Wood purchase

[Schleeper]

I got tired of readin' and talkin'. I wanna see sawdust!

I suffer from frequent bouts of analysis paralysis, so sometimes I just gotta say, "What the f***," and dive in headlong. So this afternoon, I made an unsupervised trip to the lumber yard (ie. without someone who knows what they're doing,) and came away with approx. 18-1/2 board feet of hard maple for starting work on our kitchen cabinets. Here are the particulars:

4/4 Select & Better Sap Maple, northern hard stock, kd, rough. 2@ 4/4 x 5 x 8, and 3@ 4/4x6x8. Price was $4.95 per board foot, plus fifty cents per bdft to surface 2 sides, for a total of 107.87.

I haven't even figured out how much I need yet, and I have no idea what to look for, or how much it should cost. I asked for soft maple, but all they had was curly and hard. The guy at the yard showed me some rough boards, and we picked out five of them. Then he asked me if I wanted them to mill them for me. I asked if there was a charge for that, and of course there is. I told him I have a new planer that I've never used, and no jointer. He helped me decide to plane one surface, and joint one edge.

In looking at the boards, one of them has a small, open knot in the middle of the planed surface, about 2 feet in from the end. Otherwise, the wood all appears to be pretty clear. That leads me to believe that I paid for a better grade of wood than I need for making stiles, rails, and raised panels. (Not that it will go to waste, because I have drawer front slabs to make.)

OK, give it to me straight; how did I do? What should I plan to do differently next time?

[cabinetman]

I would shop around some before paying $4.95/bd ft. It sounds high, but I'm not familiar with your area. You could also plan on doing your own planing. You can always straightedge on the TS, or with a router and straight edge, or on a router table. Maybe keep your eye out for a deal on a jointer.
.

[mschrank]

I sympathize with your feelings. I also sometimes overplan and just want to get on with it...but that method has bitten me a few times.

I'd say you did pretty good. I can't buy figured hard maple around here for less than $5-$6 bd/ft....really depends on the area. Hard maple is pretty much an "exotic" in this part of the country.

Since you don't have a jointer, you probably saved yourself a lot of grief by having them surface 2 sides.

I like to buy a good bit more than I plan on needing....sounds like that's what you did. Makes it a lot easier when milling if you can do all the planing to thickness at once, rather than having to run out and buy more later...and then struggle to plane it to match.

[LCHIEN]

you probably did ok. that's not too bad a price for hardwoods.
he steered you right by doing S2S for you since you only have a planer.
You'd better pull back some, do some paper figuring and see what the total costs are likely to be... plan on at least 10% maybe 20% extra wood for mistakes, short cutoffs, too skinny strips, etc.

Was the knot on both sides or only one side? Makes a difference you know. You can always hide it if its on one side.
Clear maple is nice to work with. Just wathc ot for burning, a sharp, clean blade helps.

[Schleeper]

I would shop around some before paying $4.95/bd ft. It sounds high, but I'm not familiar with your area. You could also plan on doing your own planing. You can always straightedge on the TS, or with a router and straight edge, or on a router table. Maybe keep your eye out for a deal on a jointer.
.

Based on how my first planing efforts turn out, I may actually WANT to do it myself (if for no other reason, so I can justify the $300 I spent on the planer!)

Not sure I have too many other options in this area for buying the lumber. If there were, I wouldn't be driving to Pennsylvania (and paying their sales tax,) in order to buy it.

[JR]

That surely doesn't sound a lie ripoff to me, particularly given how clear it is. At $4.95/bf it's not a smokin' deal, but you got treated fairly.

Planning around that knot is part of the fun, IMHO. You can either plan your cuts to excise it, or plan to include it in the finished product. A little epoxy in the gaps can be filed and sanded, leaving an interesting visual cue.

Have fun making sawdust!
JR

[Schleeper]

Loring, this was just kind of a "down payment" as it were. I'm going to be utilizing the CutList Plus software to figure out how much plywood I need, and how to best lay it out to minize waste. I may as well use it for the hardwood, too. (Mike, I'll be shocked if 18+ board feet is enough for making 30+ feet of raised panel kitchen cabinets!)

The knot I was referring to is visible on both sides.

I'm hoping that the two WWII blades I own (a 30T TK and a 40T) will be sufficient to handle the job. (And I've got a Delta 60T on the SCMS.) Right now, I'm waiting for my shim replacements to arrive.

[Russianwolf]

check woodfinder.com You can do better in PA. Granted you are a bit East of the best sources, but you should be able to find the rough stuff for $3 and S2S for less than $4. The mill I work with I can get what you got for about $2.50/bf

[Two Much]

Shcleeper, We have a planer, and we don't have a jointer. We use the table saw to joint our wood. It is more work I'm sure, but it works.
At the mill where we buy our wood, we pay 5.00 a board foot for QSWO, clear Maple and Walnut. The guy we buy it from is so nice, after Cliff picks out the wood he wants, the owner deducts for any bad sections on the wood... I think we're getting a great deal on our wood. We buy a lot of wood from him as we're always making stuff. Not sure if we're getting a special deal from him or not.
Joann

[drumpriest]

I am forever showing this tutorial, there are many ways to edge joint without a jointer, and here is one...

http://www.bt3central.com/showthread.php?t=27458

5$ a board foot isn't bad for hard maple, so don't feel bad about it. As to the knot, I just finished a set of Cherry doors with a knot that shows on both sides, though admittedly only barely on the front side. I included it in a stile, but stablilzed the knot first with some epoxy. I would recommend the 5 minute stuff, as I used some regular that I had around, and it took 2 weeks to dry.

I ALWAYS over analyze my projects. LOML is always picking on me about it, but then she also wants me to be very careful to not have to buy extra, and she wants everything to turn out awesome, so I don't know how it would work otherwise.