Lumber Gloat

Woodworking can be an expensive hobby.  Tools, classes, and raw materials all cost money.  Anybody who thinks they are going to build furniture cheaper than Ikea is kidding themselves.  As hobbyist woodworker, the only place I can compete is on quality.  My furniture will be nicer, stronger, survive longer, and the design will be customized to my needs.

Even though woodworking can be expensive, every once in a while you get a good deal.  This is when it's time for a gloat post - like this one!

I saw an ad on Craigslist last week for some kiln-dried lumber.  A few phone calls and a two hour drive later, and I was looking at tens of thousands of board feet of lumber being sold off by a now-closed flooring mill.  Here is a picture from my cell phone of the mountains of lumber.

Need 10,000 BF of Eastern White Pine?  Here it is.

Most of the available stock was Eastern White Pine, since this mill was in the far western part of North Carolina.  Lots of pine forests up that way.  There were other species available though including Ash, Red and White Oak, Maple, and even a few exotics like Ipe and Purple Heart.

My choice was Walnut, though.  I have been designing some desks for our home office, and they will look great made of a nice Walnut.  The seller had some 4/4 walnut that was graded #1 Common, which means there are more defects allowed than the nicer FAS grade.  For my purposes, this stuff will be just fine.



Street price in the Atlanta area for 4/4 FAS Walnut is around $7 per BF for hobbyist quantities.  Even though the Craigslist lumber was a lower grade than FAS, the price was much lower also.  At $2 per Board foot, I took all that my truck could carry.  This is what 500 Board Feet of walnut look like.

There was a mix of 8ft and 6ft boards.

My shop project this weekend was to clean off my lumber rack and reload it with the walnut.  Over the years I have hoarded a mixed collection of MDF, plywood, and pine scraps.  Most of the stuff on the rack was left over from house projects, so there were 2 ft sections of crown molding and other things I would never really need.

After a purge of useless scraps, I made sure that the rack was level and ready for the Walnut.  You can see in the picture below that my longer boards are stored over the top of my plywood cart.  Details on the plywood cart are available at this post on the blog.

Lumber storage area of the shop.  Who needs a window anyway?

I stored as much as I could on the rack.  The walnut is literally stacked to the rafters.  Even so, I could only fit about 120 Board Feet on the rack.  The rest of the walnut is in my neighbor's garage.  He's a woodworker also, and we're splitting the load.

Stacked as high as it would go, I could store only 120 Board Feet

After this adventure, it looks like anything I build from now on will be made of Walnut!

Ever get a good deal?  Want to gloat about it?  Let's hear about it in the comments.

The Schwarz Effect: An Academic Rebuttal

First of all, wow.  Response to my previous post about Chris Schwarz and his effect on the market for No. 80 scraper planes has been amazing.  Thanks to Chris for spreading the word.

Gye Greene went a few steps further down the rabbit hole.  He asked for a copy of the data that fed my charts, and ran it through a series of statistical contortions to determine the true likelihood of a lasting "Schwarz Effect".  I had originally recorded a few extra details of each auction, such as the condition of the scraper, the shape of the casting (there are a couple varieties), and whether the blade was missing.  Gye included all of this in his methodology, and found that price was controlled more by these factors than by Schwarz' Mojo.  Gye did confirm my observation that even the crustiest piece of crap from the bottom of the ocean would sell in the post-Schwarz era.

So it seems that Schwarz has the power to stir us all up into a frenzy of buying every tool in sight, but not necessarily to make us overpay in the long term.  Shucks.

Gye's amazingly detailed analysis is available at this link, please check it out.  Thanks to Gye for taking the time on this!  A few of his key insights:

• Expect to pay more for a scraper in the original box. This commanded about a $25 premium.
• Early castings have a base with a straight trailing edge, instead of the later concave curved edge.  The straight version will run you almost $10 more at auction.
• No blade?  Expect to pay about $11 less.

You may also want to check out Gye's blog over at gyegreene.blogspot.com for more Gye goodness!

Oh and in case anybody out there finds themselves in possession of a number 80 that needs a little rehab, you may find this post by Pickering Mike interesting over at Ramblings of a Novice Woodworker.

Think Gye and I are nutjobs?  Chris Schwarz does!  Tell us what you think in the comments!

Behold the Power of The Schwarz!

Oh, how nefarious the woodworking world can be!  What you are about to read is a tale filled with intrigue, secrecy, arbitrage, and data analysis.  What else do you need?  Hollywood, I will be expecting your call.

A couple weeks ago, Chris Schwarz blogged about his Stanley #80 scraper plane.  As usual, it was a thoughtful and instructive post that described the advantages of these simple tools.  It was nice reading for a Monday.

A nice Stanley #80 scraper plane

What only a lucky few knew, however, is that "The Schwarz" had previously set up a little experiment in arbitrage, woodworking style.  In the final session on the final day of Woodworking in America, Chris offered a bonus to the group.  He said that you could buy the #80's for $20 all day long on eBay, at least until he blogs about them.  Those in the room had one week to corner the market on these tools and then the public would hear about them via the blog, likely sending prices into the stratosphere.

Shall we see how the power of the Schwarz may be used for evil instead of for good?  The following chart takes a look at sales prices on eBay for the past month or so.  Each bubble is a single sale.  The total delivered price is along the left axis, and time marches out along the bottom axis.  The bubble size indicates how many bids the auction had - more bids get larger bubbles.

Click for larger version

As you can see from the chart, things were cruising along steadily in "The Good Old Days".  Average shipped price for a #80 was about $26, and things were good.  Then on October 3rd Schwarz made his speech at WIA, and the sharks smelled blood in the water.  I only have data up until the 5th because I forgot to check and eBay cleans house after 21 days, but even in the 3 days after WIA the average shipped price went up to almost $38.  After his blog post on October 11, Schwarz generated enough demand to drive the average shipped price up again to $41.51, a 60% increase over "The Good Old Days"!

Do you need further proof of the power of the Schwarz?  From 9/22 to 10/5 there were another 12 auctions that had zero bids and therefore did not end in a sale.  Buyers weren't interested in these planes, so these listings were not included above.  Since Chris made his blog post on Oct 11 there have been no unsold scraper planes on eBay.  All auctions have ended successfully in a sale, including the gem pictured below with the absurdly optimistic description "has light rust" which sold for $24.95 shipped.



Click for larger version



What does this teach us?  Chris has the Mojo, baby.  One comment from him is enough to send literally tens and tens of people into a buying spree.  Oh, and I have too much time on my hands. On a related note, I will be starting a new hedge fund soon trading under the ticker symbol SWRZ.  Operators are standing by!

 

Care to comment?  You would be among a select few who take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity!

 

Footnote:  In case you are as into data geekery as I am, here is the fine print on the methodology:

• I used the search term "Stanley scraper 80" to bring up closed auctions on eBay.
• I only included auctions for a single tool, no bundles were allowed.
• Only sales were counted, so auctions with no bids were excluded.
• The price reported is the shipped price of the tool, including final bid price plus shipping cost.  I did look at the results without shipping costs and the conclusions were the same.
• Only sellers in the US were included.
• A few tools were sold without blades, and I kept these in the data.
• A single bid typically means the "buy it now" feature was used.