Sourcing hardwood offcuts for joinery practise

[8Tons]

Just come back from the woodyard, bought a 3 metre plank of beech and a 2.5 metre plank of walnut.

american black walnut has certainly gone up.
Its now at 3300 euro a cubic metre.
Superior steamed beech is dirt cheap at 700 euro a cubic metre.
The VAT on the walnut was more than the cost of the beech plank :shock: :shock:

Hello sunnybob,

New member, joined today, I have a couple of questions for you, if you don't mind.
Despite what my profile says I'm in Cyprus for the foreseeable future!
Can you tell me which woodyard you're referring to?

I know exactly what you mean about the hardwood off cuts, I've been hunting in the log pile and have plenty of almond, always twisted, and lemon wood also. I've managed to make a few very, small , boards from both.
I'm particularly interested in the qualities of the lemon wood, does it hold up over a period of time?
The reason I ask is, a friend of mine had some lemon wood logs for burning, he didn't use them all over the winter, by spring some of these logs had dried out completely and were as light as balsa wood.
If you have any other tips about the fire wood logs we get here and also any tips you can pass on about woodworking in this climate, I'd be all ears.
I'm halfway between Limassol and Troodos !

 

[sunnybob]

Sorry to say, but I cant help you on any of the native woods :roll:
I dont have the patience to chop and saw and wait 2 years for it to dry out. :shock:
I dont have a lathe so no turning, and I dont have a fireplace so dont even burn the stuff (I support two old boys with kindling wood with my offcuts)

I'm in famagusta district, inland near the border (I'm southern side though despite what TNT keep saying (hammer) (hammer)
I buy walnut, bubinga, maple, beech, zebrano, iroku etc. from a couple sources. The best one with a huge selection of hardwoods is in Paralimni, which is a 100 kms from you, so youll have to wait till next week when travel restrictions are relaxed. =D> .
Theres a big one in Larnaca, but it doesnt have the range that the other one does, mostly beech and sapele and similar.

Whats your reasons for living here? Military? Troodos is the clue :shock: :lol:
Theres a private message link in your control panel if you dont want the world to know.

When you decide its safe to do so, let me know if you come this way and we can socially distance ourselves over a beer 8) 8)
Bit warm innit? 8) got 32c inside the house with the shades down, and 36 outside. Thats usually august temps. :lol: :lol: 8) 8)
Of course up where you are youre a couple degrees cooler.

 

[8Tons]

Not been a member long enough to use PM's.
I'm not military, I used to live and work here full time, but life got in the way and I had to go back to the UK.
I kept my house here, which I sold recently, to buy a very old village house, it's liveable but current events have put a stop to some of the things I'd like to be doing to it.
We were going to be here permanently within two years anyway, might be bringing that fowrward a bit.
Arrived here in early March, just before everything kicked off, we made the decision to stay here rather than go back to the UK, glad we did.
Yes it's stinking hot here, 39c apparently, no A/C and one of the ceiling fans just broke! #-o

I don't have many tools here at the moment, but I've been keeping myself busy, finished a crib board, made from some old garden furniture, iroko I think, and some other fire wood. Other stuff, a marking gauge, set aquare, centre finder, shooting board etc.
My main problems are, I don't have a work bench or a vice, which makes work holding interesting.
I've been using masking tape and superglue a lot!
Until last week the only saws I had were a blunt tenon saw and two of those tree lopping saws, which were surprisingly good, fortunately I did have two hand planes in my luggage!
Apart from a cordless drill the only other power tool I have is a really cheap router, I made a sled for this which has helped a lot.
I'm currently making what I suppose you'd call a segmented box out of shesham. I was given a large CD rack, I want to keep the larger boards, so I'm using all the little rails that held the CD's in place, gluing them together to make boards, it keeps me occupied. :lol:
Back in the UK I was nearing the final stages of my first guitar build, just had the final oil finish to apply and polish before I fitted the electronics and hardware! #-o

I notice you have motorbikes listed as an interest in your profile, what have you got?
Over here I've got a Yamaha FZ1N and a very old Yamaha GT50 that I've restored, used to have more bikes here but had to sell 'em when I went back to the UK.

 

[sunnybob]

PM you to save a complete hijack on this thread :roll: =D>

 

[8Tons]

Thanks!

 

[Deadeye]

PM you to save a complete hijack on this thread :roll: =D>

Phew! They got a room

 

[sunnybob]

Ahem... adjoining rooms, thank you very much =D> =D> 8) 8)

 

[D_W]

Just come back from the woodyard, bought a 3 metre plank of beech and a 2.5 metre plank of walnut.

american black walnut has certainly gone up.
Its now at 3300 euro a cubic metre.
Superior steamed beech is dirt cheap at 700 euro a cubic metre.
The VAT on the walnut was more than the cost of the beech plank :shock: :shock:

walnut is high here, too. Not sure what the cause is, google could probably solve that, but it's about $9 a board foot here for narrow boards. Not a whole lot of stuff around for any reasonable price in wide boards (walnut that is).

Pine and oak and commodity wood in wide boards are often sawn down here to make narrower boards that people want (1x8, 1x12 - even the rough sawn stuff) - opposite issue. $1 a board foot for clean lumber green, $2 dried for that stuff.

Beech isn't available here like it is there, though - I wish it was. most of it is burned - no organized market.

 

[D_W]

Two suggestions for the OP - the skip, as mentioned - often old pine furniture thrown out. Usually has finish on it and sometimes nails.

Or, as for common shorts from a lumber dealer or small sawyer. No knots and grain that's going down the board (no sense to frustrate yourself with complete trash that you can get with grain running out severely, etc) - you may get stuff for almost nothing.

Years ago, a steel building manufacturer here sold their dust and such to farmers, but had nothing to do with the odds and ends and put them out in a pile. All pine. Not uncommon to get free stuff there 2 feet long (up to 2x12s), but their insurer put a burr in their shorts about liability of people walking around in a waste wood pile and that was the end of that.

There's something here that's like playing in a band, though. You can practice all you want, but you'll get better at gigs if you get in the gigs right away. If there's something that can tolerate ugliness for shop hardware, start right off making things instead - you'll end up tackling things that you won't doing practice joints over and over. Try odd things, different ways of sawing, etc. Go slow and watch what's going on (it can be tempting to just rip joints out quickly when you're doing practice because it doesn't matter) and it won't be long before you can just do them at speed. Save the test wood for tools that have just been adjusted (freshly resharpened and set dovetail saws, etc).