Finding Wood on the Internet
How to find what you need?

There are plenty of resources out there...

By Steve Reznek

This started with a commission I received to make a [wooden] company logo .   The logo is more or less like a shield, a circle with something like an “S” running through the center.  The circle is orange and the “S” is red.  OK, where do you find an orange wood?  Well I started with eBay/crafts and Osage orange.  There were two types available on eBay - American and Argentinean. The blurb said that the American would lose color with time, but the Argentinean wouldn’t.  Perfect, no?  Well no; the available boards were not long enough.  The logo was to be between 20 and 22 inches in diameter.  Then I went to “woodfinder.com”.  (I’ll talk about this site a little later.)  There were three problems: the only stuff available was “American”, the boards were all less than 4/4, and it was expensive.

 When in doubt ask someone who knows, namely Will Hunt.  The answer was chakte viga.  And so Will told me both what kind of wood to use and how to find it.  The answer was “woodworkers source”. 

 A couple of warnings or disclaimers.  First, turners making segmented things are going to be far more interested in exotic lumber, than others.  Second, if you are looking to buy exotic lumber cheaply, forget it! And third, Charley and his friend with the mill have been my only source of “free” exotic wood.  Everyone should have a friend with a mill.

 Exotic wood sites are of one of two types.   Wood finder, and I guess things like it, are “phone books”.   They will direct you to companies that will (perhaps may is a better word) sell you what you want.  If you put in the type of wood you want, you get a list of vendor web sites.  The list is arranged by state.  Then you start going through the list to see what they have in the way of sizes and prices.  You can put in the type of wood, e.g. chakte viga, or pick from a list of things that includes such things as turning blocks, or logs or antique/salvaged wood.  I have found “http://woodfinder.com" to be very useful.  It is where I usually start.

 There is another thing that is like a “phone book”.  The site “http://woodcentral.com” has a message board.  You can ask such questions as, “Does anyone know a type of wood with a bright orange color and where you can get it?”  You then come back for the next few days and read the answers.  I prefer to use Will Hunt, but the message board works well.  A word of warning – it is possible to get hooked and start spending too much time answering other people’s questions.

 OK.  This brings us to last type of sight, the vendors.   They are extremely numerous; ain’t capitalism great.  Many of the vendors list their products both by type of wood in the form of boards and also by the “list of things” such as turning blocks, logs, burls, etc. At this point, my favorite vendor is “http://woodworkers source.com”.   They have three “real” stores in Arizona, but I have had no trouble ordering and shipping, other than cost of course.

 If you know the type of wood you want, you could just go to the home page and enter the name.  However if I am looking for boards, I use the site by first going to “woodworkerssource”, then clicking on “lumber”, then “exotic lumber”.   This gets you to page with four pictures of the globe – African, Latin American, Asia/Pacific and European woods.    When you click on one of globes you get pictures of the types of boards that are available.  There were 16 African, 38 Latin American and 11 Pacific types available.  African examples include things like sapele and shedua; Latin  chechen, monterillo and chakte viga; and Pacific eucalyptus and jarah.  How many of these have you heard of before?

 Click on one of the pictures and you get a description of the wood that includes how hard it is, how easy it is to machine, how it finishes and what it is usually used for.   Sometimes the pictures do not do justice to the wood.  The verbal descriptions can be better.  For example, the picture of chakte viga does not look too orange, but the description says it is very orange.  And it really is. 

 The site has a Q and A page, so you can either ask the vendor or post questions that others may answer.  I have only four more or less negative comments: 1) at least in one case the pictures might be truer, 2) they do not carry burls, 3) the only exotic figured lumber they show is eucalyptus and 4) the vast majority, but not all, of the lumber is only four quarters.  They do have thick turning blocks, most up to 12 quarter, but see the comment below.  Although not listed as figured lumber, they do have four types of figured maple – birdseye, curly, quilted and spalted. These are under “domestic”, rather than “exotic” lumber.

 Oh yes, there is one other big issue.  One way to get past “sticker shock” is to look at some of the other vendor sights.  Look at enough of them and “woodworkers source” starts to look reasonable.

There are plenty of other sites.  For example when you as “woodfinder”” for burls, you get fifty vendor sites to look at.  So find your own favorite site, or perhaps just stick with your chainsaw and “freewood”.

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