Seeing how many of you like to DIY I hope you could educate me on the best way to source wood materials for jobs around the house. E.g. making bespoke shelves, bookcases, modular storage units etc. B&Q, Homebase etc. are expensive and offer limited range, so I assume you make use of timber merchants. I find timber merchants a bit intimidating due to my lack of industry lingo, know-how, but more importantly because they don't seem to be very consumer-friendly in terms of explaining what services they offer and how much things will cost. In my neck of the woods we have Ridgeons. I've been there for just a few bits in the past, some shelfboard and skirting board - two specific materials that I knew they stocked. I have to go into the warehouse and tell a chap what I want. Noise from machinery and plant means conversation is difficult so I try to keep things simple and to the point. The chap then fills out a form that I have to take through to the shop for them to price up, which I then pay and go back to the warehouse to collect my order. But what I really want is to be able to browse materials and sizes and then ideally plan exactly what I want to make, price it up myself (from price lists published by the merchant) so that I know what I'm getting myself into, then send a merchant my order with them cutting the materials to the exact dimensions I require. Can I get this service anywhere without having to pay through the nose to get it?
Not too experienced in this field, but could you go to the DIY stores like B&Q get them to right up a reciept with what you want, and then compare the prices at smaller local merchants? Have you asked any of the guys at the timber merchants if they could help you on this subject?
There's a local timber shop called Thomerson near me who is staffed by nice men in brown warehouse coats who are very helpful. I'd highly recommend them, and they regularly help me in my quest to get wood.
I go to my local builders merchants who do timber. I go there with a cut list and they cut everything for me which saves me loads of time building hutches and show boxes for my wife's guinea pigs and everything's really square. It's a case of ringing around locally.
You could give Wickes a go, they seem to be a halfway house between the likes of B&Q and Homebase, and full on builders merchants.
As always I am truly grateful to everyone who has taken time out to respond to my thread. Some of you could have done with reading my thread a bit more closely first, but... mustn't grumble The winner - so far, please keep them coming - is this one: If I lived anywhere near Crouch End I'd be there in a flash to see what they've got as they look approachable and flexible. I need something like that, closer to home, and preferably with a website that allows me to browse what they hold and how much it costs.
Unless I am going blind (too much wood?), you haven't stated where in the country you are (and Ridgeons have lots of branches) PS Crouch End is ace.
I may or may not be known to occasionally make fleeting appearances in the East Anglia region - Cambs, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk. Taking Ridgeons, or your Thomerson, for example - if I go to them with an order for all the pieces I need to make a modular storage unit, will they cut it to size for me? It appears Thomerson would. But what if I had an even smaller job, like I need a few lengths of skirting board trimmed down in height (because I'm raising a floor and existing pipework will get in the way of new standard size skirting board). Or what if I just want a couple of shelves that are thicker than the crappy ones I got from Homebase that bow under the weight of the books stored on them (yes, I know I could put in an intermediary bracket to support it, but it would look silly)? Etc. etc. are these companies going to laugh in my face because I'm not ordering £££/££££s of work? I want a 'no job is too small' merchant I can go to with all my timber needs. When I was at school we just had to list the dimensions of wood we needed for a project and the wood-fairies would magically make our order appear in time for the next lesson. I want those wood-fairies to have an inexpensive shop near me (or deliver cheaply).
Don't be intimidated by a timber merchant, they are generally very helpful people and are often good at explaining things in straight forward ways so you don't need to be too technical when asking for advice. Something to keep in mind is that big chains like B&Q don't have much interest in what you're buying or what you really need. A local timber merchant on the other hand is generally going to be a lot more reliant on providing a product that the customer wants and that it matches the customer's budget as their primary source of business is often word of mouth. As for my own purchases, if it's small bits for the odd job then a number of people in my village are tradesmen and they do wood cuts in their garages so I often pick up the off-cuts and sometimes they'll do something cut to specification if they're not busy and have spare materials (may be worth checking around your local area if anyone's a builder/carpenter who might be willing to help a neighbour out). Anything for a bigger project, I pop by the traders near my office as I work on the edge of an industrial estate. They're always very competitive compared to big retailers and are usually happy to source something if they don't normally have it.
It seems you want some kind of personally service, something that not many merchants are going to provide. I'm not sure why you need to browse materials and sizes, wood is wood, most of the time the job dictates what type should be used, the same for the size. Get the type and nearest size to suit the job you're doing. Maybe I'm not understanding what you require, or I'm just being dumb. If you want to get wood go watch some pron.
Thomerson do indeed do that. I often go in needing seemingly 'random' cuts, and they never mind. It's ace. I have had all sorts of things pre-cut in there - they have band saws and table saws and all sorts of things that I can't fit in my place in London, so it's ideal. There *must* be somewhere similar near you, it's just a question of finding it I have done very similar, and got service with a smile - it does exist!
Depends on what type of wood you want - soft wood, hard wood, specialist, rare, etc. Haven't tried these people but they might be worth checking out. But note, the more complicated cutting you require the more it's going to cost you (if i.e. you wanted moulded skirting made etc. - yeah, I know you don't, I'm just sayin' ) http://www.timbermerchantnorfolk.co.uk/ http://www.burtonstimber.co.uk/ http://www.venbros.co.uk/sawn-to-size-oak/ Or, if you have a tree lying around http://www.suffolktreeservices.co.uk/page/saw mill/
My local saw mill - they don't have prices up or anything like that but they're cheaper than B&Q etcetera (about on a par with Jewsons, but whatever) you can ask for a quote for anything, and if they don't have what you want they will cut to size, but they keep a large stock of regularised sections. I can't think of anyone who lets you wander through their stock like you want except for the usual (expensive) suspects... Jewsons you can browse their site and call up/go-to for your order or a quote; delivery is cheep(ish). Public liability insurance isn't cheep for these sorts of places and by chopping that out they make a saving which lets them undercut B&Q et all.
Find a local merchant. There's a place in Burton called Kings or something daft, but they're cheaper and better than places like Travis Perkins. They also get oddball lengths and whatnot, so a friend recently sourced a 5.4 meter length of skirting board so their lounge wall didn't have joins in it. For exotic, or weird, wood requests I call the guys at http://www.exotichardwoodsukltd.com/ - I use their woods for guitar stuff, I've got some purple heart for a fretboard from them most recently, really nice folk.
I wouldn't write B&Q off too quickly as they often have extremely cheap off-cuts beside where the saw is. Hell, one time I picked up some MDF and pine which didn't have a barcode on it, and the guy at the till just told me to take it. I've built tons of stuff with this stuff and it's so cheap; my most recent project was shelving a walk-in cupboard in the spare bedroom. It now has chipboard/MDF shelves which can take a hell of a lot of weight. I understand that you might want to work with better quality materials but it's still worth dropping by B&Q just in case.
One issue you may have is that even if you have a timber merchant cut the wood to size for you is it may not be quite as square as you need when you start to build with it. Even wood sold by a decent timber merchant as "planed all round" is not entirely suitable to build decent furniture with without further planing unless you are very lucky. The only wood I would trust to behave straight from somewhere like B&Q is the laminated solid oak or pine furniture boards, plants of any timber are likely to twist slightly as they continue to dry out. These boards are much cheaper from somewhere like Robbins timber than from B&Q btw and they have a better selection. For most of my projects I'm slowly working on I have had the oak behind the sideboard in the dining room for over a year and it has all required slight to severe planing to get it up to scratch before building with it, and it was planed all round by the merchant. One option you may have if you need high quality wood ready for immediate use is to approach a local joiner or carpenter and ask them if they can supply the wood ready dried, planed and sized to your requirements. There will of course be a cost to this but it should give you the finish you want and may be cheaper than investing in a planer thicknesser if you don't need a large amount of wood I tend to plane all mine by hand but this takes a long time and is easy to make a mess of (trust me on this), and of course there is again a cost in buying planes to do this. A cheap plane is a waste of money and even with a decent No 7 Lie Nielsen one it takes time and practice to get it right. Anyway good luck with the building, any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer them. Mike
