I'm going to have a lot of wood for sale (Central California)

Hey Mark,
I saw that auction and was tempted.
Congrats.
I might be interested in some of the wood.
How do you price out your cnc work? And, what dimensions can it do?
Thanks,
Dolly Spragins

-- Dolly Spragins, CA, http://www.dollyspragins.com

Dolly right now I’m still learning on the CNC machine so for prices I’ll tell you I’ll work for really cheap. Tell me what you want and I’ll tell you how much. Once I’ve done a few jobs and figure out how long teh work takes and what the market will support then I can set some type of a fixed price.

The work bed on the machine is 18” by 58”. It will do round work up to 9” in diameter and 58” long. There are techniques that can be used to make bigger items. For example if you wanted a sign bigger than 18” by 58” the software will cut it into tiles and you make one piece at a time and then attach all the pieces together.

The wood should start arriving today so I’ll put some photos up and figure out exactly what I have.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

I was over looking at the wood today and I was told that the wood that I thought was Black Cherry is actually Jatoba otherwise known as Brazallian Cherry. Also a large stack (Probably 1000 board feet) that I thought was Yellow Pine, is actually Ash. The Yellow pine is only a couple of levels thick and the rest under it was all Ash.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

This is the wood, at least the front stacks that you can see. There are equal size stacks behind these two. All of the darker wood in the front stack on the left is Walnut. There is also more Walnut in the back.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

This is the wood that I’m told is Jatoba. I’ll still have to confirm that as this info came from another woodworker that was there picking up the wood he bought. I’m not familiar with Jatoba at all.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

Here is another stack that is labeled as “BC” under species just like the above, but on this one you can see they actually wrote “Jatoba” right on the label. So I guess it is Jatoba.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

The bottom two layers on this pile are White Oak. The next two thick layers (Labeled with green paint as HY) are the Hickory. The next layer that is falling apart is White Pine. The darker wood on top is Walnut.

All of the wood is currently labeled with tags just like in the above photo. I’ve taken pictures of all the tags as the wood is being moved to my shop on a open bed truck so I don’t know if the tags will survive the journey.

Most of the wood is 4/4 FAS. According to my guide on wood from the American Hardwood Export Council, “The FAS grade, which derives from an original grade “First And Seconds”, will provide the user with long, clear cuttings – best suited for high quality furniture, interior joinery and solid wood mouldings.” So this wood is all the highest grade wood. In fact it was all destined to be cut up and turned into moulding before the company went out of business.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

And, I am on the other coast

-- Norman

But Norman you guys on the other coast have all the good wood prices anyway! I think 90% of the hardwood we can even get in California is coming from the east coast and we have to pay a premium for that shipping.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

I wish that I was about a thousand miles closer to you. I’m in NM where we hardly have any wood…... :(

-- Art

I will be following this post as you get it home and sort through it. I often drive down to Sacramento for wood. Hopefully you don’t need all of the Walnut! I like BC for cutting boards. It sure is hard. There are other web sites to try. Woodnet forums, woodbarter are a few.

-- Robert, so much inspiration here, and so little time!

Robert, part of me wants to keep all of this! But it’s way more wood that I can use in a decade and I used to keep my motorhome in my shop but I had to move it out to make room for the wood. So my plan is once I get it I’m going to select out what I want to keep and put it on my lumber racks in the back of the shop. Everything else I’ll get rid of. I’d like to get the motohome back indoors.

I can’t imagine I’ll keep all of that walnut. I had just bought $700 worth of walnut from my regular supplier and I still have all of it on the rack. I don’t know if I should admit exactly what I paid for all this wood, but lets just say it was only a fraction of what you could buy it for at a lumber yard. I would imagine it was only a fraction of what a lumber yard could even buy it for. I’m not looking to get rich trying to sell the stuff and I’m still figuring out some prices, but it will be cheaper than wholesale prices at the local places around here. Heck I could sell it at 50% of the wholesale price and still make some money on the deal.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

I should also add that I am a licensed business so I have to charge California sales tax on all sales out of here.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

The wood is arriving at my shop. This is the stack of walnut, and I still have more walnut coming. Now that I have it at the shop and can get an idea of how much it is, I will be selling a lot of it. It’s way more than I could ever use.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

This stack is mostly Ash with the middle section being Yellow Pine. That bottom stack of Ash os over 1000 board feet, FAS 4/4 rough sawn. It’s all 16’ long with widths between 8” and 12”.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com