Cost of Wood

[spearson92]

Hi all!

New to the forum and relatively new to woodworking as well, but I was wondering if anyone has advice on the price of wood these days?

I have previously seen oak in the region of £35-£40 per cu/ft which sounds about right from other people's posts on forums, but that was a little while ago now.

I know that the price of wood will vary massively on type of wood/species, grade, finish provided etc. But say for example what price would you expect to pay for some prime grade, European oak waney boards? I have the gear to now start prepping some rough sawn so looking for best value for money when buying hardwood.

Also, is it best buying directly from a sawmill or from a timber merchants? I'm all the way up in Inverness so options are limited without delivery. Any advice welcome on price, where to buy, or other better value types of hardwood I should say that the types of projects I intend to do are nice sideboard, coffee table etc.

Many thanks in advance!

Steve

 

[PAC1]

Last week I ordered some Kiln dried oak and paid £60 to £80 per cubic foot. I had quotes that ranged upto double this price. But it was the very best first quality in 3 and 2.5 inch thicknesses. I would say £35/40 is low but may be achievable for 1 inch oak if not top quality.

 

[tomatwark]

£35/40 per cubic foot sounds like air dried or freshly sawn to me.

£60/80 is about the right price at the moment foe kiln dried

 

[spearson92]

Cool, thanks folks! Gives me a good idea to base other prices on.

 

[custard]

Oak is one of the few British hardwoods that’s commonly sold graded. Consequently you get a huge and ever changing price range. In my woodworking lifetime I’ve seen Pippy Oak go from a small premium, to a deep discount, and now back to a substantial premium. Quarter sawn, clear, and exceptionally wide boards all carry hefty premiums. Brown Oak and Tiger Oak carry even bigger premiums, I’ve happily paid £150 a cube for exceptional boards.

A reasonable average price for decent quality, waney edge boards is about £60-65 a cubic foot. But you’ll find fence post grade Oak in country mills for £20 a cube.

The moral of the story is don’t buy Oak without understanding the yard’s approach to grading, it’s worth enquiring because some yards use their own grading system. For example my two favourite yards for Oak in the South East, Tylers and English Woodland Timbers, each have radically different grading systems.

 

[PAC1]

Oak is one of the few British hardwoods that’s commonly sold graded. Consequently you get a huge and ever changing price range. In my woodworking lifetime I’ve seen Pippy Oak go from a small premium, to a deep discount, and now back to a substantial premium. Quarter sawn, clear, and exceptionally wide boards all carry hefty premiums. Brown Oak and Tiger Oak carry even bigger premiums, I’ve happily paid £150 a cube for exceptional boards.

A reasonable average price for decent quality, waney edge boards is about £60-65 a cubic foot. But you’ll find fence post grade Oak in country mills for £20 a cube.

The moral of the story is don’t buy Oak without understanding the yard’s approach to grading, it’s worth enquiring because some yards use their own grading system. For example my two favourite yards for Oak in the South East, Tylers and English Woodland Timbers, each have radically different grading systems.

The other major factor when buying oak and waney edge in particular is the amount of waste. 20-30% of a good waney edge board is scrap. If you are unfortunate and get one that is split as well it can be 50%. Therefore if you need 4 cube for the project, ordinarily with square edged boards I would order 5 cube but with waney edge it will be 6 or more. At that point the true cost per cubic foot of useable oak is £100+ per cube.
Oak more than any other wood, you need a good relationship with your supplier so that they know what you want and you know what they are supplying.

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

I'm new to this too, but have picked up an enormous amount of advice on this forum =D>

I cannot comment on the types of wood, but one thing I would do though is shop around and don't settle for a yard/shop that is close to you. Also, when you go to the yard/shop don't be afraid to ask questions and look at the wood, and if they are reluctant to give answers or show you around, then I'd forget them. (But then again, I am a grumpy old git :wink: )

OWK ccasion5:

 

[spearson92]

Yeah I agree. All good points there.

Custard, English Woodlands Timber are one the places I've been looking at. Any advice for buying from them? Or how they go about their grading? I'm trying to plan a trip there at some point as it's not too far from the in-laws.

 

[custard]

English Woodlands make buying very straightforward, they're trying to overcome that scare factor that a lot of people have about timber yards. So they're innovating in areas like photographing individual boards for sale and posting them online, about a year ago they installed a massively wide thicknesser so they can mill up big waney edged boards for people who want waney edged topped furniture.

They have a guide to their grading system here,

http://new.englishwoodlandstimber.co.uk ... -Grade.pdf

They pull out selected boards and selected logs from the top "prime" category that are that bit better still, and grade them as "super prime". Basically they're doing themselves what more experienced timber buyers would do, picking out the best of the best. Sure, you pay a bit more for these extra clean boards, but if you're a furniture maker then quality generally trumps price.

Another good thing about them is that, like Tylers, they do their own kilning, you'd be surprised how rare that's getting these days. Besides giving you a choice of kilned or air dried, it also means you can have real confidence in their kilning quality. Kilning quality has been drifting down for a good few years now, as yards rush their wood through the pre-drying and kilning process to shave a few pence off the price. Unfortunately Oak suffers more than most species when it comes to poor kilning, you find checking and a problem called "yellow stain" becoming very common.

I appreciate you're looking for Oak, but it's worth mentioning that they're also one of the very few UK sources for unsteamed, waney edge Black Walnut.

 

[spearson92]

Thanks Custard, some good advice. That's one thing I liked about English Timber was the buying process seemed particularly easy.

To be honest I don't necessarily have to start off working with oak, just thought it might be a good starting point. But maybe I should expand my horizons and see what else is out there. Many thanks!

 

[cornishjoinery]

The worst thing for saw mills is weekend warriors coming in and going through piles of wood looking for a peice that is 800 long. Then trying to knock them down in price!

 

[Paddy Roxburgh]

The worst thing for saw mills is weekend warriors coming in and going through piles of wood looking for a peice that is 800 long. Then trying to knock them down in price!

Interesting, I would have thought fire would be worse.

 

[Steliz]

The worst thing for saw mills is weekend warriors coming in and going through piles of wood looking for a peice that is 800 long. Then trying to knock them down in price!

Yeah! They should ban all non-proffesoonal joiners from saw mills because they are ruining it for all the proffesoonals!

Berk.

 

[Starjump]

I bought some cherry from English Woodlands Timber last year. They kindly showed me different boards sorting through the pile with a forklift truck. Once I had selected three planks, the operative, who had patiently served me applied his pricing criteria to the boards. I was in the dark through the whole pricing process, my inexperience I didn't try to hide, but it seemed reasonable. He explained some discount was applied where a little twist was evident etc. He was a good bloke serving me and the timber suited my needs. Good luck!

 

[JWD]

The worst thing for saw mills is weekend warriors coming in and going through piles of wood looking for a peice that is 800 long. Then trying to knock them down in price!

hmm i wonder if we could make a forum just for non proofoshoonals & weekend warriors & the like

 

[tushi]

I just bought 250 bd ft of curly maple and 350 bd ft of white oak, in January, so I don't have room for more right now. I have visited Hearne's Hardwoods in PA off rt 1 in Knottingham, which is about 60 miles for me. I figure Hollister is about the same distance. Thanks






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There are no solved problems; there are only problems that are more or less solved.
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