Thread: Cheap Timber for Begginer

The best finds out there are the free bits put out for hard rubbish collection in residential areas.
Lots of treated pine and recyclable furniture. Pallets are awkward, flimsy and full of nails.

V

Get to know your local tree loppers

Originally Posted by dai sensei

Get to know your local tree loppers

Still starting out so don't have the equipment (let alone the space) to mill timber... I don't even have a thicknesser/planer yet....

Hi Dibbers,

These posts pop up all the time, and may not be something you'll want to hear, but IMO working with cheap timber especially pallets is one sure way to make you hate wood working.

The most valuable asset you have is your time, as often when you make something with cheap materials is often you end up making it again, therefore costing twice as much (atleast) time and labour that what you should have, the old mantra of make it once make it last applies here.

Pallet wood appears to be all the rave these days, but depending on what you're planning on making it is definitely not a good alternative due to it being either treated, made of really soft junk wood to begin with and as others have mentioned is full of nails. So you end up scrapping most of the wood you took home due to it breaking apart when you try and remove nails.

Plus without a jointer and a thicknesser working with cheap is incrediably frustrating especially if you're remotely close to being a perfectionist. Wood found at the tip is often warped, bowed, embedded with all kinds of crap that ends up dulling your blades which cost significantly more than the timber. Not to mention if you're unlucky and you hit a nail you have bits of metal flying around your work area.

Wood working isn't a cheap past time and if you're serious start small and work your way up, alternatively sink a few grand into it (at a minimum) and don't look back.

However to answer your question, if you must go on the hunt for cheap timber. Gumtree, bulk rubbish collection, anyone doing some serious rennovations, rubbish tip. But as you say these comes down to how lucky you get. Shops that specialise in reclaimed lumber knows the value of good quality lumber and often are not that cheap.

Originally Posted by tonzeyd

Hi Dibbers,

These posts pop up all the time, and may not be something you'll want to hear, but IMO working with cheap timber especially pallets is one sure way to make you hate wood working.

The most valuable asset you have is your time, as often when you make something with cheap materials is often you end up making it again, therefore costing twice as much (atleast) time and labour that what you should have, the old mantra of make it once make it last applies here.

Pallet wood appears to be all the rave these days, but depending on what you're planning on making it is definitely not a good alternative due to it being either treated, made of really soft junk wood to begin with and as others have mentioned is full of nails. So you end up scrapping most of the wood you took home due to it breaking apart when you try and remove nails.

Plus without a jointer and a thicknesser working with cheap is incrediably frustrating especially if you're remotely close to being a perfectionist. Wood found at the tip is often warped, bowed, embedded with all kinds of crap that ends up dulling your blades which cost significantly more than the timber. Not to mention if you're unlucky and you hit a nail you have bits of metal flying around your work area.

Wood working isn't a cheap past time and if you're serious start small and work your way up, alternatively sink a few grand into it (at a minimum) and don't look back.

However to answer your question, if you must go on the hunt for cheap timber. Gumtree, bulk rubbish collection, anyone doing some serious rennovations, rubbish tip. But as you say these comes down to how lucky you get. Shops that specialise in reclaimed lumber knows the value of good quality lumber and often are not that cheap.

All fair points mate.

It was more a case of getting the basics down and making all of my rookie mistakes on cheap stuff and not ruining a nice (and expensive) piece of timber. I can't imagine a worse feeling than spending hundreds of dollars on some really nice timber and ruining it because I made a mistake with measurements, haven't perfected a technique.. I know mistakes will always happen, but i'm guessing you'll make a lot more when you start out.

I take your point on the pallet timber, a mate has said the same (re: nails etc). I guess i'll just knock up some stuff with MDF and/or ply till i'm confident in my plans/measurements and a few different joints.

appreciate the honesty though.

Mistakes always happen, the beauty i find with woodworking is when you do make a mistake you either find a creative way to fix the mistake or send the mistake to the scrap pile where it gets used in another project some time down the track. The advantage of buying timber from say Bunnings is when you do go and use the "scrap" pile you can easily go back to Bunnings and get more to finish the project. Not so easy with random bits of timber you collect along your woodworking journey.

Plus pine is cheap, soft therefore its easy to work with especially with hand tools and is plenty strong for most applications.

