Where does lumber come from?

I want to apologize if my previous blogs came off as a bit “ranty”.  That wasn’t their intentions as they were meant to be informative and provide insight to custom woodworking.  If you haven’t read them yet and have no clue what I am even talking about, I encourage you to go back and read them so you can judge whether or not I am the “get off my lawn” type.  Either way, I thought for this blog I would take a different approach and try to make it strictly informative.  At least I will try, I can’t guarantee if I am indeed the get off my lawn type.

Lumber.  Let’s talk about lumber.  Specifically buying lumber and what options are available to you.  Buy the right lumber or else! After all, it’s not like this stuff grows on trees! For many, obtaining lumber is as simple as just going to hardware store.  But believe it or not, there are many other ways of obtaining lumber as well as different species that would otherwise not be available at your hardware store. 

Let’s talk about the obvious option first, the hardware store.  Convenience is a luxury you will pay dearly for.  This is by far the most convenient option for anyone looking for lumber, however this will be the most expensive option.  Reason being the lumber changes hands far greater than any other option.  To ensure each changing of hands gets cash stuffed into them, they mark up the price with each exchange.  By the time you, the customer, gets to the hardware store the lumber is marked up quite a bit.  The species options are also a bit lacking compared to other options.  You should be able to find the more common domestic hardwoods such as oak, maple, poplar, cherry, and even walnut from time to time.  You may even find some exotics, primarily mahogany.  The main advantage you will have buying lumber from the hardware store is that the wood will be S4S.  S4S….what the hell is that?  S4S is an industry wide description of the dimensioning state the wood is in.  Let me elaborate.  The first S stands for “surfaced”, the number is a quantity, and the final S stands sides.  So when you go to the hardware store and buy wood that is S4S’ed, that means that all faces and edges are surfaced, or surfaced 4 sides, meaning you should have a flat, parallel, and even thickness board.  A huge convenience to those who do not possess the tools or skills to do that milling themselves. This is a convenience you will ultimately pay for as well however.  You may have also noticed the italicized word a few sentences ago.  You should, but not always, end up with flat and parallel boards.  Sometimes, the selection only provides boards that are better suited for building a boat than a piece of furniture. 

The next option would be sourcing your lumber from a hardwood dealer.  This is my current go to for obtaining my lumber.  As the name implies, they wheel and deal exclusively in wood.  Because of this, the pricing typically runs lower and the quality and selection is higher.  Selections include softwoods and hardwoods, domestic and exotic, as well as plywood, trim, and mouldings for case work or finish carpentry.  While this sounds too good to be true, there are some draw backs to shopping at a hardwood dealer.  The first being that these are not located in every town that has a hardware store.  Typically, hardwood dealers are located in more populated areas.  Unless you happen to live close to one, you can expect to drive for multiple hours to go buy yourself a pretty board from Africa or South America.  Another downside to a hardwood dealer is the lumber is not typically S4S’ed.  In many cases, it is S2S’ed at best, and sometimes has had no milling done to make the lumber usable for any project other than “rustic”.  This is a big reason why many folks who have zero desire to do woodworking are not familiar with what or where a hardwood dealer is.  You will likely need to have some skill or means to take a board and make it S4S’ed to use it in a project.  A final note on hardwood dealers that differs from the hardware store is how the lumber is sold.  At a hardware store, you will likely by boards in nominal sizes and be charged per foot, i.e. a 1x4 that is 6’ long.  This differs from a hardwood dealer who sells the lumber by volume.  The unit of measurement used at a hardwood dealer is called board foot, and that is what they charge per, not the foot.  This system originated back at the sawyer as a way to maximize the value of a log.  To give an idea of scale, 1 B.F.(board foot) is equal to 1’ wide x 1’ long x 1” thick.  While you may be accustomed to getting 1” nominal boards, sawyers don’t cut logs into 1” thick boards.  As wood dries, it shrinks, so instead logs are cut into lumber with thickness measured in “quarters”.  So a true 1” thick board would be considered a 4/4 (four quarter) board, a 2” thick board would be 8/4 (eight quarter), and so forth.  This terminology is how you will see lumber priced and displayed if you were to shop at a hardwood dealer.  To those unfamiliar with this, buying lumber from a hardwood dealer can be intimidating the first couple of times.

