Kane":12w9gtnv said:
Sorry to contradict but you can buy steel from the internet pre-priced so to speak and in small quantities
with the postage included in the calculations (no idea about plastics mind)
There's the rub,
"postage included". with the greatest of respect this is a bit like quoting prices from the corner shop when you want to buy your groceries from Sainsbury's - and the prices bear about the same relationship. Having built the computer system for one large steel manufacturer in the 1970s I know the sorts of variation in section, finish (e.g. mill, scaled, pickled, dimension ground bright, etc) and so on that occurs - well enough to know that mail order steel suppliers are like the local DIY shop flogging PAR pine. In other words, extremely limited range of sizes and materials at premium prices. And a DIY shop isn't a timber merchant.
I've found that in general where merchants do publish stuff it's only from a very restricted list and the prices seem to err on the side of caution. I think Baco metal centres used to do this on ally profile, but they only ever quoted prices on the 100 or so most popular lines from about 3,000 and the price was always subject to quantity, availability, etc and so was never right - so it was generally easier to ring and ask.
The plastics comment is also from experience. You might get a price on the net for something simple like 4mm clear acrylic (which will be well out of trade affordability) but you'll probably never find a figure for 35mm UHMW polyethylene.
Kane":12w9gtnv said:
One thing that confuses me as someone with no idea how wood yards work is that when you see pictures there's massive stacks of timber all over the place so how can the price vary so much week to week due to demand?
Firstly, most hardwoods are air dried for the first part of the process of production at the rate of 1 year per inch thickness. Even if you accelerate by kilning there's still a finite amount of kiln capacity and it takes a set time to kiln a batch, so there will always need to be buffer stock between forest and end user. To sell air-dried 4in oak you need in effect at least 4 to 5 years worth of stock to meet on-goping demand, so only a certain percentage of that huge stack will ready and available at any time. Another thing to bear in mind is that if a big player like M&S decided to refit their shops in, say, Elm, the requirement for Elm would suddenly go up enormously as prices inevitably chased availability. This is a problem in
all raw material/commodity markets and as I stated earlier, timber ain't soap, it's a raw material with (in some case) commodity market spot prices. To make things even worse in recent years the Chinese have complicated the market by coming in and buying up huge stocks of timber, including futures, which further depletes the availability of materials at fairly short notice.
I recall a number of years back that M&S and Boots, who were both undergoing major refit programs at the time, were using so much ash for show work that the price of joinery ash rocketed up from around £13 to £14/cube to nearly £30 for a while. Does that mean that merchants who had stock bought-in to make a profit at £14 should have continued to sell at that price when the market rose? Or that when the price collapsed, as it did a few years later when demand fell, they should have continued selling at the higher prices? In a capitalist world, I think not.
Kane":12w9gtnv said:
It's a pity that B&Q or some other shed couldn't see this thread and do some market research to see what the actual demand is for quality timber - with their buying power they could negotiate a good price and stock it in their bigger stores (ok so I'm dreaming :lol: )
You certainly
are dreaming! Those muppets can't even deliver acceptable
quality sawn pine without too many defects (hence the description "banana pine"). In any case their prices against timber yards are often a joke, even on small quantities. And the thought of someone at B&Q rip sawing down big boards :roll:
Kane":12w9gtnv said:
Wastage confuses me (like a lot of things - why is it called waney?
Why is a tenon called a tenon, or a cramp a cramp? It's just the traditional and correct terminology. Like most other things timber has it's own vocabulary (or jargon), just like cars or computers which neds to be learned to communicate with yards. If you are a car owner I presume you know some of the jargon to do with cars which is no doubt a help when dealing with garages. Why must timber be any different?
Scrit
