I too was hoping prices would fall back to normal. Considering the changes that will happen in January, I think its inevitable that many businesses will again be shut down and prices and availability of numerous goods will skyrocket or be not available. A band saw mill is looking better and better
Was just at the sawmill a couple days ago. The sawyer told me his buddy just ordered one. Nine month wait. I agree availability and price will not improve anytime soon. If ever.
Your ''close'' on the fire, here in the PNW, we lost a huge amount of prime timber, they think they can salvage log some of it, but, if the sap in the wood gets too hot, it'll split the wood dropping the price's on logs in a big way. There are 1oo's of thousands of acres of prime timber gone all around here. Its a shame, to say the least.
Pressure treated prices shot up first and then disappeared like toilet paper. Stick lumber and sheet product followed suit. There's been several threads here documenting increasing prices. Prices are leveling off and in some cases coming back down. Lumber prices shot up sky high in 2018, weren't too bad in 2019 and shot back up again in 2020. 2020 trend so far:
In addition to plant shut downs and hurricane season, plus fires, making lumber expensive and less available, there's also been a lot of rioting and she's have had to buy lumber, especially plywood to protect their businesses.
I had plans to build 2 large workbenches in my garage since January. I should have bought the wood then. I can't bite the bullet on 600 bucks in lumber now when I could have only spent 300. An 8 foot folding table for meat processing, and a sheet of plywood on saw horses for other things will work for now.
