Why is the UK Timber Yards Sooo messed up?

[xraymtb]

Plenty places sell those sizes, I've had quotes from Hudsons and Arbor for 4x4 softwood that was a lot less than you seem to be suggesting? And I'm not talking volume either.

 

[sitefive]

Plenty places sell those sizes, I've had quotes from Hudsons and Arbor for 4x4 softwood that was a lot less than you seem to be suggesting? And I'm not talking volume either.

Maybe you had just a general quote without asking if it's treated/untreated? I have an email from Arbor a week ago and all they had was treated fence posts as well..

hudsons- do you mean http://www.percyahudson.co.uk/ ? I have them on my list as called- but have been either eyewatering expensive,or again only treated fence posts.If I remember correctly they were the ones who asked £48 for a 3metre sawn 4x4 post.. lol

Where do you usually get timber from? :roll:

Think I will pick up a phone when I get a couple hours of free time and call up all the timber yards I can find Near Leeds as a last hope.

 

[xraymtb]

I usually get hardwoods from some tree surgeons I know North of the border or from Lanarkshire Hardwoods when I am up that way. Don't often buy anywhere else but tend to use Arbor if I do.

 

[artie]

.If I remember correctly they were the ones who asked £48 for a 3metre sawn 4x4 post.. lol

If you are talking about 3 by 3 sawn soft wood, You should be able to get all you want for around £1.50 per mtr.

I buy 150 by 38 ( 6 by 1 1/2) in modest quantities for less with no drama.

 

[sitefive]

.If I remember correctly they were the ones who asked £48 for a 3metre sawn 4x4 post.. lol

If you are talking about 3 by 3 sawn soft wood, You should be able to get all you want for around £1.50 per mtr.

I buy 150 by 38 ( 6 by 1 1/2) in modest quantities for less with no drama.

Honestly I think my whole area just sucks, I have seen places around london online which sells that stuff for below the £1.5/mtr for 3x3.
The only ''affordable'' softwood I can get here is super knotty CLS roofing stuff for exactly £300/cube and I get bad comments from the owners all the time that I pick out only the best stuff they got :| , and their best stuff isn't that good either -even after planing it all up you don't get exactly good timber anyway and the sizes they stock also are very limited #-o but that's the best place I have found after visiting myself at least 7-8 local places and having called everyone within 40miles.

 

[sitefive]

Stuff I picked up today, £300/cube for cls stuff, now tell me does the quality even looks OK to anyone here? Granted it will look much better after I plan it up again and won't be that bad after they are finished with finish but that's just pathetic after picking out the best boards they had from freshly delivered load, Others charge for that same stuff over £420+, if you want anything decent be ready to pony up £700/cube which is already Oak price not softwood's...

Gets so frustrating at times that I have to think twice again if I even want to continue my venture.

 

[YorkshireMartin]

The timber in the pic posted, at least the centre board, looks appalling to my inexperienced eyes. I doubt that is C16, looks like firewood to me. The ones marked as C16 do appear so, and not just from the stamp.

I can't find a yard around here that does 3x3 or 4x4 untreated either. But, they will happily machine it from a larger piece of stock to my specifications at no extra cost. I don't use that service as I do my own, but it's there.

Square section timber just doesn't seem to be a regular thing. I've absolutely no idea why, but there will be a reason.

I do know the problem you speak of as I've encountered it myself, but you seem to buy a lot more wood than I do. But surely, if you buy plenty, you can travel anywhere, establish a trading relationship with a good supplier and they will send you the boards you require. Their location doesn't really matter past the first order or so. Obviously it depends on your spend with them what price you get and the quality they select for you, but thats just the way it is, at least to start with.

Not saying it's right, but such things are not limited to this business sector, not by a long way.

 

[Chrispy]

Sitefive, seems to me that you are ringing round builders merchants and fencing suppliers, have you tried propper dedicated timber merchants?

 

[artie]

Sitefive, seems to me that you are ringing round builders merchants and fencing suppliers, have you tried propper dedicated timber merchants?

Or better still go direct to the Mill.

 

[Jacob]

....
Square section timber just doesn't seem to be a regular thing. I've absolutely no idea why, but there will be a reason.....

