PAR or sawn timber?

[woof]

Just worked out what PAR means (any other newbies ... it means Planed All Round :lol: ). Recently had some american oak delivered (3/4 x 5 3/4 boards) and some were awful so sent 6 back, only for them to deliver and leave them when I wasn't around. Still they were an improvement. Anyway I digress....

I thought having a planer and thicknesser would be a ridiculous luxury for an occassional workshop, however, if you spend weeks beforehand sending wood back and forth - with the consequent frustrations - it seems yes it is a luxury but at least you can ensure your wood is square and thus get good joins.

However, what cost saving on average by doing the planing and thicknessing yourself? I ask this as my small oak project wood cost just under £400, so savings to be made by do-ing it yourself would soften the blow of forking out.
Thanks, Mark

 

[BradNaylor]

Hi Mark,

The 3/4" boards you bought will have been machined out of 1" rough sawn timber. Price for reasonable quality rough sawn American White Oak is currently around the £25 per cubic foot mark. Very roughly, this equates to about £10 per 8' long x 6" wide plank (or board)

You don't tell us what you paid for your PAR boards. I recently bought some 3" x 3/4" PAR AWO at £1.10 per foot so imagine yours at 6" was probably £2.50 per foot.

At these figures then, rough sawn timber works out at around half the price of PAR.

There are advantages either way. There is the initial cost of a planer/thicknesser - but if you're serious about woodworking you're going to need one of those anyway. They are not just used for machining rough timber!

Planing up a load of rough timber takes time. If my workload is heavy and I have a lot of doors and face frames to make I will buy PAR timber as above to save myself a maybe day's work - but for me time is money. If I was doing it as a hobby I always plane my own.

As you have discovered, with PAR if you are unhappy with any boards or lengths you can send them back. You are buying a 'manufactured product' and a degree of quality control should be expected at the timber yard. With rough sawn timber, you are buying a 'commodity product' and to a greater extent have to take the rough with the smooth. If you have a good relationship with your supplier however, you will be able to send back any particularly bad boards.

Personally, I always go and pick my own. I am lucky to have at least two hardwood importers within half an hour's drive who are happy for me to climb over a pack picking out what I want. This cuts out all the nonsense of sending stuff back and waiting for a new delivery. I am also often working on several jobs at once. A typical order for me might be 10 boards of oak, 3 of walnut, a couple of steamed beech, and a cherry. It is easier to go and get it. The time taken is worth it in my view.

Incidentally, what did you pay for your oak?

Dan

 

[matthewwh]

Hi Mark,

Even for a predominantly hand tool based workshop I would still regard a planer and thicknesser as essential.

As you have found, they will rapidly pay for themselves, and they give you the capacity to size timber to your requirements, rather than constraining your projects to the standardised dimensions of PAR. The machines I use are excellent (jet thicknesser and a rexon jointer) they always do a lovely job and haven't owed me anything since about a week after I got them. A good handplane will quickly sort out the slight ripples caused by the blade rotation and leave you with clean accurate stock and a big smile.

An inexpensive extractor is another worthwhile investment to go with these, the little yellow ones from Axmonster are very good value, nice and quiet, metal impeller, and not too expensive, so if something big ever does go up the pipe you won't be crying for long.

 

[Waka]

Mark

A P/T in the workshop will eventually pay for itself, I bought the JPT 310 and by buying rough sawn it has probably already paid for itself.

 

[woof]

Dan,

I paid £398 for 13 8ft+ boards of 3/4" x 5 3/4"
and 1 8ft board of 1/2" x 5 3/4"

Initially the guy quoted me £478 but I looked so dumbfounded and spluttered that he reduced it. The fact he did reduce it so quickly did raise my suspicions that it was obvious to him that I am a newbie .... but of course he has now lost my future custom. So the extra he put on top will be all the profit he gets from me. I am pretty sure I still vastly overpaid??!!

 

[Lord Nibbo]

Dan,

I paid £398 for 13 8ft+ boards of 3/4" x 5 3/4"
and 1 8ft board of 1/2" x 5 3/4"

Initially the guy quoted me £478 but I looked so dumbfounded and spluttered that he reduced it. The fact he did reduce it so quickly did raise my suspicions that it was obvious to him that I am a newbie .... but of course he has now lost my future custom. So the extra he put on top will be all the profit he gets from me. I am pretty sure I still vastly overpaid??!!

Your boards = 3,1/4 cuft at £400 = £123 a cu ft that must be a record for any wood :shock:

 

[woof]

Dan,

I paid £398 for 13 8ft+ boards of 3/4" x 5 3/4"
and 1 8ft board of 1/2" x 5 3/4"

Initially the guy quoted me £478 but I looked so shocked and spluttered that he reduced it to £398. The fact he did reduce it so quickly did raise my suspicions that it was obvious to him that I am a newbie .... but of course he has now lost my future custom. So the extra he put on top will be all the profit he gets from me. I am pretty sure I still vastly overpaid??!!

Your boards = 3,1/4 cuft at £400 = £123 a cu ft that must be a record for any wood :shock:

I knew I would feel bad, but :evil: I am seething now. Being very new to this, I did think about asking how much to pay on the forum, but felt that since some of you are professionals, it would be unseemly and wrong to do so. What this particular supplier has done has lost all my future custom. Clearly taken advantage of my inexperience big time. Like being a tourist abroad and going for a 5 mile taxi ride when you only need to travel 1/2 mile.