The next option for sourcing lumber would be to buy directly from a sawyer.  In most cases, these are just local people who happen to have a sawmill, either mobile or stationary.  I mention mobile because if you happen to have a tree on your property that has come down or is coming down, you can find someone who has a mobile sawmill to come to your location and mill the logs into slabs or boards if you so desire.  Naturally there is usually a fee and I can’t even ballpark it for you as it depends on region and sawyer.  In some cases I have seen people willing to do it for the cost of keeping a couple of slabs from the tree and in others I have seen people charge per the hour.  But that is the mobile sawyers.  There are also sawyers who have stationary mills who trailer logs to their mills and slab them up there.  The real beauty of buying from a local sawyer is you can usually get a ton of lumber at a pretty good price.  Buying from a sawyer also yields the possibility that you can pinpoint exactly where the lumber came from.  They might be able to tell you that the log was from a tree in a neighboring town that the locals said stood for 200 years or something along those lines.  Whatever the case, you might be able to put a story behind the wood which could help sell whatever you are making with it or just give it that extra bit of flair to have as a talking point.  This approach also keeps the logs from going to the chipper or getting burned.  The downside (I know, there always seems to be a downside) is that the wood is usually “wet” and not appropriately dried for use and is rough milled.  As wood dries, it changes size and sometimes shape depending on the internal stress it goes through.  Before you can use a board, it needs to be properly dried.  This can be done with a kiln (extra cost though quicker turnaround) or naturally  (no cost other than storage space and effort to towards proper drying techniques and a much longer dry time, typically at least a year or two).  The other mentioned disadvantage to sourcing lumber through a sawyer is that the lumber is rough milled, meaning there has been no surfacing done to any surfaces of the wood.  This helps with the reduction in cost since someone hasn’t spent time to surface any of the faces (fewer hand exchanges).  If you don’t have the tools at hand necessary to mill the lumber to be usable this is not a good option for you.  The final negative for this is sawyers are only able to saw up logs that are available, meaning, no fun colored woods from South America or Africa.  Sorry, but I am yet to see a maple tree that is purple throughout.   

The final option for sourcing lumber is kind of a smorgasbord.  This approach typically doesn’t obtain all the lumber you might need, but rather just add to your collection.  Many times if you go on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace and search for lumber(or old furniture that can be disassembled and utilized), you will see listings where someone might be getting rid of leftover lumber from a project or even scraps they had sitting around in their shop for years.  Depending on your need, you can land some beautiful scraps for your projects.  The beauty of this lumber sourcing approach is that it’s usually cheap or free.  Most of the time you are just taking something off someone’s hands who no longer wants it.  It’s a win for both seller and buyer.  Another great benefit of this approach is in a way it is kind of recycling.  If you are not picky with your needs or don’t need large pieces, you will likely be taking someone else’s scraps that would likely have just ended up in the garbage or fire pit.  While wood is totally biodegradable, why not try to keep less out of the landfill if possible? Finally, it’s kind of fun if you have the “picker” mentality.  Who doesn’t like going to a garage sale in hopes of landing that one hidden gem of a find?  The same can be said for digging through someone’s cutoffs and scraps.  That being said, there are the inevitable downside to this form of lumber acquisition.  The first and obvious being you likely won’t be able to source exactly what you need for a larger project.  You might, but don’t count on it.  Sometimes cutoffs are cutoffs for a reason.  There might have been a gnarly knot smack in the middle of the cutoff piece or a pretty bad check (splitting of the end of the board caused from the internal stresses that occur when a board dries).  But some artists seek these flaws and make them the center of attention for their pieces.  The final negative to this approach is that it can take extra time searching, especially if you are digging through a lot of scraps.  Depending on your drive and your scouring, you may have spent hours only to come home with a tiny cutoff.  Of course everyone’s time is valued differently but this is certainly something that should be considered. 

There you have, some of the main ways in which a person sources lumber.  As I mentioned before, I typically source all of my lumber from a hardwood dealer.  The convenience and selection properties far outweigh the negative aspects.  Of course, there is nothing saying you can be your own lumber provider if you happen to have trees on your property.  You don’t need big expensive tools to turn a felled tree or large branch into something beautiful.  No woodworking history book I have read mentioned anything about chainsaws or power tools.