It is a regular thing you are just looking in the wrong places. Snows saw it specially - good enough for turning even and a lot of people keep those sizes for stair newels etc. If you go to a yard which does fence posts they'll try to sell you fence posts.
http://www.snowstimber.com/product-rang ... -softwood/

 

[Jacob]

Stuff I picked up today, £300/cube for cls stuff, now tell me does the quality even looks OK to anyone here? Granted it will look much better after I plan it up again and won't be that bad after they are finished with finish but that's just pathetic after picking out the best boards they had from freshly delivered load, Others charge for that same stuff over £420+, if you want anything decent be ready to pony up £700/cube which is already Oak price not softwood's...

Gets so frustrating at times that I have to think twice again if I even want to continue my venture.

That's the cheapest of the cheap structural timber used for joists and studs. What are you hoping to make with this rubbish? If it's not good enough buy better stuff

 

[Peter Sefton]

Stuff I picked up today, £300/cube for cls stuff, now tell me does the quality even looks OK to anyone here? Granted it will look much better after I plan it up again and won't be that bad after they are finished with finish but that's just pathetic after picking out the best boards they had from freshly delivered load, Others charge for that same stuff over £420+, if you want anything decent be ready to pony up £700/cube which is already Oak price not softwood's...

Gets so frustrating at times that I have to think twice again if I even want to continue my venture.

That's the cheapest of the cheap structural timber used for joists and studs. What are you hoping to make with this rubbish? If it's not good enough buy better stuff

As Jacob has said this is structural timber for the fabric of a building not joinery timber, Unsorted is what you require. PS I am not a softwood man and other will have a better knowledge than I, but I can recommend Snows Timber as well for all grades of softwood.

Cheers Peter

 

[bugbear]

... this is structural timber for the fabric of a building not joinery timber, Unsorted is what you require.

Exactly; Carpentry versus joinery.

BugBear

 

[Dave.L]

Hi sitefive,

This probably won't be enormously helpful, but you seem to be at a bit of a dead end so i thought i may aswell suggest it.
Have you tried Quay Timber? (I'm guessing you have) they're not particuarly cheap, but seem to be better than what you've been quoted so far. I bought some 3x3 dressed redwood off them a few months ago and seem to remember it being about £3 a metre.
Granted they treated me like a nuisance rather than a customer, but the wood was pretty decent and as I wasn't buying huge amounts I could absorb a slightly high price.

Just a thought,
Cheers,
Dave

 

[Jacob]

The problem with Snows and many good timber merchants is that they have minimum order sizes - £500 or a cubic metre frinstance. So you need to find a joinery firm who buy from Snows etc, or another large merchant such as Lathams who will look at smaller orders. Going to smaller builders merchants is a waste of time (except for CLS, mdf, chipboard etc) they don't keep good quality timber

 

[sitefive]

Hi sitefive,

This probably won't be enormously helpful, but you seem to be at a bit of a dead end so i thought i may aswell suggest it.
Have you tried Quay Timber? (I'm guessing you have) they're not particuarly cheap, but seem to be better than what you've been quoted so far. I bought some 3x3 dressed redwood off them a few months ago and seem to remember it being about £3 a metre.
Granted they treated me like a nuisance rather than a customer, but the wood was pretty decent and as I wasn't buying huge amounts I could absorb a slightly high price.

Just a thought,
Cheers,
Dave

tried them, not cheap at all, maybe if you just needed only a couple pieces and were super close to them.
5.4m lengths 70 x 70 £20.78
5.1m lengths 95 x 95 £49.38


Waiting for a quote from snows now, asked for a quote of 1.5cube of different sizes let's see what's up with them.
thanks for the suggestion.

 

[paulrockliffe]

I ran some ash through my calculator to work out the price per cube, it came out at £305 including VAT from the place I use. I'm in the same area as you and get all my wood from a sawmill near Penrith because I've struggled to find anything decent locally. Bit of a pain having to order everything over the phone and having to then find time to collect it, but it saves a fortune.

Mind you, looking at that stuff you've paid £300 for, you'd be better going to Travis Perkins or similar, their PAR is marginally better than that, but it's much cheaper!

 

[Jacob]

Hi sitefive,

This probably won't be enormously helpful, but you seem to be at a bit of a dead end so i thought i may aswell suggest it.
Have you tried Quay Timber? (I'm guessing you have) they're not particuarly cheap, but seem to be better than what you've been quoted so far. I bought some 3x3 dressed redwood off them a few months ago and seem to remember it being about £3 a metre.
Granted they treated me like a nuisance rather than a customer, but the wood was pretty decent and as I wasn't buying huge amounts I could absorb a slightly high price.

