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Now this is from Martin. He's a woodworker. I came across your article on my web page URL there. I
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found it very interesting and insightful. I'm a semi-retired serial technology entrepreneur based
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in Ottawa, Canada. I'm also a building stuff with wood enthusiast. You know, so am I. Lately I've
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been extending my search radius of smaller mills in attempt to find more affordable wood suppliers
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Well that's certainly reasonable. Wood can get pretty expensive especially if you're going for
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something other than you know standard basic softwoods. I'm certainly going to leverage the
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advice in your article for softwood. Do you have any similar tips for sourcing hardwoods? Well the
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article on softwoods that Martin is referring to has to do with my recommendation that construction
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grade lumber of the right kind normally sold for house frames actually is pretty good material for
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fine woodworking. Now when I say that to a group of woodworkers I usually run into some opposition
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They say oh you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what fine woodworking really is. But I can assure you that if you choose the boards correctly you can make some marvellous
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stuff out of construction grade lumber. There's some exceptional boards that just get sold for
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floor joists or whatever from lumber yards everywhere. Softwood for construction is not
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graded for quality in terms of furniture building. I mean it is graded but you know from a house
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framing point of view if you have a 16 foot long 2x10 and it's perfectly clear and knots and it's
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got some interesting grain in it nobody pays attention to that. Nobody's going to charge more
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for that board and those are the kind of boards that can turn into some really nice woodworking
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projects for you. You won't find any wood any cheaper than that and believe it or not contrary
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to popular wisdom the spruce pine and fir lumber that is sold for building frames here where I live
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takes a finish beautifully. I'm going to be going into more detail about this later in the show but
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Martin's particular question is about hardwoods which of course there's no such thing as construction
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grade hardwood. All house frames at least in my part of the world are made the softwood because
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it's a lot easier to work with and it's plenty strong but Martin lives in an area where there's
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a lot of forests around the city of Ottawa and I don't know the scene too well in that region but
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I can assure you and Martin that there will be small small sawmills around that are cutting
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lumber from local logs and some of that's going to be hardwood too. The mills are one of
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two types. There's a stationary mill where the logs are brought to the mill and then they're cut
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These are easier to find because they don't move around and they're pretty big and they look like
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a sawmill but then there's also portable sawmills which are almost always big band saws on a track
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and those mills go to the forest so someone will cut some lumber, some timber worthy of sawing
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into lumber, they'll drag it out to a clearing somewhere and then the guy with his portable
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band sawmill will come and start cutting up into boards. So how do you find these people? Stationary
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or traveling band sawmill. Well the internet's a great thing for that. When I was
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answering Martin's question by email I did a quick Google search for sawmills near Ottawa and that
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could be anywhere. Small sawmills near Louisville, Kentucky or small sawmills near Edmonton, Alberta
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It doesn't really matter and in most cases, every case I've ever seen, there's some listings that
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come up. So you need to connect with these people and you know make a deal on some boards. You're
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going to find that usually they're very very good to deal with. Certainly there's a handful of small
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small sawmills where I live and you get to know the people and they let you pick through
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their lumber pile. Just be sure to return the lumber into a nice pile when you're done. If you
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don't want to wear out, you're welcome. But you can get wood there that way for maybe half the price
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of retail. Now in most cases you're not getting kiln dried wood so the wood hasn't gone through
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some sort of a chamber, a heated chamber in order to dry it out faster. But I actually consider that
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a bonus because wood that's been air dried, so not kiln dried, is actually a lot nicer to work with
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It's less brittle, it planes better, it sands better. I really like it and there are plenty of easy ways
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to reduce the moisture content of your lumber so it works well for interior projects
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without having to use a drying kiln. So in fact the best lumber in the world for fine woodworking
