custard
Established Member
It's clear from a number of recent posts that sourcing hardwoods is a real problem for many woodworkers. It might be useful to get a thread going which aims to take some of the mystery out of the process.
I guess the first thing to recognise is that even though there are thousands of species of trees, there are only a handful of common furniture woods. It's not that they're the only timbers suitable for furniture making, it's more that they're the only ones regularly available in the massive quantities needed to fuel the market. To make your life simple when first starting out you should confine yourself to a very restricted timber palette, in fact I'd recommend choosing just two or three from Ash, Beech, Sweet Chestnut, Oak (American White or European, not American Red), Sycamore, American Cherry, American Black Walnut, or Maple. All of these are widely available. At least at the beginning forget about Holly, Swiss Pear, Zebrano, Macassar Ebony, Yew, Wenge, or any other temptingly attractive timbers, the fact is they're difficult to source except sporadically from specialist yards. You're far better off having good stocks of two or three timbers rather than individual boards from lots of different species, that won't yield enough consistent timber for any one project, and any left over timber can't be carried forward to your next project.
Having chosen a fairly common timber your next step is to identify a yard that supplies smallish quantities in a range of thicknesses and has a clear pricing structure. Don't expect to get the very cheapest prices out there. You should probably rank reasonable quality and ease of buying above out and out bargain hunting.
I'm more familiar with timber suppliers in the South East, but somewhere like SL Hardwoods would fit the bill,
https://www.slhardwoods.co.uk/products/ ... awn-boards
There are equivalent retailers all over the country, many of them have regular delivery rounds and can drop timber off at your door.
The next step is to decide how much timber you need. You should always have a plan and a cutting list before starting a project. But a good rule of thumb is to remember there's about a cubic foot of sawn timber in a project like this,
To be safe, you'll need a bit extra, say 1.5 to 2.0 cubic feet. But if you're restricting yourself to two or three timbers that's okay, because you can just carry left over stocks forward to the next project.
If you order, sight unseen, from a yard like this you'll almost certainly get flat sawn boards where the end grain looks like this,
To make it clearer the end grain will conform to this sort of shape,
Look at the face of a flat sawn board and the grain will look like this,
In other words there's "cathedral" grain in the centre, petering out to rift or quarter sawn grain at the edges. This illustrates it more clearly,
Why is that? You'll read that flat sawing gives a greater yield from the log. In fact the truth is a bit more devious, timber mills cut flat sawn because it makes a highly variable natural product like timber into something a tiny bit closer to a standardised, homogenous commodity.
I guess the first thing to recognise is that even though there are thousands of species of trees, there are only a handful of common furniture woods. It's not that they're the only timbers suitable for furniture making, it's more that they're the only ones regularly available in the massive quantities needed to fuel the market. To make your life simple when first starting out you should confine yourself to a very restricted timber palette, in fact I'd recommend choosing just two or three from Ash, Beech, Sweet Chestnut, Oak (American White or European, not American Red), Sycamore, American Cherry, American Black Walnut, or Maple. All of these are widely available. At least at the beginning forget about Holly, Swiss Pear, Zebrano, Macassar Ebony, Yew, Wenge, or any other temptingly attractive timbers, the fact is they're difficult to source except sporadically from specialist yards. You're far better off having good stocks of two or three timbers rather than individual boards from lots of different species, that won't yield enough consistent timber for any one project, and any left over timber can't be carried forward to your next project.
Having chosen a fairly common timber your next step is to identify a yard that supplies smallish quantities in a range of thicknesses and has a clear pricing structure. Don't expect to get the very cheapest prices out there. You should probably rank reasonable quality and ease of buying above out and out bargain hunting.
I'm more familiar with timber suppliers in the South East, but somewhere like SL Hardwoods would fit the bill,
https://www.slhardwoods.co.uk/products/ ... awn-boards
There are equivalent retailers all over the country, many of them have regular delivery rounds and can drop timber off at your door.
The next step is to decide how much timber you need. You should always have a plan and a cutting list before starting a project. But a good rule of thumb is to remember there's about a cubic foot of sawn timber in a project like this,
To be safe, you'll need a bit extra, say 1.5 to 2.0 cubic feet. But if you're restricting yourself to two or three timbers that's okay, because you can just carry left over stocks forward to the next project.
If you order, sight unseen, from a yard like this you'll almost certainly get flat sawn boards where the end grain looks like this,
To make it clearer the end grain will conform to this sort of shape,
Look at the face of a flat sawn board and the grain will look like this,
In other words there's "cathedral" grain in the centre, petering out to rift or quarter sawn grain at the edges. This illustrates it more clearly,
Why is that? You'll read that flat sawing gives a greater yield from the log. In fact the truth is a bit more devious, timber mills cut flat sawn because it makes a highly variable natural product like timber into something a tiny bit closer to a standardised, homogenous commodity.