How to entertain yourself on a winter's evening - start a new thread about the price of oak and stand well back!
Steve, don't listen to the others, :wink: your words on pricing sound very familar and sensible to me
Dan Tovey wrote:
Ultimately though, timber cost is normally no more than 10-15% of the selling price of a project, so it's easy to become over obsessive.
Dan, it depends what you're making. If it's a piece of fine furniture or even a window or door in ordinary timber 15% sounds about right but the timber cost on this job was originally supposed to be 39% of the selling price and has ended up being 48%. On a job with large timber content and relatively low labour content its bound to be higher. With oak it's dangerous not to be obsessive. I was a bit obsessive and I still lost out.
I don't throw away timber unless it's too thin or too short to be of use. I do throw away waney edge sapwood and split heartwood and end shakes. Out of each board I could use less than 50% to fulfill my cutting list the rest was firewood or offcuts of no immediate use. These will eventually be used or given away but no means of being paid for them in the short term, if at all, so must be allowed for in the customers price.
I should have stated that I was talking here about European oak, I haven't used AWO for some years - it comes too dry and the grain is dull compared to Euro and English.
I usually use kilned European sq edged oak but for my current job (4prs garage doors) I have decided (with the help of this forum last week) to used air-dried because of the exposure to the elements they will get.
I told my supplier what I wanted the oak for, they even had some that was aired-dried and then part-kilned down to 15% for just such uses.
I'm so used to ordering and receiving sq edge oak that I never thought to ask whether this stuff was sq edge and didn't find out it wasn't until it turned up on the lorry
And no I didn't go along to their yard with my tape and chalk to pick out my own boards because I was buying about 2 tons and also their yard is about 100 miles away. :wink:
The only time I collect timber is when I'm desperate for a couple of boards and I'll get them locally and that happens on average once a year.
So I spent an extra day that I hadn't allowed for ripping out the heart and ripping off the waney edge and cutting off the end shakes. And I had plenty of time while doing this to think about the extra £600 or so that this oak had cost because all this waste was being charged at the same rate as the usable bits. I couldn't have got sq edge air-dried because is was not an option although if I'd known I would have got a quote for
them to cut to my list which I will certainly do next time.
But the reason for my original post was - isn't it an anomally that kiln dried is more valued by most makers because it is ready for use for all internal and semi-external jobs and can be bought sq edged with minimum waste, whereas air dried (only available in waney edge boards) is (presumably) less popular and though only slightly cheaper in unit price works out
far more expensive than kilned because of the very
large wastage. :? :?
I now have a large pile of firewood and an equally large pile of small to medium sized offcuts which are really only of use for kitchen doors. It will all get used one day but is not something I had planned on giving workshop space to.
Anyway its been good fun and thanks for your interest and replies. I've done enough thinking about oak for this week, I'm off to get a glass of wine and think about something else
Cheers
Malcolm
