wood workers. where do you source your wood

Thinking about pottering in the garage with some wood working projects for the wetter/darker/colder days of the winter. So where do you source your wood for interesting wood work projects. Cant seem to find anywhere local other than the standard pine in horrible warped packs from B&Q. Anywhere online that delivers at reasonable prices?

Thanks in advance

surrey timbers does a good range and is good on the postal if you’re not close. https://www.surreytimbers.co.uk/

Timber is heavy and bulky so generally more cost effective to source locally. Where are you?

Mostly trees.

There is oxford wood recycling in Abingdon near Oxford. I know a hobby woodworker who uses them.

There is oxford wood recycling in Abingdon near Oxford

There are wood recycling places all over. The Bristol one is good for interesting bits of timber but you need to rummage for the right pieces (https://www.bwrp.org.uk/). I think you’ll struggle online. You’ll pick up odd bits on eBay but I suspect any specialist will be expensive and any general place won’t have interesting bits.

Another way is to find something interesting and use the wood from it. I’ve made a few things the legs and sides of old snooker tables. The wood is basically scrap as they get cut up for the slate. Pianos are similar, very little value.

Final place is skips. Often get pitch pine, occasionally something more interesting. Pretty sure they don’t do online delivery, though.

https://www.hardwoodoffcuts.co.uk/ if you’re near Essex.

Yandles have a good selection if you’re anywhere near Yeovil.

https://www.slhardwoods.co.uk/ do project packs and deliver if you’re just after some interesting stuff for smaller projects.

I have a couple of woodyards near me in Stoke who have pre-cut boards/planks/lengths and a tempting offcuts bin.
I have a big charity shop near too, amazing how little you need to pay for old tables and cupboards.

Old science lab benches and humanities dept cupboards.
A treasure trove of nice hardwoods 😆
Though with more new build schools around the pickings are getting slimmer as the years go on.

Old science lab benches and humanities dept cupboards.
A treasure trove of nice hardwoods

Often with the bonus olfactory nostalgia of scraping decades of chewing gum of the bottom face of board. I had to cut up some Iroko school changing room benches and for each one before I could put it through a machine I had to spend an hour or so pinging off bits of gum and releasing a little waft of flavour with each on.

Cutting up wardrobes and chests of drawers releases all sorts of odd smells – you can smell different detergents and perfumes from people’s clothes that the wood has absorbed.

As above local wood recycling projects are worth a try – some have more interested stock than others depending on how they come across their stock. For chunkier projects like garden furniture you can often get Scaffiold board which are just soft wood but are a good, solid mostly knot free – most places store them outdoors so you often have to dry them out for a bit. You need to be very vigilant for any nails or stones that have got into them in their working life though.

Lots of places will supply oak whisky barrels – most cheaply broken down into staves – for small projects the two straight ends of each stave can be nice bits of wood to work with  – takes a bit of work to regularise them though

Also maybe look for places selling reclaimed flooring  – old sports hall floors and the like  – which can be some nice bits of wood.

Cant seem to find anywhere local other than the standard pine in horrible warped packs from B&Q.

not in the same bit of the shop as their CLS and pine timber… often branches B&Q will have a little shelf of more crafty orientated hardwood boards with names like ‘waney edge furniture board’

Often with the bonus olfactory nostalgia of scraping decades of chewing gum of the bottom face of board. I had to cut up some Iroko school changing room benches and for each one before I could put it through a machine I had to spend an hour or so pinging off bits of gum and releasing a little waft of flavour with each on.

Very much so, don’t want the gum buggering up your thicknesser blade!

I got some lovely wood from a reclamation yard a few years back – really old, pine boards that had been used to store cheeses on.
Each board had round stains from the cheeses ingrained into the wood!
Looked really cool when made into a freestanding kitchen unit.

I tend to pull my wood at home, B&Q sounds like too much of an extravagance.

For **** around I find skips, old furniture and the bargain ends bit of merchants.

Unless you have a big project in mind, then buying hardwood timber to spec from a merchant is £££.

Hardwood suppliers, which in Glasgow is Timbmet. And I think they’ve other depots around the country.

