Shannon's Lumber Industry Update

Are you considering starting your own lumber business? Or maybe you just wondered about how they work as a business model. This is a big topic but on this episode I take a shallow dive into some of the things to consider when you start selling your lumber to others.

I'm cleaning out some of my inbox this time and answering a question about the difference between green and air dried timbers. Talking about the checking inherent in larger timbers, and planting your own grove of trees. Plus I delve into the possible replacements for Western Red Cedar.

Let's talk about Poplar...or Tulip Poplar...or Eastern Cottonwood...or White Poplar or Yellow Poplar or Quaking Aspen or (gasp) Tulipwood. No they are not all the same tree. Or are they? Today I talk about the Populus genus and that upstart wannabe from the Magnolia family Liriodendron tulipfera.

Let's talk about wood identification and the process I go through. In this episode I give you a few resources to use but mostly a hierarchy of things to follow to get you very close to a positive ID of that unknown wood in your hand. Its all in the end grain. BTW the featured image for this episode exhibits diffusely arranged, large pores that are both solitary but in radial pairs. Vasicentric or...

This week I have Tommaso Valeriano join me to talk about the ways in which he has acquired nearly 30,000 board feet of lumber without ever visiting a lumber yard. Mostly his success has come through auctions and he shares some of his tips for finding the auctions and getting boards without breaking the bank.

I talk with Caleb Darnell of CD's Trees. They are a tree removal service out of Hot Springs, AR that has gotten into sawing and drying lumber and even custom woodworking projects using the trees they fell for customers.

Russian Birch plywood prices are tripled at minimum. Moreover even paying the higher price isn't something the general market wants to do and support the Russian economy. So what are the alternatives? There aren't very many to be honest and this episode gets into why that is. Plus I answer a bunch of your questions on tree growth rate, why wood is anisotropic, and what to do with Buckeye.

On this episode I have Ben and Paul from Cambium Carbon join me to talk about urban logging and repurposing a waste stream into a new circular industry. Saving the planet, one urban log at a time with the company Cambium Carbon. A disrupter to the lumber industry possibly? Maybe a whole new way of thinking of things.

In my predictions for 2022 I stated that there would be more focus on domestic lumber. Today I dive deeper into that and look at how local timbers present opportunities and challenges to the commercial lumber market as well as the individual hobbyist woodworker.

On this episode Alex Adams joins me to talk about choosing wood for his upcoming workbench projects. He wants to incorporate as many locally sourced woods as he can in order to gain experience with many species that he could use in future furniture projects. We discuss the technical demands and the species in his neck of the woods and pair them together for a skill building FrankenBench!

So you've decided to saw your own boards from a log. In this episode I discuss how and where you might get a log when first starting out and then the care and feeding of that log before you begin to saw it.

Today I look at Chinese Mahogany (Toona sinensis) and use my philosophy of technical numbers to identify how this unusual species would work when compared to more commonly known woods. This is the same process I have spoken about in the past but I'm going from abstract to specific this time and hope it helps to show how anyone can learn more about any species in the world this way.

Silviculture is essentially the farming of trees. But it pays attention not just to the forest and the most sustainable way to harvest it but also the surrounding ecology. The system of cutting used can effect all the flora and fauna in an around the concession and the silviculturalist must be able to pivot and adapt their system in response to all of these factors.

I talk a lot about understanding the technical properties of wood in order to choose the right species for the project at hand. On this episode I want to share with you a case study of a great customer who had some very specific, albeit mysterious, demands for a project and how I was able to help him find the right wood for the job.

As we draw to the end of 2021 I'm going to make some predictions about where the lumber industry is heading in 2022. Plus I answer some questions about the SAB grade, Quartersawing practices, and those finger jointed 2x4s you may have seen on the shelves.

Happy Thanksgiving here in the US and today I will talk about one of the first lumber industry concessions in North America. Yes that's right the Plymouth Company funded those Pilgrims and you better believe they wanted some lumber back in return.

On episode 63 I dig into the mail bag and talk about Knotty Pine, Paulownia, Old lumber and old veneers, and of course address a few more tone wood questions.

Buying specialty wood products can be really tough unless you have the buying power to purchase a lot of volume. The fact is that woods with specific uses like tone woods, or quartersawn cuts have some kind of industry driver behind them. Those industries responsible are often buying directly from the landowners and sawmills so that the supply of the specialty product rarely ever makes it to the g...

This is my most technical episode yet and it is my own personal Venn diagram of topics: music, physics, and wood! I dive deep into what makes a good tone wood for the specific type of instrument you want to build and what technical properties to consider. In the end there is a lot you just can't measure and therein lies the magic and artistry of making musical instruments from wood.

Softwoods. These woods get overlooked a lot because they are deemed not as durable or stable as hardwoods. In this episode is dive deep into the structure of softwoods. I start with a look at the botanical families and then look closely at the major players: Pines, Cedars, Cypress, Yew, Spruce, Fir, and some weirdos dating back to the dinosaurs. Plus I declare my softwood dark horse that everyone...

In this episode I talk about pressure treated lumber, define wood rot, discuss the Emerald Ash Borer, how to bleach wood, and finally delve into the term "full" and "scant" when it comes to lumber dimensions.

Today I'm taking about wood spalting and wood staining due to fungus, bugs, or the enzymes within the wood. All of the gooey goodness inside our woods can produce some cool results and in many cases they aren't fully understood by science.

Steaming lumber is done to change the color by blending more of the heartwood color into the sapwood. In this episode I talk about this process but do so by answering a whole bunch of semi related questions to build our understanding of the steaming process.

In this episode I discuss the seasonality of the lumber industry, mold on your drying boards, the varieties of Hickory, wood movement during the build, fishing lure woods, and woods we see every day but may not know about.

On this episode I'm revisiting lumber prices yet again as the craziness may be nearing an end. But I predict pricing will never return to pre COVID levels. It seems the Fed agrees with me too. Also on this show some Lacey Act changes, Pallet wood, equilibrium moisture content, White Oak, and matching veneer.