Cheap wood

[DiyNutJob]

What places have best price on wood? I don't need quality finish, and just want strong wood. Thanks.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Timber yards over DIY sheds any day of the week, just avoid some of the national chains like Travis Perkins, who seem to think that what they sell is gold plated (in reality if you have an account, and the item is on your discount list, they aren't bad, but getting an account means signing up for a few thousand pounds expenditure a year).

It helps if you know what you are asking for when you talk to these people, so rather than "strong wood" asking for "ex-4 x 2in rough sawn carcassing" or "3 x 2in C16 CLS" is generally a better bet. Some of the yards I know don't like dealing with DIYers. The other thing is volume - ordering £250 worth of timber will maybe get you a bit more discount than going in and buying a single plank. Similarly, some places can be super helpful if you offer them a cutting list for your project in terms of minimising waste and even cutting to length for you

 

[DiyNutJob]

Thanks for that. Even if I don't buy from them, I can use them for price reference. I can already see them being cheaper than DIY stores.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

The troulbe with all the yards though (as a dIYer) is that it's rarley ever priced in the yard.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

The troulbe with all the yards though (as a dIYer) is that it's rarley ever priced in the yard.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I deal with an independent merchant a few miles down the road from time to time. He holds a fair bit of construction section on site as well as a selection of sheet materials and treated stuff. His price list is on the wall in the office, but he generally discounts my orders as he knows I'm trade, but if a DIYer walks in with a trade-size order (i.e. £100 plus) he'll generally give them a bit of discount as well. Being a small yard he can cut to size, although he no longer does dimension planing. He has a panel saw and will sell smaller pieces of sheet stock cut to size, providing you supply him with a cut list in advance. He offers a delivery service, including on Saturday mornings, for a nominal fee, but order above about £500 and he'll generally deliver for free. His prices are above the larger merchants (he knows it), but below the local builders merchants and well below the DIY sheds whilst his quality is consistently good, all of which makes it worth buying from him.

There are still yards like that around, and it is well worth finding one of them, because cost is not always the be all and end all. Or am I just lcky to be living where I do?

 

[DiyNutJob]

The troulbe with all the yards though (as a dIYer) is that it's rarley ever priced in the yard.

I have checked a couple with websites. I would go with those prices even if they don't label them in the shop. When I buy stuff, I usually get the price and product details before I go to the shop. Walking around in circles looking for what I need would drive me crazy.

 

[DiyNutJob]

Do timber merchants cut wood for free? Also, how tolerant would they be at dealing with DIY-cutting in their car park or exterior premise?

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Do timber merchants cut wood for free? Also, how tolerant would they be at dealing with DIY-cutting in their car park or exterior premise?

That varies from yard to yard, and always has in my experience. If they cut it'll often be a case of the first cut or two are free, after that you pay 50p to £1 a cut (bear in mind that they need to have a machine, which takes up space, and that the saw man is supposed to be trained, so the service is costing them). It's always worth asking if they'll supply materials to a cut list. Outfits like Travis often won't cut (at least my most local one won't), so they'd just have to put up with me whipping my cordless saw out and doing a few cuts in the yard to get it inside the van LOL

It's worth noting that even a yard which offers a cutting service may not be able to cut for you if you just turn up - their staff may be otherwise occupied unloading a delivery or loading up their own truck for deliveries to customers (especially on a Saturday morning), so if you require cutting it's always best to ask them a day or maybe two before you need to take delivery. One place I use has both a beam saw and a CNC router and will CNC machine sheet material to order - if you supply a CAD drawing they are happier with that and it costs less to get the cutting done because they don't need to set-up the drawing in CAD. Another thing to note is that most decent yards don't like DIYers (or tradesmen for that matter) picking through their stock to get at the "best stuff" then leaving an unholy mess for them to tidy up, but equally they probably won't supply you with banana pine of licorice twist cedar, either (or will replace it if they do in error - BTW a bowed piece can be acceptable if the bow isn't too bad and you are doing lots of short pieces)

 

[DiyNutJob]

When you say they don't like this or that kind of people, what do they do, give people a funny look?

 

[opps]

That varies from yard to yard, and always has in my experience. If they cut it'll often be a case of the first cut or two are free, after that you pay 50p to £1 a cut (bear in mind that they need to have a machine, which takes up space, and that the saw man is supposed to be trained, so the service is costing them). It's always worth asking if they'll supply materials to a cut list. Outfits like Travis often won't cut (at least my most local one won't), so they'd just have to put up with me whipping my cordless saw out and doing a few cuts in the yard to get it inside the van LOL

It's worth noting that even a yard which offers a cutting service may not be able to cut for you if you just turn up - their staff may be otherwise occupied unloading a delivery or loading up their own truck for deliveries to customers (especially on a Saturday morning), so if you require cutting it's always best to ask them a day or maybe two before you need to take delivery. One place I use has both a beam saw and a CNC router and will CNC machine sheet material to order - if you supply a CAD drawing they are happier with that and it costs less to get the cutting done because they don't need to set-up the drawing in CAD. Another thing tio note is that most decent yards don't like DIYers (or tradesmen for that matter) picking through their stock to get at the "best stuff" then leaving an unholy mess for them to tidy up, but equally they probably won't supply you with banana pine of licorice twist cedar, either (or will replace it if they do in error - BTW a bowed piece can be acceptable if the bow isn't too bad and you are doing lots of short pieces)

I once went to selco with a customer to buy 4 sheets of MDF that needed to be cut on their wall saw. The sign said that they offer the first 2 cuts for free and that subsequent cuts would be 50p per cut (fair enough).

I gave the bloke the required dimensions and sheets of paper showing the cutting order. I watched in disbelief as he pulled out a tape measure and marked each measurement horizontally for the vertical cuts (one efter each other). Not only did he not take the blade thickness in to account but he used a 10mm chisel tip marker pen. Fortunately the sizes I gave him were nominal, but he didn't know that...

When we got to the till, they insisted that the first two cuts being free only applied to the whole order. I argued that was illogical because punters would walk in, get the two free cuts on one sheet, pay and walk back in and repeat the process. They pathetic response was that people would be bothered to do that. They also tried suggesting that every individual piece of MDF implied a single cut. They were too thick to appreciate that two cuts can result in 3 or 4 bits of MDF (if one of them was horizontal).

In the end the customer tried explaining that to them and they were so confused that we ended up with 3 or 4 free cuts per sheet.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

When you say they don't like this or that kind of people, what do they do, give people a funny look?

There are quite a few places these days which bar you from selecting your own stuff on the grounds of "health and safety", but I suspect it's more to stop the guys who will pull every piece out of the rack looking for the one perfect piece (then not replace any of the stuff they've hauled out). TBH this sort of behaviour afflicts yards selling hardwoods more than those selling softwoods. It is accepted in the trade that your timber will be picked off the stack "as it falls", which may mean accepting a couple of pieces out of, say 20 or so, which have defects. Normally this isn't a problem because (i) anyone in the trade expects a certain percentage of wastage which is factored into a job and (ii) even if there are defects in one or two pieces these can normally be used out of sight/as noggins/recut for smaller components/cut round, etc, but no tradesman wants to go into a yard and discover that the stack of, say, 1in oak boards has already been picked over multiple times and only poor quality boards remain - it's a total waste of time dealing with yards which allow this. So basically if you are given the option of selecting your own boards, don't hog all the best boards when you don't need them