Oak for furniture making

[Frode]

Where can you buy oak or other types of wood for crafting, for example, a dresser or bookshelves? Oak at the lumberyard costs an arm and a leg. Are there cheaper alternatives?

 

[Lagavulin]

Check with a local carpentry. They might offer the right thickness, cut, etc., at a significantly cheaper price. I doubt the lumber company has all the different dimensions commonly used by carpentries.

Lagavulin

PS Do you have any price information to post in the forum?

 

[JPW]

Depends a bit on where you live. In northern Skåne, there is a small local sawmill that might be able to help you: Mats Johansson (0435-53257). He often has a variety of wood types in stock, but lumber yard dry - the final drying you have to do yourself (I guess).

 

[John77]

If you have plenty of time, you can browse Blocket for people who want to get rid of their oaks, then you can surely get hold of good material and have it sawn at a low cost.

 

[Martin_Blomberg]

If you have plenty of time, you can browse Blocket for people looking to get rid of their oak trees. You can probably get good material and have it sawed at a low cost.

I wanted to do the same with some enormous birches on my property at the vacation house. The first sawmill asked: "Where did the birch grow? In the forest or on a property?" It turned out the sawmill didn't want to cut trees that had grown on a property due to the risk of nails embedded in the tree. These could break the teeth of their saw.

Anyway, I'm thinking along the same lines. I've started to consider if you can buy old solid wood furniture on Blocket to reuse the wood material.

 

[John77]

There may be people who have home sawmills like logosol or whatever they are called, an acquaintance of my dad has one of those, and when he orders birch firewood, he picks out extra thick fine logs that he saws for carpentry work. Such a mini sawmill uses a chainsaw and it's not as dangerous if you were to saw through a nail.

 

[johan77]

Where can you buy oak or other types of wood for crafting, e.g., a dresser or bookshelves? Oak at the lumber yard is really expensive. Are there cheaper alternatives?

Buy from a sawmill. The prices there aren't so bad. Then you have to dry the wood before planing/jointing it.

Woodworking shops usually aren't keen on selling pre-planed planks -- it's quite a lot of work but not much added value.

For my stereo bench project, I bought an oak countertop at Bauhaus. They are quite cheap, but it's a pity with finger-jointed boards.