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I suppose this is a bit of a gloat, but it is gloat-worthy. However, it also demonstrates that there is a lot of available affordable wood out there. In this case, it was all free. A truckload of maple, cherry, hickory, alder, and oak. A guy I know owns a cabinet shop. It's not like we're buddies, but he comes into the office and knows I work with wood as a hobby. He has given me some of his scraps before, as they just throw them away or burn them. He told me recently to come by anytime and he had some stuff for me. So I stopped by today and he helped me load it all up.

He said that he offered it to the local high school and they said they'd be willing to take it if he'd be willing to deliver it. He didn't really see the financial viability for him to pay someone to load it, haul it, unload it, and drive back to the shop, just to get rid of some of his scraps. Yay for me, because I was willing to come over and get it.

Not all of it is useable for guitars, but for other furniture projects or jigs and smoking some babybacks on the weekend.

I remember a thread recently about a guy not being able to afford wood for an electric. It doesn't get any more affordable than free as long as you pay attention and are willing to put forth more effort than the local high school.

Darrin

Good score indeed. An he's not the only cabinet builder to have to get rid of his scrap. There are a couple of high end cabinet makers in Cairns, that need to get rid of the off cuts. Might be rare to get pieces large enough for a guitar back unless you go 3 or 4 piece, but all kinds of stuff that works for heaps of luthier type projects.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
Facebook
Cairns, Australia

I supply myself with a ton of offcuts from my canoe building business. Its always a tough decision about which pieces to keep and which to use to extract their thermal value. The end result is that I have material for quite a few more guitars for which I only have to buy wood for bridges, fingerboards, fretwire and tuning machines.

Go forth and collect perfectly good wood! Every professional woodworker has a scrap wood box that risks overflowing. If you are respectful, and perhaps selective about who you approach, I'm sure that they wouldn't mind that the wood goes to some higher purpose than the fireplace.

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Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

I build up so much scrap from resawing and i hate throwing it away.
most stuff i find a use for and i try to sell every scrap (you have to make every penny when you have a small business)

if cutting sides billets if its 1" to wide i will rip it down and use the off cut for binding stock.
orphans get cut into peg head veneers/bridge plates/rosette squares etc
and i have to be creative when it comes to small off cut chunks (book matched peg heads etc)

but i still get left over with loads of scrap that i will not throw away.
at the moment i have a huge box of curley scottish sycamore that is destined for the college among with boxes of cocobolo.monterillo,african blackwood,mac ebony,african ebony, etc etc that i dot know what to do with.
i let visitors pick through and take what they want from the off cut bins and i am thinking of putting boxes of offcuts (when i say off cuts i mean peices that are 3"wide x 6" long x 3mm for example) on ebay for the wood turners and bow makers and inlay folks.
even if i get 99p for a pound of coco scraps its better than throwing the stuff away as it gets used there for does not release the carbon its accumilated over the years by being burned.

I also have a box a pretty off cuts that i keep for myself for end grafts/truss rod covers etc but the more wood that comes through the door the less attached i get to it.

oh well one mans trash is anther mans tresure,

Nice hoard by the way glen.

Joel.

Outstanding score. I think finding that great "score" is more fun than buying new stuff.

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Has anyone ever tried "Dumpster Diving" at Martin?

Mike Franks
http://www.mjfranksguitar.com

I think another thing to note, is that when this guy offers me to take his "trash", I take all of it. Even if I know it's not what I want. That way I serve a purpose for him and don't leave him more stuff to get rid of. That way, he's more likely to offer in the future.

I just went out and looked at my wood piles...all that alder and hickory...I may have to smoke some ribs this weekend.

Darrin