Advice on buying cherry lumber please

[keith ouellette]

Some one in my area is selling about 50 bf of rough cherry it has been air drying for 3 yrs (he says) and he wants $150 for all of it
He has
4 at 1X10"X5.5'
6 at 1"X8"X5.5'
1 at 2"X8"X6'

I have not looked at it. Its about a 40min drive for me to get there and my local supplier sells rough cherry at $6.50 a bf.

compared to the local hard wood supplier it seems like a good buy. Right now I have no plans for a project in cherry but I also have no hard wood stored at all for anything, I just usually buy as I need.

Is this a good enough deal to buy and sit on till i want to build some end tables or not.
If it is what kind of things should I look for when I inspect the wood?

[Joshua Layne]

Having just paid over $6/bf for cherry, that seems like a good deal, BUT... I got to sort through a mammoth pile of lumber and hand-select each piece I wanted, where here you are taking what the seller has. If it is nice wood (free of defects: knots, worm holes, sugar scarring (unless you like that look in cherry - it is a bit rustic, but can be nice in some pieces)) and has either the figure or lack thereof that you are looking for, then I would buy it. If any of it is sapwood I would personally avoid it - I don't like cherry heartwood and sapwood mixed. Of course, I don't have the room to store an extra 150BF of anything, so I would probably suck it up and just buy what I need for each project.

HTH - I am not an expert on anything, much less rough lumber grading, but I have learned a few things the old fashioned way (the hard way)

Josh

[Terry Rogan]

I don't think that $5 a BF is a good enough "deal" to warrant driving all that way to get whatever the guy has.
I'd rather pay the going price and be able to pick through what I wanted.

[Larry Fox]

In my experience cherry can be very hit or miss and, for my $$, I like to pick the piles and look for those "certain" pieces.

[Keith Westfall]

I believe that works out to $3.00 per foot...

... but I was never really good at math!

[Drew Loehr]

Not a "great" deal.
Check it out. If you like the wood it is worth it. If it is checked, heavily warped, has bad grain and lots of sap wood, then I would certainly pass.

[Roger Bullock]

Cherry can be tricky to see what you will end up with in the rough if you don't know what to look for. That said, sometimes the seller might not know just how good or bad the wood he has for sale. I once had a hardwood retail shop and ran across all kinds of deal, some good and some bad.
One of my first questions to the seller would be "Where did it come from?" If it came from a fence row or a back yard it could be full of hidden metal. Look for dark to black stains, but sometimes you just cannot tell. 8" cherry without sap wood or center pith would have to come from a larger tree. Sometimes an inexperienced sawmill will try to cut wider boards from a tree that is to small which could lead to cupping.
Take a small hand plane with you and if he does not object, plane off the rough cut to see what is there, a damp rag will make the grain pop out.
You can also run into problems using air dried and kiln dried lumber in the same project.

[Kevin Barnett]

First thing...
Make sure his rough cut is at least 1&1/8" for smaller thickness and about 2.25" for the larger thickness. If so, proceed to the next paragraph. If not, walk away. You can get a better deal almost anywhere.

Second thing...
To me, these are shorts. From my perspective, they should be cheaper per bft than FAS. When I do the math, I come up with 43 bft... so about $3.46/bft (assuming a 1x10 is over 10" wide). That's not the best deal. If it's 40 minutes away and you have no immediate plans, I'd pass. If it's clear lumber, it's not a rip-off. It's just not a good deal.

[keith ouellette]

well it sounds like its not that great of a deal. If I contact him in a couple of days and he says he would except $100 (instead of $150) I'll go look at it.

This is why the creek is so great. At first It seemed like half price cherry was a no brainer but now I know there were some things I didn't think about.

Tanks for the advice.

[Prashun Patel]

Ask for pictures. Preferably closeups, but at least good enough resolution to see if there's a lot of sap, warp, or uneven thickness. It won't tell you whether it's good enough to buy, but it might tell you if it's bad enough NOT to.

I bought 50bf of some bad cherry for a song, and I gotta say, it wasn't worth the song. It won't plane properly without tearing out huge chunks. I ended up using it as a pallet for a compost bin!

[Roger Bullock]

Excellent point Kevin on checking the thickness. Thinner sawn lumber is a sure sign of someone running the saw mill that has no idea how to cut lumber. You can get by with a little thinner board with a band saw mill but 4/4 should still be at least 1 1/16 inch.

[Bob Winkler]

I won't buy any air-dried lumber anymore since I bought a huge load of air-dried maple that was filled with bugs. Every time I cut into a nice board, it's usually riddled with tracks and holes. It kills me.

Only KD lumber for me from now on. I don't mean to offend those who love air drying, but I can't go through that again.

Bob

[Terry Brogan]

I'm with Bob. If it was air-dried close to any other wood that was infested with powder-post beetles, for example, and you have any other wood stored in your garage or shop, you'll never see the end of them. Not worth it even if free.