Thread: Firewood?

Hi
I agree, most of Bunning timber is absolute crap.
You have to pick through it with the hope of getting enough for your project.
I usualy go to Mitre 10 for timber.
I even had a trade card at Bunnies, but because I didnt spend enough they cancelled it, when I go to M10, they give me trade as a matter of course.
Cheers, Allan

The reason Bunnings dressed timber is crap is because one of the Forum members has already picked through the stack and taken the best. I stockpile timber well in advance of needing it becasue you have to pick only when new stock arrives. I have noticed that they do not get rid of the rest (firewood) so it stays on the shelf and more timber is not re-ordered because the stock numbers are still there.
Make a habit of dropping in regularly and checking for new stock so you can have first pick. I reject probably 9 out of 10 pieces and have got real good at sliding off the blue strapping without getting splinters.
I don't think the timber quality is going to get any better as the demand has outstripped the supply.
I am already thinking about smaller projects so I afford to keep up this hobby.

If you want decent timber, go to a decent timber yard. Even a crap timber yard will sell you better timber than Bunnings. You always get what you pay for. Bunnings are great to run into to get some screws, fittings or brand items. For things like timber, specialty places are the go.

Dan

their motto "price is just the beginning" how long has Bunnings been going? are we getting closer to the end? :confused:

what do you guys expect?

a quality chef is going to go and by his/hers produce at the BEST places. eg. not coles or woolys. same deal for woodworkers. please do go to bunnings/ mitre 10 or whatever and expect to get good stuff. its just run through a thicknesser basically. wood is one of the most unique mediums available, dont just limit yourself to what you can get 'cheap' at your local hardware shop.

also, if you buy a decent bit of timber, you are definatley going to treat it with much more recpect than a bit of crappy pine and it will show in the quality i your work. i guarantee it

When I want to purchase some timber, I should certainly be able to expect better from a company like Bunnings. After all, the Bunnings group was founded on timber milling in the south west of Western Australia. They made their name and grew on the back of the timber industry.

I'm old enough to remember the Bunnings of 30 plus years ago and they were certainly the premium timber merchants of the day. You wanted good timber....you went to Bunnings, at least in WA. Now they can't even produce good firewood. Very sad.

They've certainly forgotten their background. Come to think of it though, they're not really Bunnings anymore are they. They're just Wesfarmers using the Bunnings name.

Typical of huge conglomerates really....they buy up all the small quality businesses or force them out of the market, then do all their calculations on prices and margins and to hell with....er, what's that word now? QUALITY...that's it. Oh, and the other word is service. It's only lip service nowadays. All but the Bunnings name got swallowed up long ago.

Whew got that off my chest!

Looks like everyone is having the same experience.
It is true that people generally pick the eyes out of the timber when it arrives but this stack was new stock. I don't know much about the technical side of timber but I can spot the fact that this rubbish came from the very outside of the tree. It had deep sap trenches down one side which in many cases halved the useful width of the timber and many of the large knots had fallen out.
You can tell that the racks on which the timber is stored were not designed by a brain surgeon. The wider pine boards (140-280) stand vertically and are so tightly packed beside eachother that it is sometimes impossible to get your fingers in to grab a piece. Sometimes the only way I have been able to get a piece out to have a look is to wet my palm, place it against the plank and push in and up until I can get a grip on the bottom. Not easy with 3 metre planks. No wonder I almost always go home from buying timber at Bunnings with a cut somewhere on my hand.
I suppose it's one of the drawbacks of living in what is essentially a seaside resort. Wauchope and Kempsey are the nearest towns with timber merchants and the petrol makes the timber expensive. Damn this hobby is getting expensive. I guess I'm going to have to spend more time in the local recycling yard, sell a few more Telstra shares and get that jointer and thicknesser and buy some earmuffs for my neighbours.

Bunnings is owned by Wesfarmers which also owns 50% of Wespine Industries which has a world scale pine sawmill. So they probably can't send it back (to themselves)

You know what? I'm going to stick my neck right out here and say you guys are lucky you HAVE a Bunnings to complain about.

There's no Bunnings/Hardware House within half a day's drive of here. I heard there were plans to build one but apparently that's not going to happen now. We've got Mitre 10 and Thrifty Link. They both have their place but there's nothing like the scale and range of a Bunnings down here. Mitre 10 gives me the same rubbish service you get at Bunnings but without the range.

I wish I could walk into a hardware shop the size of a football field and usually find what I want (OK, a lot of the time it's out of stock, but at least it was in stock at some point in the store's history).

There's no price matching here, if you want city prices, go to the city.

I probably still wouldn't buy timber for furniture there but there's plenty I would buy, given the choice.

OK, half tongue in cheek, I hate the big chains as much as anyone, but at least you have the choice to walk in there or not.

Well I guess that that's one of the trade-offs you make when you move to the country.

Seriously though, I would have thought that there would be a lot of scope for buying good timber down your way.

They can't chip the lot of it surely?


Craig

So its official, paradise has no Bunnings.

Craig

I think your dart is closer to the bullseye. OK its fair enough to have a winge about the shortcomings of some suppliers, but I think many of us would like to see postings on who or which companies have good or cheap supplies or hopefully a combination of both. Although my interest is in the Perth area, I'm certain the good experiences of others will be of special interest to us all. If the good suppliers get increased support, and are told why when we visit them, that can only be good for us.

Cheers

We used to have a great place down here. They were a furniture maker and they stocked all sorts of stuff and didn't mind selling you small quantities. Bought a 600mm piece of 4x1/2 Rosewood off them once, they even resawed it from a 4x1. Sadly, they closed down due to lack of business.

There is now only one source in the area for hardwood and they're a sawmill and don't want to know you unless you're buying large quantities. Most of the woody types down here slab their own, but I can't wait 5 years for it to dry out. The local hardwood is nasty stuff to work with too, very curly grain.

Furniture grade wood, well I don't know anymore. The timber yards down here cater to the building industry, which means pine, oregon, ply etc. but nothing exotic. The local timber industry is heavily geared towards woodchips and plantation pine, I hate to say.

Nope, no Bunnings in Paradise. But there are plenty of tourists. Especially at the moment. Flies too.

Hey SilentC, I was looking at the NRMA accomodation directory and it lists Pambula as having a population of 765. I'm not surprised you don't have a bunnings. But despair not. Think of all the people in Sydney gasping for breathable air and sitting in endless traffic jams on their way to bunnings. When I go for fishing trips down the snowy it sometimes takes me 2 hours to get through Sydney. 2 hours will get you the 200ks to Batemans Bay. Take SWMBO on a romantic weekend and just as you pass Bunnies look surprised and say, "Just going to pop into Bunnies to see if they've got some stuff I need." Don't forget to order in all the goodies and put the roofracks or trailer on the car.
You really do live in gods country though. I used to spend a lot of time down there in Tathra and Bega, shooting, fishing, surfing and diving for abalone. And that was all usually in the same day.