I’ll have to look at the email alerts to see if I can filter stuff a little more automatically. I currently look at two sections daily, my local “Tools” and “Materials”.
In Tools I’m looking for a replacement router for my router table right now, and I’m willing to wait ‘til the right deal comes up, so I just look at a search for “Router” regularly.
In Materials it’s a little tougher, because I’m looking for deals on hardwood (and, soon, probably some deals on fencing materials), but those searches are cluttered up with flooring, and sometimes buried in other products.
For instance, we got a bunch of Peruvian mahogany in the form of box beams. I had to develop a strategy for breaking them apart that let me get the nails out of them while destroying a minimal amount of wood, and the resulting wood varies in thickness and is genearlly under ¾” thick, but we’re making it work for baseboards and cabinet door panels.
The easier to use stuff is seconds from manufacturing processes or other construction. Here it helps to keep track of phone numbers. I’m finding that people become very helpful when you call for a second time and say “I’m the guy who bought …”, all of a sudden it’s “Sure, I can take a check from you” (rather than having to hit the bank to get cash because I’m spending more than I can get from the ATM per day) and “When would you like me to deliver it” (because 200bf of eastern maple just doesn’t transport well in a mid-sized sedan…).
It’s also worth noting that the people who are selling this from their own business processes often appreciate wood. Conversations about what you like and don’t like and why can get not only good information about the wood from people who are actually working with it, but discussions of what their production excesses are going to look like and when.
I mentioned that I was hoarding the first load of maple because I wanted to be sure we had enough to do the kitchen, and the seller said “I’ve almost always got a few tens of board feet lying around if you run up short”. Because we’d talked about what I wanted to use it for the first time, and since his customers are largely looking for straight clear stuff, he pulled aside the figured stuff and put that on top for me, so I’ve already got my drawer fronts all picked out.
I also recently picked up a bunch of Massaranduba (Brazilian Redwood), Ipé and Yellow Balau from the seconds pile of a local decking supply place, and the resulting conversation not only gave me a good education (although I don’t really need to know about the fire resistance relative to concrete of something I’m going to use for chairs [grin]), but a good feel for when to call them back and how to approach them if I need more of something specific.
The other hard part about Craigslist for lumber is that there are two kinds of sellers: Those who are selling off what to them is scrap (the folks I’m looking for), and those advertising commercial services. I’m generally looking for hardwoods in the $2/bf range, so after weeding out all of the surplus vinyl windows, paving slabs and other building materials and just looking for the hardwood, I’m still wading through the 80% selling flooring, 10% selling things like walnut slabs or specialty lumbers at retail prices (handy resources to have, but only when I decide I need that walnut slab tabletop), for the 10% selling bargain lumber.
-- Dan Lyke, Lagunitas California, http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke
