Lumber by the pound?

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Here is an ad I came across:

“LIVING EDGE OAK, CHERRY SLABS UP TO 3” THICK, 8’ LONG, 18" WIDE. $1 PER POUND."

Has anyone ever heard of selling lumber this way? If it isn’t kiln dried, it could be pretty costly, especially at 3" thick. It would take a number of years to air dry it sufficiently. What are your thoughts?

L/W

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Benjamin Franklin

Hi L/W,
I have had the experience but it was a little different. When I bought sawn veneer in Paris, most of it, although unexplainable not all of it, was sold by the kilogram. I suspect that the reason was that it was very valuable and with irregular shaped pieces area or volume measures would be difficult. Most were in the $130 – $195 range per kilo.
Raw slabs…… you’d have to go and look at what you were buying, weigh it, get the price and decide if it looked worth it to you. :-)

The early bird gets the worm but its the second mouse that gets the cheese.

I wonder if they sell cheese by the board foot.
Maybe it’s a European thing…

Ellen

Ebony and other rare lumber short are sold sometimes by the pound. I saw that several times online and locally. I usually avoid those as they tend to be very expensive as they are, most of the time, pretty dense heavy wood.

Abbas, Castro Valley, CA

It would sure make it hard to compare prices. Sounds calculating to me, but it doesn’t hurt to have a look.

Mike, an American living in Norway

I found a few sellers here in Britain that measure the wood in metric and sell it by the cubic foot….bloody annoying.

-- Alec (Friends call me Wolf, no idea why)

This was a Portage, Wisconsin seller. I’ve seen small off-cuts sold by the pound, but not large slabs. Paul’s comment about irregular-shaped pieces got me to thinking that maybe they’ve priced it that way because the “living edge” (I would refer to it as live edge) is so wavy that they felt it was too difficult to calculate board feet.

According to Paul’s per kilo prices, this is a real steal!

Ellen, I’ll have to see if we can get a better deal on cheese by the board foot! LOL

I understand that sometimes paper mills buy by the ton rather than by the cord to avoid paying too much for punky, rotting wood. I would think that could cause the mill to get “soaked” (pay too much) when the wood has been sitting in the rain.

Thanks for all your input.

L/W

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Benjamin Franklin