Just a thought,
Cheers,
Dave

tried them, not cheap at all, maybe if you just needed only a couple pieces and were super close to them.
5.4m lengths 70 x 70 £20.78
5.1m lengths 95 x 95 £49.38


Waiting for a quote from snows now, asked for a quote of 1.5cube of different sizes let's see what's up with them.
thanks for the suggestion.

I don't expect they'll be cheap but the last lot we got was top class. unsorted sawn 4x4, 2x9, 1 1/2 x 6, 5ths 1x7, etc and a load of skirting, architrave. I'll dig out the invoice and see what we paid.
They deliver only and take stuff from the top of pile by grade. No sorting through heaps which have been already sorted and the best stuff gone, which also saves hours of effing about. If stuff really doesn't come up to the grade they will give a discount or take it back if it's really bad. Never had to do this.

PS good quality swedish redwood is excellent stuff and a pleasure to work with. Nothing like CLS at all.
PPS nothing like the bad old days where I'd turn up to Arnold Lavers in my van and spend several hours digging through a stack of sh|te. The joke was that the same conspicuous propellor shaped lengths were there every week because nobody would give them a home. Sometimes you'd be lucky and a fresh pack of 5ths would yield a few pieces of higher grade, but it was a lot of work to get them.

 

[SlowSteve]

I'm going to agree with sitefive here - in general the wood situation in the UK is pretty awful in terms of price and quality, and the customer service that comes with it is dire as well.

I spend a fair bit of time for work in the US and India and to a lesser extent Canada. I like going for a wander around around the tool merchants and lumber yards when I am abroad.

In all the other countries there are far more lumber yards, offering a much higher selection, and relative price is lower in all of them. By that I mean that you can buy equivalent quality wood at a lower price.

From home depot - the US equivalent of B&Q - I can get SS grade Douglas fir for the same price as c16 pine in the UK - AND it has square edges so it doesn't need 12mm ripping of it to make it useable. Beech is considered a very fancy wood - especially in demand for benches ( there is a huge obsession with bench making happening at the moment in the US) and it's a lot more expensive than Maple. However - this hard to get, expensive wood is STILL cheaper than it is in the UK.

If I got to an actual dedicated lumber yard in either the US or Canada - i.e like an Arnold Lavar where they say "Ey!" a lot - and talk about UK prices they don't actually believe me. I.e it passes out of the realms of "Wow... thats expensive" and into "Thats insane"

The natural response is to think "well - a lot of our wood has to be shipped in..." - but, I'm looking at prices in Atlanta - that wood is getting hauled nearly 3000 miles from Canada by road - and its 4000 miles to the UK by boat, and the boat is a LOT cheaper.

In India, you will find a timber yard every mile or so in ANY of the larger towns or cities - there must be at least 300 alone in Mumbai. My local jewsons stocks 3 types of Plywood in a couple of different thicknesses. My local proper lumber yard stocks perhaps 6 and have a sulk if you won't take the top sheet. The average Mumbai place is stocking perhaps 12 or 15 types, and something like a 7 ply Marine Ply made from Sapele, rather than pine or Birch - is about what I'm paying for average quality WSB in the UK. And the UK is closer to the main sources of Sapele than India is!

The reality is that somewhere in the supply chain there is a huge price gouging going on or maybe there is gouging all the way through the chain. And I think that impacts the whole Woodworking "economy" - it makes woodworking much more expensive that it could be, and because of that reduces demand. Will less demand you get companies who can't stay in business, but rather than fixing their supply chains, they blame the customers for spending less.

Think of how much more additional demand there would for capentry and joinery in general if wood prices fell by half. What projects would you be making if you could buy the likes of oak and sapele for a similar price as your paying for decent pine at the moment. Thats not a crazy question - because it's what a lot of other countries are paying.

 

[Jacob]

......
From home depot - the US equivalent of B&Q - I can get SS grade Douglas fir for the same price as c16 pine in the UK.......

Not surprising. Douglas fir and CLS are both imported into UK from Canada. There is very little indigenous timber used in Britain.
One of many reasons for the decline of trad timber yards is property prices. Air drying timber takes up a lot of space and doesn't pay the rent. Our best and oldest local yard got sold for house building.