But a problem is quality, as the best goes to the best customers. When ordering always ask for open ended lengths and over 7″ width or you’ll get skinny twisted boards*(* not called planks, the term is boards.)

For sheet material, single or double sided veneer its usually cheaper if you ask for customer returns, as they can be returned for minor colour differences, or the veneer has too many knots or such. Nowt wrong, but cheaper if you arent looking for anything particular :?

@dyna-ti any leads on furniture ply in the area?

Also worth thinking about other uses the wood you want may have. For example, I source hardwoods for longbows from things like decking boards (Ipe) but Oak would also be available, cross country ski blanks (Hickory) etc.

It’s also worth finding a local indipendant timber merchant and finding out who’s responsible for hardwood offcuts, I acquired a stash of Ash, Walnut, Oak, Maple and a few others for very little money as it was offcuts from larger contract work they’d done so they just wanted rid of it.

any leads on furniture ply in the area?

timbmet, lathams, some branches of Thornbridge.

Ta muchly, got a few projects in the planning stages but needed a source, will check them out.

By furniture ply do you mean furniture board(joined bits) ? I dont use that.(nowt wrong with it though)
Otherwise just from timbmet. Marine grade ply.

One thing I am wanting is a cheap source of bendy ply. Bit back I bought a vacuum laminating kit(bagpress) and its for a chair I’ve never got around to making. Need the core material and I dont want kerfed board.

I suppose it depends on the radius but I always find bendy ply too bendy. I prefer very thin regular ply, then laminate a couple of layers over the ribs. Holds its shape much better. I get my ply, bendy or otherwise from Sydenhams

There are plenty of online suppliers. I ordered but am still to recieve some par American oak from British hardwoods 3 weeks ago. It’s for some shelving, they ask you to say what is for so they can select something suitable. Shipping was £20 on top of £144.

I’m also about to use toolsandtimber to order some rough sawn ash. That’s to make my own axe handles, hence searching for the cheaper sawn stuff and ash. I’ve yet to confirm exactly what I need/ want so my basket has 3 different sizes of almost 3″*1 1/2″ in 2.4m lengths, totalling £58 and delivery another tenner.

Whitney Sawmills for probably peak artisan.

Otherwise, every man and his dog seems to have a chainsaw mill and selling boards on FB market place.

Or find a small independent mill, if they are anything like the one we use, they will have all sorts of interesting stuff laying about the yard left over from orders or awaiting a buyer.

By furniture ply do you mean furniture board(joined bits) ?

No I meant furniture grade birch ply, once I get a bit more confident I’d like to try the dyed stuff but that’s a long way off yet.

got a few projects in the planning stages but needed a source, will check them out.

If you’re checking out Lathams – a budget alternative to Birch ply – they stock a poplar ply by Grimica that is birch faced. Cheaper to experiment with (half the price and half the weight) The faces are indistinguishable from regular birch – the cut edges aren’t quite as neat and lovely as birch but has the same nice neat regular ply thicknesses and the tone of the polar core is very similar to the birch face.

I don’t think lathams deliver and Timbmet definitely don’t. Thornbridge does (theres a branch in Prestwick). Although they don’t regularly stock stuff like Birch… If I’m not in a hurry I get better prices if I ask MGM in prestwick to order stuff like birch in for me(which they’d usually get from Timbmet) than I do if I go to Timbmet directly

Non of these are places that will cut material to size for you so if you you’re not getting it delivered you’ll need a van to collect

From time to time the B&Q at Darnley has 18mm birch ply on the shelf – and they’ll cut to size

“There are plenty of online suppliers. I ordered but am still to recieve some par American oak from British hardwoods 3 weeks ago. It’s for some shelving, they ask you to say what is for so they can select something suitable. Shipping was £20 on top of £144.”

British Hardwoods are excellent!
In ten years of using them very regularly, monthly, for about ten years I only had to quibble about the quality of their timber twice, and even that was maybe one board in twenty.
They ain’t cheap, but they are bloody good!

That’s good to know, thanks.

Where are you located?

Any suggestions for southamopton? I know of one timberyard in town near the station, no idea on reputation or quality though