Major score of wood

It all started when a fellow cabinetmaker told me about a local door company that had gone out of business, and was auctioning off their shop. On one hand, I've been seeing a lot of that, and it makes me sad. But the other side of the coin is that it does make the market tighten up a bit, with less businesses competing for the few construction dollars that are out there. Whatever. All I know is that I scored a major amount of wood, for a very nice price.

If you've never been to an auction, or bid on something online, I'm here to tell you that some amazing bargains can be had. I know a fellow who bought a load of white oak for $25. Well, not just a load, two semi trailers full of white oak. His biggest problem was where to store everything, since it was in sixteen foot lengths. So bargains can be found at auctions, no doubt.

Back to the local company selling everything. Honestly, all I was looking for was a dust collector.


But I noticed that they had some lumber up for bidding. Since I opened my woodworking school about three weeks ago, I've been looking for a good assortment of wood.

Be careful what you wish for.

It started out with me winning four of the auctions for pallets of wood. Now when I looked at the pictures and read the descriptions, I didn't really have a clear picture of what each "lot" contained. It just said "hardwood" but didn't mention the amount of wood included.

It started off with a van full of it.


I started stacking it neatly, trying to sort it by specie.


But the shelves quickly filled and I had to start new piles on the floor.


Every new stack revealed some gorgeous boards. Notice the 16" wide boards of mahogany above. The pile below contains some 2x10s and 2x12s of mahogany, but there are some huge pieces that I can't identify. Bubinga? Teak? Rosewood?


Below is a very nice stack of red oak, which I used to love. But compared to some of the other gems in this lot, it's rather boring.


And I have no idea what I'm going to do with this stack of softwood, most of it is a gorgeous vertical grain douglas fir. This stuff is really pretty, but a little thin for my taste.


All this wood ended up filling my van three times, and my buddy Phil's truck (which is huge) took the balance I'm starting to run out of room, but at least it's somewhat sorted.


Now, I'm pretty good at wood identification, but even I was having trouble figuring out what some of the wood was. Luckily, some of it was labeled.


Even though they botched the spelling, I'm glad this board was labeled. There's no way I would have guessed this one.


Finally, all the wood is unloaded.


There are piles everywhere. Luckily, I have someone coming by over the weekend to help me get this organized.


About half of this load is longer pieces, so I'm sure I'll be building some very cool pieces in the coming years. But there are some incredible "shorts", perfect for using in the projects that we make at the school.

Now if I can just figure out what to make with that pile of softwood...