Deal or No Deal $9/bd ft Maple Burl?
PheasantHunter
| Posted in Wood and Materials on
The local Windsor Plywood store just got in a pallet of figured maple. Some fiddle back, but mostly maple burl. Most pieces are 2′ long and 8-14″ wide. A store employee told me they plan to sort the pile and double the price in the near future. I don’t have a specific project for the wood, however, it isn’t every day I have a chance to buy burl locally. $9 a bd ft is the going local price for birds eye maple, keep in mind Great Falls, Montana is a long ways from the source.
Having said all that is $9 bd ft for maple burl a reasonable price? I looked on ebay but didn’t see any board that were similar.
Replies
I just checked on L.L. Johnson's website Charlotte, MI and it is $22a bdft for 4/4 premium birds eye maple and $18 for heavy curly maple. If you like it buy it.
PheasantHunter,
That's really hard for anyone to say objectively. To me it sounds like massive over pricing but I'm sitting on 1100 bd.ft. of burl/fiddleback I purchased for 10 cents a bd.ft. I also paid $1.65 a bd.ft. earlier for a little over over 400 bd.ft. so please take it from me that prices can and do vary all over the place..
Mind you I am about an hour away from a sawmill where I buy all my wood rough and green at the mill so I don't have any transportation charges, drying charges, sufacing charges. etc..
In addition I buy at sub wholesale from a sawmill that set's aside specialty wood like this for me because I pay them more than their normal buyers do! Yeh, wood that isn't straight grained and all white doesn't sell for anywhere near the price that perfect boring wood sells for..
I rescued 917 bd.ft. and 9 6x6x10' timbers that were all burl. The sawmill opened up an all burl giant log and saw that it wasn't going to "make Grade" and planned on chipping it!
When they do find a log or two that is all fiddleback or something special they don't have buyers will to pay the price for it and so it often used to go into the chipper since it won't make grade
The Maple I paid 10 cents for was just that sort of deal. They had carefully seperated out all the great stuff and tried to get a premium from their normal buyers for it.. It sat there for a whole year and turned black on them.. at which point they planned on running it thru the chipper untill I offered them a dime a bd.ft.!
These stories about your questionable purchases from the inbred/mentally challenged operators of this sawmill that don't realize that there is a woodworking market, are getting tiresome.
Sure, they were going to run fiddleback maple through the chipper, riiiiiight. A giant log that was all burl huh? And you say they didn't know it until they cut it open huh?
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