomas"
spake the words:

Larry Jaques wrote:
No, K is 1024, exactly. No mas, no menos, señor.

Yeah, yeah, tell it to the company that manufactured my hard drive...

Your drives are so old they're measured in K, are they'? =:0

That's the difference of "megs less overhead", sir.
Net vs. gross, KWIM,V?
Kinda like Searz horsepower vs. reality.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poverty is easy. * http://diversify.com
It's Charity and Chastity that are hard. * Data-based Website Design
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Larry Jaques wrote:

That's the difference of "megs less overhead", sir.
Net vs. gross, KWIM,V?
Kinda like Searz horsepower vs. reality.

There's actually a real answer to this problem. I think they invented
kibibytes and mebibytes or some silly froof like that. I forget which is
which, but one of them is the proper powers of two version, and the other
is the lazy HD manufacturer's multiples of 1000 version.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/

On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 17:28:53 -0800, "Brett A. Thomas"
wrote:

Larry Jaques wrote:
No, K is 1024, exactly. No mas, no menos, señor.

Yeah, yeah, tell it to the company that manufactured my hard drive...

oh, but then we have to get into actual vs. formatted size...
maybe they should sell hard drives in "nominal" sizes?

first off it's kilobytes, as in kilograms, the diff is kilograms are 1000
grams, where as kilobytes are 1024 bytes, remembering back to collage it
has to do with base 2 math, as far as your hard drive, there are a number
of reasons why your not seeing the full 60GB, fist hard drives are brocken
down into sectors, and each sector holds X amount of data, and sector size
changes from drive to drive. Your going to be short the first sector of the
drive this is where the MBR(master boot record) is located and depending on
how big your sectors are this can eat a little bit, a 60GB drive with 1200
sectors is going to be short 50M, also depends on how it was formated, was
it a stock drive in the computer, HP Pavilions a while ago had a 40GB drive
but only formated 25GB for the user, and then used the rest as a Back-up
space, this is also common for lap tops and some of the newer toaster
systems, Compaq EVO's for example, also if it's not an OEM drive, and you
just put it in the system using there formating, it may not have been
formated to the right size, I've seen some maxtors like that. and last,
they may be rounding a little bit, there a few sectors short so they just
round up.

Silvan wrote:

Larry Jaques wrote:

That's the difference of "megs less overhead", sir.
Net vs. gross, KWIM,V?
Kinda like Searz horsepower vs. reality.

There's actually a real answer to this problem. I think they invented
kibibytes and mebibytes or some silly froof like that. I forget which is
which, but one of them is the proper powers of two version, and the other
is the lazy HD manufacturer's multiples of 1000 version.

Richard Clements wrote:

has to do with base 2 math, as far as your hard drive, there are a number
of reasons why your not seeing the full 60GB, fist hard drives are brocken

Not the least of which is that hard drive manufacturers have been using the
standard that "megabyte = 1000 bytes; gigabyte = 1000 megabytes (of 1000
bytes)" ever since about the time when the first IDE hard disks came out.
It's a marketing gimmick. No mystery to it. Caveat emptor.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/

"Silvan" wrote in message
...
Richard Clements wrote:

has to do with base 2 math, as far as your hard drive, there are a
number
of reasons why your not seeing the full 60GB, fist hard drives are
brocken

Not the least of which is that hard drive manufacturers have been using
the
standard that "megabyte = 1000 bytes; gigabyte = 1000 megabytes (of 1000
bytes)" ever since about the time when the first IDE hard disks came out.
It's a marketing gimmick. No mystery to it. Caveat emptor.


Not really Sylvan. It's always been that a K was 1024 bytes and at the same
time the entire industry has loosely used the term K. Everyone knew what it
really was, but the rounding was just convenient, since the error was
trivial. The marketing claim you suggest above would actually work in the
consumer's favor. A kilo byte is 1024 bytes, but according to your
statement above, it should mean 1000 bytes. You're actually getting 24
bytes free from the manufacturer. No marketing scam there. Same thing as
you scale up in size. BTW, I know you probably just screwed this up, but a
megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes - rounded. As to the available space - well
that's a formatting issue. The drive does indeed contain the space as
advertised, but formatting takes up some of it leaving you something less.
--

-Mike-

Larry Jaques wrote:

On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 17:28:53 -0800, "Brett A. Thomas"
spake the words:
[snip of strange brews]

To clarify, let me present jo4hn's terminology for counting bytes: one
byte, two bytes, many zigabytes. J4's lemma to a well known axiom: No
matter how big a resource you give them, software mavens will not only
fill it up but will exceed it.

And finally the definition of a computer: an incredibly fast idiot with
a zillion toes to count on.

As the man said, hope this helps.

mahalo,
jo4hn

Mike Marlow wrote:
"Silvan" wrote in message
Not the least of which is that hard drive manufacturers have been using

the

standard that "megabyte = 1000 bytes; gigabyte = 1000 megabytes (of 1000
bytes)" ever since about the time when the first IDE hard disks came out.
It's a marketing gimmick. No mystery to it. Caveat emptor.

Not really Sylvan. It's always been that a K was 1024 bytes and at the same
time the entire industry has loosely used the term K. Everyone knew what it
really was, but the rounding was just convenient, since the error was
trivial. The marketing claim you suggest above would actually work in the
consumer's favor. A kilo byte is 1024 bytes, but according to your
statement above, it should mean 1000 bytes. You're actually getting 24
bytes free from the manufacturer. No marketing scam there. Same thing as
you scale up in size. BTW, I know you probably just screwed this up, but a
megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes - rounded. As to the available space - well
that's a formatting issue. The drive does indeed contain the space as
advertised, but formatting takes up some of it leaving you something less.

