how many board feet and how many species

allen levine

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for the non pros of the group, obviously a professional cabinet maker or furniture builder might keep quite an inventory.
but for the non pros, Im curious how much lumber you guys/gals keep in your stockpile.
do you just purchase before you build a project?
If you buy wood when the price is right, like I usually do, how many species of lumber do you have on hand, not talking pen blanks, Im talking enough bf to build something with.
I feel as long as the wood is stored properly, value does not go down, so its not like I could lose money if I sit on a couple hundred bf of anything for acouple years.
 
i havnt got time to count allen:) as for my experiences with others and myself before the ship's came in. they and i would figure out what was need for the job, increase by 35% and do the project. if they had left over then that became something to look at for the next project or just go on the shelf. another thing to consider as bob gibson mentioned is that in the different grades you incur more loss in the quality of the wood you get. but you do tend to get better figure in the lower grades. i hope you cant be "wood poor" because if you can then i am:):D:D
 
notmany of us have access to the lumber you do, so when the iron is hot, I strike.
if I come across someone who wants to dump lumber at relatively cheap prices for me, I will buy it and not worry about when or what Im going to build with it.
besides blades and router bits, lumber is my main ongoing cost for my woodworking habits.
 
I've got somewhere around a hundred board feet each of red oak, hard maple, walnut, cherry and poplar, plus about a hundred board feet total of various other species - like spalted soft maple, white oak, hickory, bloodwood, goncalo alves, etc.

Also a 'because it's handy' pile of 2 X 4s, 1 X 12s, etc. of pine, and some assorted plywoods.

About half my small barn is full of wood, plus a bunch (too much, actually) laying about the shop.
 
I believe most guys who build different units for commision, like you don, wouldnt keep as much as lets say a kitchen guy, who builds with cherry or white oak or a few others.
Id rather not buy from any local lumber yards, since prices on long island are off the wall insane for lumber.
but if Im spending time travelling or excess money on gasoline, Id rather make the trip worth wild in the long run and buy excess at a good price.
ONce I retire and get serious with the furniture building 500 bf of lumber wont be around that long.

I have a real problem, I dont find many woods unappealing. I think most of them have a certain beauty so I dont mind building furniture out of most species and I dont mind mixing different colored pieces of furniture in one room.

I might have someone selling me white oak, 8/4, at less than 1.00 a bf, so even though I have no use for it currently, (unless I get it by tuesday for the chairs), Id still take it at that price and just pile it up.(150 bf of it, but its local for me)
 
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BOY i would be all over that deal In a heartbeat Allen. I wish I could come accross the deals you get. I only buy what I need for a project. I really don't have the room to store much extra wood. Same with sheet goods I figure what I'll need and thats what I buy.
 
BOY i would be all over that deal In a heartbeat Allen. I wish I could come accross the deals you get. I only buy what I need for a project. I really don't have the room to store much extra wood. Same with sheet goods I figure what I'll need and thats what I buy.

when people want to clean out somewhere, to them, the wood is just a nuisance. I havent seen the wood yet, so I wont be satisfied I got a good deal till I can see it personally and make sure its useable for me.
he mentioned he has a bunch of used tools hed like to sell, and IM looking for a sawzall, so Ill see what happens by tuesday.
and with deals, theres usually no picking and choosing. Ya gotta take what they want to sell, and if that means a few cracked, split, or warped boards so be it.
 
he couldnt see me after work tonight, Im pretty close by to him, and tomorrow only early morning, and I aint gettin up early for noone on sunday.
so hed said hed call me monday to set up a meeting time on tues......I think most of his tools are contractor used tools
 
I try to pick up material when I find a good bunch of one type or another. I don't keep too much around as I just don't have room for it. When I buy for a project I over-buy by about 20% and have only shorts leftover when the piece is gone.

For on-hand right now I probably have 40+ of mahogany, 60+ of white oak, just shy of 100 of black walnut with smatterings of cherry, BE and curly maple, some goncalo, shedua, padouk and ebony shorts but it varies with what I find more than with what I am doing. For example, I went to the yard for about $12 worth of poplar and left with $260 worth of walnut to boot. The lumber yard is worse than Costco ;-))
 
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a couple of years ago I would go down to the borg or local lumber yard and buy off the shelf. Usually just enough for whatever i was building. Since then I've discovered several sawmills in the area and buy 50 -150 bf (or whatever the pocket book will allow) of rough sawn boards. I've pretty much switched from using mainly pine to cherry, maple and recently mahogany. I don't mind getting less good stock per bf so I buy common grade usually. It takes time but most often, unless the board is too twisted, I can make decent to nicely figured usable parts from it. I could probably spend more per bf and get more usable lumber but I have fainting spells when I have to pay over $3.50 a bf for anything.:eek::eek:

to finally answer your question :D I have about 40-60 bf each of cherry, mahogany, poplar, and pine in the shop now and maybe 10 -20 bf of maple and oak. Mostly 5/4.
 
Then you would have had a heart attach at the $9.95 a bd.ft. I paid for the wood wor the head rest on the chairs I just built... Birds eye maple.

I think the best price I've seen around here for birdseye maple was $12 or $13 per bf.

Alan, for flatwork I pretty much just buy for each project since I don't have a lot of storage space. My meager lumber rack is filled with a variety of hardwood shorts, with probably nothing longer than 5 feet. With my stock on hand, I could whip up a cutting board or two, but probably not any real furniture.

Turning wood's a different story. Nearly everything I have in stock was free, and you have to be ready to strike when those opportunities come along. I've got wood piled on the side of the yard and in the driveway. What I lose to cracking goes to the neighbors for firewood.
 
havinng a mill 1/2 hr away, means that I don't store alot of wood on hand,altho I do have some of many types(mostly the hard to get ones like 8/4 curly maple, some Wenge/Sapele/curly oak/Leopardwood)..but I have oodles of white and red oak(over 1000 BF each) that I bought at public auctions, or had sawn from logs.. I still have some very large Kentucky Coffee tree logs from my yard that I ned to get sawn( along with the walnut logs)..I gotta get on that.:eek:
 
My ex buddy that owned and operated his own sawmill went off the deep end and left his wife with a stack of bills after he got a full time job at the steel mill. I appreciated the fancy wood he cut, but wasn't able at the time to do much with it. I do have a a couple/three mint tubs stacked and stickered with rough cut wood. Boardfeet, I have no idea. Let's guess more than 2 bdft and less than oh, 3,000 bdft.
 
My ex buddy that owned and operated his own sawmill went off the deep end and left his wife with a stack of bills after he got a full time job at the steel mill. I appreciated the fancy wood he cut, but wasn't able at the time to do much with it. I do have a a couple/three mint tubs stacked and stickered with rough cut wood. Boardfeet, I have no idea. Let's guess more than 2 bdft and less than oh, 3,000 bdft.

its definatly more than enough to do the kitchen jonathan:)
 
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