If you do work with MDF (or any kind of wood) make sure your dust extraction is up to the task, if you're unsure head over to the Dust extraction section, more than enough info there to keep you busy for a few years.

The suburb next to mine is mostly light industrial. I drove around to see who leaves pallets out. Took photos of their business signs with phone numbers. Then I phoned a few during the week to check it would be OK to take them. This was good because most are happy to be rid of them but some just stack them in the front to save space.
Eventually I had to hire a trailer to do a small job one weekend. So then I drove around this industrial area and got lots of pallets. Also got some a tiler didn't want from a building site. Plus from the tool hire center. Really there is no shortage of them.

I just aquired an old jointer and I'm saving up for a thicknesser.

The main problem I see with pallet wood is that after the time and energy of removing the nails you only have short lengths of timber between nail holes.
Still like you said, it's an option to do some basic beginner projects or shop projects on a limited budget.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

Learning on cheap timber is a bit of a trap. Unless you are practicing "timber straightening techniques" which you should learn how to do at some stage, the most important thing about any timber you are going to learn is that it be straight. If you try to learn on crooked timber, it's like learning to play musical instrument that is badly out of tune. The pine at Bunnings, or timber from salvage yards, is also not always straight so watch out for that. So straight timber is usually expensive. Timber can be straightened with a hand plane but it is a lot of work and one the first things you would need to learn is how to sharpen. This is why lots of folks end up buying planers and thicknessers.

One thing pallet wood is good for is practising techniques. Cutting out the planks between the bearers rather than trying to de-nail them gives you a pile of shorts to play with. Hit them first with a wire brush to knock off any grit and you now have some raw material to practice hand planing (though I recommend either having a second blade available ground as a scrub or a cheap plane used for just initial de-furring of timber). Build a bench hook and a shooting board from scraps of ply and you can practice cutting and squaring timber to specific dimensions. Start joining them together using a variety of methods such as spline joints, mitres, mortise & tenon, finger joints and of course dovetails in all their permutations.

I'm about to start teaching a work colleague some basic woodworking skills; one of the first things he'll be making is a "pallet mallet" with the head coming from one of the bearers and the handle cut from one of the slats.

I don't know what prices are like in Sydney for something like Tassie Oak/Vic Ash, but down here I can build a decent coffee table using 6x1" boards of roughsawn tassie oak for about 60-70bux worth of timber. It's only when you head up to the premium timbers where that same coffee table starts costing in excess of 160bux in materials.

Many years ago when I was in woodwork classes at school, Meranti was the timber of choice (cheap and readily available).
Bunnings have plenty of Meranti, and you will find it easy to use and finishes nicely.

regards
Keith

Thanks for all the tips guys.

I'll keep a look out for some pallets and see if i can grab those. I'm still setting up my garage (which is still very much in the "get rid of all the household junk" phase). It's only a single car garage unfortunately, and having only moved in relatively recently there's still a buch of cr@p i need to find a home for or throw out.

I figured i could use the pallet timber to make some smallish boxes to keep off cuts together as a starting point. And like chief mentioned, get some practice on some basic joins. At the moment they're propped up on any available wall space.. and with limited space i'll need to keep everything pretty organised.

I'm also looking forward to a bit of problem solving. In lieu of being able to find a flip saw, I'm going to try and design a stand to house a mini table saw (when i manage to buy one), and my Compound Mitre Saw... i want 1 stand to be compatible with both saws... with the table saw at a height to use my workbench as an outfeed table... that's going to be a tricky proposition, but i like a challenge.. I'll spitball ideas on here when i've got a basic concept... bit hard at the moment without the table saw... I need dimensions to start off with...

Bunnings - Picked up 6 pallets from my local in one of their own hired vans !!!! Had to hire a van for work (2 hours for $45) and saw all their discarded pallets stacked up outside the fence at their loading zone. All pine and probably best for practice pieces but lots of useful timber.

Sound out some of the European appliance sellers, some of them have timber skids in the packing for washing machines and dishwashers etc that contain nicer timber than your average pallet. Only suited for making small stuff, but I've seen some nice spruce and scots pine in the crates for Asko. Too good to see it thrown out.