Buying Wood

Whoever thought that buying timber could be, a stressful experience?

I have the plans for our new bed, and the list of timber I need to build it, I thought compiling that was the hard part, but it isn\’t!  I spent most of last week, when the car was on the road (burst radiator hose, following day leaking Radiator, repair to chipped windscreen etc.), searching for furniture grade timber.

The mahogany I usually use, is construction grade, far too wet to use, it would bend and twist as it dried out. I went to most of the big stores, and they had some, but not all the required timber in dry pine, I then went to a Specialist Timber Merchant, and he explained that the cost of drying the timber here, made it very expensive, also, they cut the trees far younger, so the trunk is not that big, therefore most of their hardwood is sold as laminate boards, joined by cutting minute teeth at each end, but this detracts from the look. Even pine is sold as laminate boards 1.2mx3m  up to 1\” thick, however you can still get planks from the Company, although in limited sizes, unless you pay well over the odds.

I had thought of building the bed out of oak or teak, but don\’t like the idea of laminate boards, and to get the thicker pieces, I would have had to laminate the laminate, 🙂  so it looks as if I will have to make a couple of trips, buying from different suppliers. All being well that will start tomorrow.