My wood fetish extends beyond firewood into wood slabs, furniture and really anything made with wood. Just thought I would post a couple links to these places in Ohio that sell a variety of cool wood slabs to the retail market for your viewing enjoyment. Makes me want to buy a chainsaw mill..... http://www.ohiowoodlands.com/Beech_c_11.html Keim Lumber is just a great place to visit if you ever get the chance. I can best describe it as a huge Amish combination Home Depot/Lumber yard and mill. They sell a lot of slabs to the Amish woodworkers in the area. http://www.keimlumber.com/burlsslabs
I think the pricing is high also, which is one of the reasons I posted this, (other than some cool wood). Hard to believe really. It's crazy high... Especially the wide slabs.... Keim had a huge Walnut tree (one tree) shipped from Missouri to be sawn and kiln dried all into slabs. I think they sell a lot of this stuff at these prices.
You would be surprised what walnut brings. I have a few I can cut and saw but not sure if they'll sell in my area for a price worth having it cut.
I have a fine woodworking background and have been through some very high-end specialty lumber showrooms in San Francisco and Ontario. Even by those standards, some of Keim's prices for large walnut slabs strike me as ridiculous. But, assuming they've been selling at such rates for a while, it must be working for them. Kiln drying large, thick slabs is tricky and time-consuming. Then they're machining the slabs flat and, I think, even running them through a wide-belt sander, which is a step further than I've seen before. It looks like a boutique sales environment, targeted at affluent consumers who can't see through the fuzz on rough-sawn lumber, rather than tradesmen.
Yeah its outrageous but not far from what I've seen on a lot of sites that sell slabs. Here's a local place to me http://www.primowoodslabs.com/Black-Walnut-Slabs_c2.htm
Yeah, I have to think they're posting some of those like lottery tickets. They probably won't sell, but if they do, woo-hoo! They're overstating the quality of the product, and $30+ per board foot is nutso.
To be fair, I think the economics of things like this can be surprising. When I was in woodworking school (about 15 years ago) one of my instructors was building a dining room table for a couple of doctors in SF. The initial ballpark price for just the table had been $20K, and it had gone up as the clients requested more and more fancy details. As the table approached completion, they commissioned a dozen hand-built chairs to go with it. It's amazing what some people can spend, but my instructor's clients were getting what they paid for -- many hundreds of hours of very skilled labor. These guys are asking people to pay for... what, exactly?