Uh, no, he didn't screw it up. That was my original point with my crack
that, when someone tried to correct my original "k" joke, that they
should tell it to my hard drive manufacturer.

Forever, in computer science, 1K (kilobyte) has been 2^10 bytes, or 1024
bytes. 1M (megabyte) has been 2^20 bytes, or 1K * 1K, or 1,048,576
bytes. 1G (gigabyte) has been 2^30 bytes, or 1M * 1K, or 1,073,741,824
bytes. There are good reasons for these odd results, having to do with
the binary system computers use internally.

When hard drive manufacturers first started selling hard drives, they
"rounded down," and advertised drive capacities as being on the 10^x
scale. So, an advertised "50 megabyte" drive that a computer scientist
would expect to have 52,428,800 bytes of storage space really only had
50,000,000 bytes of storage space. Back in the 50 megabyte days, nobody
much noticed.

Now, hard drives are much larger, and the error is, too. A new, "250
gigabyte" drive that a computer scientist would expect to have 250 *
1073741824 = 268,435,456,000 bytes. But the HD manufacturer sells you a
drive that actually holds 250,000,000,000 bytes. That's where most of
the quoted vs. actual difference goes, and why, if you put in a "250GB"
fresh drive, your computer will tell you it's a 232GB hard drive, even
before you put a filesystem on it. It's not "overhead" or OEM
controlling, or any of that stuff. It's that, if you look on the fine
print of the HD box, there's a little asterisk that says "we consider
1GB to 1 billion bytes." This is not true of other types of computer
memory; for example, when you buy "1 GB" of RAM for your computer,
you're getting storage for 1,073,741,824 bytes. If you bought a "1 GB"
hard drive, though, it'd have storage for 1,000,000,000 bytes.

Finally, a topic in this newsgroup I actually know something about!

-BAT

"Brett A. Thomas" wrote in message
...



Forever, in computer science, 1K (kilobyte) has been 2^10 bytes, or 1024
bytes. 1M (megabyte) has been 2^20 bytes, or 1K * 1K, or 1,048,576
bytes. 1G (gigabyte) has been 2^30 bytes, or 1M * 1K, or 1,073,741,824
bytes. There are good reasons for these odd results, having to do with
the binary system computers use internally.

Yup - my background also.


When hard drive manufacturers first started selling hard drives, they
"rounded down," and advertised drive capacities as being on the 10^x
scale. So, an advertised "50 megabyte" drive that a computer scientist
would expect to have 52,428,800 bytes of storage space really only had
50,000,000 bytes of storage space. Back in the 50 megabyte days, nobody
much noticed.

Now, hard drives are much larger, and the error is, too. A new, "250
gigabyte" drive that a computer scientist would expect to have 250 *
1073741824 = 268,435,456,000 bytes. But the HD manufacturer sells you a
drive that actually holds 250,000,000,000 bytes. That's where most of
the quoted vs. actual difference goes, and why, if you put in a "250GB"
fresh drive, your computer will tell you it's a 232GB hard drive, even
before you put a filesystem on it. It's not "overhead" or OEM
controlling, or any of that stuff. It's that, if you look on the fine
print of the HD box, there's a little asterisk that says "we consider
1GB to 1 billion bytes." This is not true of other types of computer
memory; for example, when you buy "1 GB" of RAM for your computer,
you're getting storage for 1,073,741,824 bytes. If you bought a "1 GB"
hard drive, though, it'd have storage for 1,000,000,000 bytes.

I've never seen the asterik, but I've never looked for it. There is
overhead on a fresh drive though that does eat into the capacity. There is
a low level format that is beneath the level of the operating system. Then
there is the filesystem you're refefring to. I guess I'm not familiar with
today's marketing practices, but it used to always be that the unformated
drive capacity is what was advertised and that was before the low level
format - what we used to call the hardware format. Then you put the
filesystem on top of that and lost even more capacity. Today you put
microsoft products on top of that and lose all of your capacity...

It's easy enough to figure the real capacity though. Number of bytes per
sector multiplied by the number of sectors, and the number of cylinders. I
suspect if you do this on any disk drive it will not come out to an even
MByte or GByte count.


Finally, a topic in this newsgroup I actually know something about!


It is a rewarding feeling, isn't it?
--

-Mike-

On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 12:59:01 -0800, "Brett A. Thomas"
wrote:

Forever, in computer science, 1K (kilobyte) has been 2^10 bytes, or 1024
bytes. 1M (megabyte) has been 2^20 bytes, or 1K * 1K, or 1,048,576
bytes. 1G (gigabyte) has been 2^30 bytes, or 1M * 1K, or 1,073,741,824
bytes. There are good reasons for these odd results, having to do with
the binary system computers use internally.

Back in 1999 someone wrote a question to a local newspaper inquiring
why the upcoming click-over to 2000 was called Y2K when every computer
literate 12 year old knew that a "K" was equal to 1028 and thus
everyone was apparently celebrating 2048. You would not have believed
the answer. (paraphrased; don't remember it exactly) "the 2048 is
'averaged' to 2000 so that Y2K makes sense."

Who'd have thought that the clueless pendulum would have swung so far
so quickly and to include so many, beyond that which one would expect.

I wrote an erudite reply regarding scientific/mathematic suffixes and
prefixes and their predating computers by some decades that was
probably digested solely by the immediate members of my family who
were fairly bulldozed into reading it.


- -
LRod

Master Woodbutcher and seasoned termite

Shamelessly whoring my website since 1999

http://www.woodbutcher.net