lumber yards

[Sean Hughes]

I trust everyone is having a pleasant morning. Just a quick questions for those of you local to the surrounding area of Philly. Where do you get your lumber from? I live in Chester County and am curious where you all shop?

Thanks

[Erin Stringer]

I'm in Ohio so I don't have any suggestions for you directly. But I have had great luck with woodfinder.com. You just enter your zip code and what you are looking for and it comes back with all of the operations in your region.

[John Motzi]

Hi Sean,

I but my hardwoods at Hearne Hardwoods in Oxford, PA. They have a very nice selection and are friendly to work with. http://www.hearnehardwoods.com/

Recently I ordered a bunch of plywood, MDF, etc from Industrial Plywood in Reading and I was satisfied with their service. If you order $300 or more they deliver to our area. For me this is important for me because I don't have a truck nor a van. http://www.industrialplywood.com/

Let me know if you need more info.

John Motzi
Downingtown, PA

[Dev Emch]

This applies to everyone. Three suggestions.

1). Let your fingers to the walking thru the yellow pages. Find all the tree surgeons and tree guys who cut and trim locally. This is a landscape thing. Everytime you get spring snow or really bad weather, there will more juicey lumber. Hurricanes are great for providing new lumber. Some of the last cuban mahogony that went on the market was the result of hurricane damage. In every large city, there are always those who salvage hardwood lumber from this demographic. One caution however. You may wish to run a metal detector on your lumber. This is esp. true in civil war states and states where folks shoot into trees or pound nails into them etc. A buddy of mine in IA once cut the crotch out of a hardwood tree and saw sparks. Turns out that someone had left an empty can of beanies & winnies in a branch and the tree had grown around it leaving this hollow armpit void. He made an ashtray out of it. It was really cool as the can had been reformed into this knarlly old non disscript void. I know one place in Denver where you can buy a pickup full of hardwood logs for a fairly cheap price. Sold as firewood. I have seen american sycamore, walnut, white and red oak as well as elm and poplar. I avoid elm. Not worth the hassles!

2). Call up woodmizer's customer referral service and ask if anyone locally saws for hire. Most woodmizer owners who saw for hire are also in the Mom & Pop lumber business or know someone who is. These guys usually know about unique opportunities. For example, when they widen roads in areas where there are lots of white oak trees. Guess what, now you have the state throwing out nice white oak lumber. Not worth while for some large furniture company or huge hardwood company, but for the part timer who uses the wood sawing business to support his hobby, its perfect.

3). The new england states including PA are loaded full of these tiny part time businesses and most of them are in the hardwood business. Not much money in dealing with pine and softwoods as your competing with the borgs now.

It is to your best interest to find these guys in your local or not so local area. Often, its these guys who are the first to come across that rare log find and can offer you excellent opportunities on figure or unsual woods. A while back, lightening killed off this very old sycamore in the middle of Denver near the old country club. The executive types wanted it hauled away as it was an eye sore. Fair enough. One of the sawers got to double dip on this one! He got paid a nice chunk of cash to haul away the remains of this tree and stump grind the stump. Later, he put the two main saw logs thru the woodmizer. He quarter sawed the logs. I did not know this but did you guys know that american sycamore is related to the white oak? I was blown away at the nice flecking. It was a dense and lovely fleck but amercian sycamore is more tight grained than white oak. So you have a board that looks like a cross between maple and q-sawn white oak. Needless to say, these boards did *NOT* stay in his tiny little display room for very long! Right now, some of my rough pine comes from a feller and his son who have a home made band saw mill. It uses two bicycle wheels to support the band and is run by a 5 HP single phase motor along with a pile of old salvaged parts including truck axles and what not. They are making a living but not enough to go out and buy a new woodmizer.

Good Luck in your Quest...

[Jim Becker]

Like John M, my favorite "candy store" for lumber is Hearne Hardwoods in Oxford...even though it's an hour and a half drive for me. While I do buy material locally from a small operator, when I want things special, I make the trip to Hearne. I may do that more often now that I've found out that my second cousin works there...hee hee

I will say that John's description of this place having a "nice selection" is quite an understatement! The selection is jaw-dropping.

[Sean Hughes]

thanks everyone.

I'll make a trip to Hearne's later this week.

[lou sansone]

I agree with dev. I have gone to the "big names" but found better value using the mom/pop mills. When I needed 16/4 pattern grade mahogany I had to use the big guy, but other than that I try to find the out of the way guy.
lou

[John Stevens]

Delaware County Supply in Boothwyn (off I95 at Chichester Ave near the DE border) has a wide variety of domestics, tropicals and sheet goods, and will special order other sheet goods from Fessenden Hall. (Edited to correct the name...I always call them "Del. Val." instead of "Del. Co." by mistake, whoops.)

[Alan Turner]

Sean,
Groff & Groff, in Quarryville, is my default hardwood yard. If htey don't hav eit, then I will shop Hearne's. Groff has primarily domestics as they do not import logs, to my knowledge. But if you are looking for a flitch of cherry, walnut, etc., they are well priced and quite friendly to deal with. It is about 40 minutes further than Hearne. Down Route 1 to 272, then North for about 15 miles, next to the Citgo station. Thaey have about 1M b.f. on hand, and taKe the wood from log to KD to final sale.

[Bill Antonacchio]

Hi Sean,

I second Alan's suggestion of Groff & Groff. Found them in FWW and have had them ship Maple and White Oak to me. Very happy with the wood, price and service.

Regards,
Bill

[Kevin Arceneaux]

Why do I feel lucky?

I live in a Parish (county to the rest of the US), with about 100,000 population, that has 3 Hardwood stores and 2 others that deal in cypress only. I also have 2 sawmills I can buy direct from that are less than a hour drive from the house. They both specialize in cypress, but have other wood, oak, ash , and poplar, available from time to time.