Thread: Furniture grade Pine

It depends on which pine. The Bunning's pine is probably Radiata.

Not strictly a pine, I guess, but Oregon (Douglas Fir), which is a conifer, is a wonderful timber, readily available if you shop around.

In sailing ship days, the ships that came to Australia to collect the grain and wool often came ballasted with timber from North America or Europe, often pine, but rarely Radiata. A lot of that pine found its way into the building industry and is turning up in salvage yards.

Go check your local salvage yards to see what they have. If you are lucky, they will have some Sugar Pine, Baltic Pine or some such.

I suggest that you look in the yellow pages for suppliers of furniture grade timber, rather than places like Bunnings which cater more for the DIY set which would use timber for rough carpentry rather than cabinetmaking.

Also the back of Aussie woodworking mags is a good place to find smaller suppliers that aren't in the yellowpages, try Australian Wood Review or Australian Woodworker.

You will pay a lot more than Bunnings prices though for clear straight pine, especially for 240x19 and 290x19. Try to come up to speed on the terminology that the suppliers use, for example from lowest quality to highest is merch, standard, select and clear grades (obviously with ascending difference in price as well).

You might want to reconsider the design of your bed by using narrower boards. Because of the way they're milled, wide boards tend to distort (bow/cup) over time. This is probably why you've seen a lot of bad bits at Bunnings - plus the way that Bunnings rack their timber is not conducive to keeping it straight.

Try doing a search on this board for "Melbourne Timber Suppliers", there's been a lot of discussion about this topic.


Cheers,


Justin.

Pine clears are very expensive.
The other way to do it is to go to somewhere like Tile Importers and buy twice as much (or more) timber than what you really need.

If you can afford it, work out the bunnies cost and spend that much on merch (or utility). (As long as you can get enough length between the defects in the timber).

Dock out the boards that you need from the long lengths, starting with your longest boards first then 2nd longest and so on.

For your 19mm boards just buy 290 x 19 and rip the daggy edges off to your desired board size.

Yes there is a lot of waste but the waste represents a large cost saving plus you also end up with spare timber for the next project.

Head out on Liverpool rd just north of Mountain Hwy and there's a good timber yard up on the left before you get to Canterbury Rd. There's also a big pine place in Lysterfield rd Ferntree Gully. Almost opposite St Joseph's College and the old Tupperware factory near the Glenfern Rd roundabout.

The Pine Centre in Bakers Rd Nth Coburg used to be quite good but I have not been there for some time. They might be worth a phone call.