Mail order wood?

[Jerome Hess]

I know, left myself open for a joke, or 2

ANyway, located in central florida. We have lots of wet, yellow knotty pine, otherwise not much available.

But I do notice that there seem to be 2 types of suppliers online.

1) they have GREAT looking wood at decent prices, but they are all cut for pen blanks
2) they have Great looking wood at DIAMOND prices and I need to sell a kidney

Anyone have an online supplier that they have used and gotten good consistent quality from over several purchaces?

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks

J

[David King]

Hi Jerome,

It would help us to know what you are hoping to build and what woods you are needing. A lot of the smaller luthery places specialize in just one or two species of wood. Also you might fill in your geographic location in your profile to reiterate where you are.

[Waddy Thomson]

As said, it depends on what you are looking for, but if you are willing to build with non-exotics, like Walnut and Cherry, there are some pretty good looking sets out there for not so much. Check out Hibdon Hardwoods. Their domestics are pretty reasonable. Here is a classical I build from a set of their standard Walnut. Something like a $60 set.

[Bob Howell]

I have bought a lot of wood over the internet and had great results. It is the only way to buy many types. But it is specialized. Butternut for chair seats has been sold by a guy in NH for years and another one in Wis. One place imports exotics from Mex. because of connections. Another Brazil. Now that I am looking for tone wood I see one guy lives out in the mountains and collects spruce. Most of the sites have a few pieces for guitar backs and sides.

Try woodfinder.com. I have used it in the past with good results. But if you are making instruments, look at the advertisers here. Many of these are small operations and are flush on day and out the next.

[Simon Magennis]

I buy almost all my wood from online tonewood suppliers. Mostly in Europe however.

From north america I have used RC Tonewood and Boltwood. Happy with both. I have also used two kits from StewMac. Also happy with that. Recently I have bought, or swapped, stuff from professional guitar makers here.

If you have storage space and know what you are doing, if is obviously going to be cheaper to buy billets and cut it yourself. But processing wood is time consuming and sometimes a billet will turn out to be mainly firewood.

[Daryl Kosinski]

You might want to look into a small local owner run sawmill. Most small mill operators love to talk and supply wood. Onetime I was looking for some quarter sawn spruce, at the time he didn't have any but took me over to a large log, handed me a marker and said "draw on the end how you want me to cut it". I did and a few weeks later he called and said your lumber is ready. I paid very little but had to buy the whole log worth.

[Bob Howell]

This morning I I looked for sycamore on woodfinders. Found it at a sawmill 40 miles north of me at a sawmill I had never heard of. Not cut up for guitars but I can resaw it.

Also, guitar sets are offered on ebay.

[Daryl Kosinski]

Bob if they have a band mill they may be willing to resaw it to your specs.