SO just checked British hardwoods site - oak is £28.9 incl VAT per cubic foot roughsawn - would have cost me around £93.90.

:evil:

How much should I have paid for 3 1/4 cubic feet PAR oak?

 

[mr]

Your boards = 3,1/4 cuft at £400 = £123 a cu ft that must be a record for any wood :shock:

Over on the Getwoodworking forum there are reports of a seller in North Wales asking £203 per cubic foot for oak. In any case its yet another example of a sawmill, woodyard taking advantage of the newbie / hobbyist. Yes they see you coming. No they don't care that they can only skin you once as you take your business elsewhere - they don't want your business in the first place. Sorry to play the same old record again but it really drives me to distraction.
I have no idea Im afraid how much you should pay for PAR, I got skinned alive once and have always bought sawn since, however I have heard reports of 30pence per metre of processed timber. In this instance I'd be tempted to go back to the origianl supplier with an estimate from SL Hardwoods (who are by no means the cheapest in the world) and ask for an explanation / refund. When satisfaction is not forthcoming I would probably head back here and tell the rest of us where not to go.

Cheers Mike

 

[mr]

Your boards = 3,1/4 cuft at £400 = £123 a cu ft that must be a record for any wood :shock:

Over on the Getwoodworking forum there are reports of a seller in North Wales asking £203 per cubic foot for oak. In any case its yet another example of a sawmill, woodyard taking advantage of the newbie / hobbyist. Yes they see you coming. No they don't care that they can only skin you once as you take your business elsewhere - they don't want your business in the first place. Sorry to play the same old record again but it really drives me to distraction.
I have no idea Im afraid how much you should pay for PAR, I got skinned alive once and have always bought sawn since, however I have heard reports of 30pence per metre of processed timber. In this instance I'd be tempted to go back to the original supplier with an estimate from SL Hardwoods (who are by no means the cheapest in the world) and ask for an explanation / refund. When satisfaction is not forthcoming I would probably head back here and tell the rest of us where not to go.

Cheers Mike

 

[kmcleod]

My experience was that rough sawn was about 1/3rd of the price of PAR.

That was for Southern Yellow Pine...

So did some calculations and bought a planner/thicknesser and a jointer,,,,

The freedom it gives it worth the cost anyday,,,

 

[woof]

Very much appreciated info chaps. Well the experience has at least sorted out what the next machine buy needs to be ... for the next big project of course ... (whenever that might be!) .. a planer/thicknesser.

 

[Waka]

Woof

Looking at some of those examples the prises are rediculous. I had an order delivered about 6 weeks ago of 10 cubic Ft of rough sawn AWO, total price including Vat and delivery was £287.00. so tota;price per cube is £28.70.

Rehgarding asking questions on the forum, never worry about asking those questions, that's what the forum is all about, remember there is no such thing as a stupid question.

 

[r896neo]

if you can woof i would second the advise given and definately go hand select the boards yourself.

Many hardwood yards can often be dealing with larger orders etc and the guys are dead bored. When i call in they seem happy to trawl through timber lifting for me to inspect etc. They always like a brief chat but its the least i can do for their help, and by going down your self you can often spot deals on Short lengths or slighlt damaged timber.

I recently was buying 5 cub/ft of 2" white oak and one 8ft length had wonderful figure but a split right down the centre. It was pretty minor and a night in a bunch of cramps soon vanished it! anyway I mentioned it and he charged me for 2" by 8ft by 6" wide, when the board was a foot wide! You cant haggle over the phone!

 

[mister henderson]

There's another reason for buying a planer/thicknesser-

Buying PAR means you have to cut the boards down to size AFTER they've been thicknessed. This is a bad thing. The stresses built-in to the boards will then be released and the wood will move. This means that it will no longer be flat.

Ideally you should buy the boards rough sawn, then cut them down to nearly the sizes you need, then keep them for a while in an environment similar to where the finished piece will end up, then plane and thickness them down to the correct dimensions

We've all done it, by the way, gone to a supplier and bought planed timber. I did it with english oak. It ended up similar in shape to well-fried bacon

 

[woof]

There's another reason for buying a planer/thicknesser-


Ideally you should buy the boards rough sawn, then cut them down to nearly the sizes you need, then keep them for a while in an environment similar to where the finished piece will end up, then plane and thickness them down to the correct dimensions

How much bigger would you plane and thickness than final dimensions ... 3mm or more all round? How long should they be acclimatised to the new environment- 1 week, 1 month? I must admit I thought I would acclimatise the unsawn boards in future but you make a lot of sense by getting close to final dimensions. And for the final planing thicknesing, I take it you could use the P/T again? Looks like Santa needs to do some weight training to bring me a planer thicknesser :lol:

 

[mister henderson]

I didn't mean to p&t to nearly the final dimensions, I meant to cut out the shape of the pieces you need. This is assuming that the borads you have bought are close to the required thickness- e.g. 20mm finished from 1" stock
If you do need some thinner pieces then p&t before acclimatisation would be a good idea, but leave them at least 3mm oversive maybe more with longer pieces in case the distortion means they can't be flattened later

How long to leave them to acclimatise? Good question. Asssuming they have been kiln dried and then stored in what is effectively an open-sided buliding (most timber yards) then as long as you can but not less than a month or so
In my front room (centrally heated house) the relative humidity is currently 35%. In the timber yard it's probably 65%. That could mean quite a bit of movement. Play it safe if it's important