Walnut potential group buy?

[Jeremy Scuteri]

Should be fun! Looking forward to it.


While it looks like we have critiqued Mike's actual procedure, I do love the idea of having an outlined procedure, so I am going to try and summarize what seems to be a quick, fair process.


1. Order will be based on names out of a hat, if you aren't present when your name is pulled, your name goes back in the hat. Not necessary at all, but it is kind of fun (like a raffle) and it takes almost no time at all.

2. We measure BF the quickest way possible. Take the width of a truck bed if you are in a truck and count layers like Ken suggested. That is fine by me. People who don't have trucks will have to do something slightly different, but that should be relatively easy to do. This should help keep things moving quickly.

3. No rejecting or reserving boards in any way. Random chance will dictate your fate. This is a change from what almost everyone agreed to earlier, somewhat out of nowhere, but I am completely fine with it. See, I'm not 100% anal retentive all the time!

3. If there is a shortage, we will determine a process with some randomness (and time efficiency) to even things out. The spreadsheet will help make that process quick if it comes to that.

4. If there is extra, we distribute it based on shares of the expected 1700 BF.

5. Group Picture. No pictures, It didn't happen!

6. We take all of Phil's wood and replace it with pine 2x4's from Home Depot. (just kidding)

 

[cyclopentadiene]

I am traveling tomorrow but Jeremy will be picking up the lumber for me. I too have the same approach as Phil, in the event of a shortage, I have no problem with letting 50 bf go into the pool to ensure everyone receives lumber. I initiated the thread and threw a number out there as I did not expect this much interest. I have no plans for the lumber as I generally use 8/4 for most projects and 250 bf of 4/4 will last me quite a while. Less will be easier to store.

thank you Jeremy for taking charge and making this happen

Jeff

 

[Jeremy Scuteri]

Ken is right. Time to stop worry about doom and gloom what if's and get to the fun part of it. I am ready. I've got refreshments covered.

 

[golfdad]

maybe I should cancel todays plans and head up there with some popcorn.......might be a "funniest home video" segment

 

[LeftyTom]

That will take a lot ofvroom, 17 piles of 8ft boards.

 

[KenOfCary]

I'm beat after loading and unloading pretty much all day collecting and delivering wood. There was plenty of wood available - way over 1700 bf. A lot of it turned out not to be Walnut but was other quality hardwoods.

Once I got home I had more white oak than Walnut but that probably works better for my woodworking plans in the near future. There was a lot of Cyprus that I wish I'd had room to take as well, but I was completely loaded up when I left. No room for more.

All in all, I think everybody got their buck 25 worth. What I got home with filled the space I had to put it in. More wouldn't work.

 

[robert391]

If its not too late put i will commit for 200 BF.

 

[Jeremy Scuteri]

All done now

 

[Jeremy Scuteri]

The biggest issue we ran into was that people were maxing out their hauling capacity. Haven't had a chance to look at my haul. Had to take my little girl to a birthday party. I'll post some pics later.

 

[Jeremy Scuteri]

There was walnut, cedar, white oak, red oak and something lighter (poplar?/Cypress?)

 

[LeftyTom]

After the half-your-load point, I forgot my manners and found myself loading 2 boards at time after we had run out of walnut ( I was short about 30bdft, but ces la vie) My apologies,and don't feel embarrassed to remind me to slow down. I was hot, sweaty, and focused on getting finished.

 

[thsb]

I feel really good about the day, as i got to meet more people from this forum. Had followed Tim Sherwood's cabinet building and install for a long time so it is great to be able to meet him along with everyone else. All of my wood is sitting in my carport and i have to figure out a place to put it because i am maxed out in my workshop and the wood rack outside of my shop.

In addition, i feel like i got a great deal on some good wood. I was getting 150 board feet and got a lot from the 13 foot length pile that others couldn't handle in their vehicles easily. I think i got somewhere close to what i ordered. plus, I got over 50 bf of nice cedar. I hope Jeremy went back and got the rest of it otherwise it was not going to get used.

Thanks so much to Jeremy for coordinating everything. It is greatly appreciated.
tim

 

[KenOfCary]

Thanks again to Jeremy for organizing this and especially to adapting to the changing situation during the pickup. I think everybody got their fair share of discount wood, It turned out not to be all Walnut but I ended up with a bunch of very nice White Oak that I can use for my Craftsman style projects - probably more useful than the Walnut would have been.

 

[Graywolf]

Yes thanks to Jeremy for leading this adventure. I for one feel we all came out ahead in this transaction. And yes we did go back and clean up the remainder of the wood.

 

[Jeremy Scuteri]

After the half-your-load point, I forgot my manners and found myself loading 2 boards at time after we had run out of walnut ( I was short about 30bdft, but ces la vie) My apologies,and don't feel embarrassed to remind me to slow down. I was hot, sweaty, and focused on getting finished.

Classic NCWW style (in a good way -- read on). I am pretty sure everyone had already either gotten their share of walnut, or came very close at that point. At one point Tom was trying to give away one of the best boards in his pile because it was "way too wide for his jointer". As I looked at his truck, I saw a lot of crappy wood which he was moving out of the way to get to one of the few nice boards. I had to argue with him for a bit to try and get him to keep it. I hope he didn't give it away.

 

[CrealBilly]

Sounds like a good ole fashion NCWW Lumber Run

 

[ste6168]

All, good to meet you guys, glad the dog and I were able to make the drive up. Jeremy, thanks a ton for coordinating this. I ended up with well over my allotted wood, though slightly less than 200BF of walnut. Like Tom said though, no worries, as I more than made up for that small "loss" with cedar, and a little bit of the lighter wood. Not sure if it is maple or oak, or if I got a mix of the two. I was whooped by the time I got it unloaded, so I will dig deeper another day. I do wish I was able to haul a few of those longer boards, that was certainly some pretty wood... More than happy with what I got.

Along with the red oak I got for a song about a year back, I am now completely maxed out on wood storage. I think those portamate racks may be slightly over capacity... Now I need to figure out what to do with this pile i've got sitting next to the shed. I am honestly not sure if I can use this all in 5 years...

 

[Jeremy Scuteri]

Here is a summary for everyone following along. Get your popcorn now.
We arrived within about 10 minutes of each other at the sellers location. That was pretty amazing in itself. We had some major curve balls right away to deal with. There was an all out brawl within minutes. :nah:


There were 5 pallets of wood off the trailer, on the ground on the edge of a driveway, in direct sunlight with easy access. One entire pallet was cedar, another entire pallet turned out to be oak 2 were completely walnut and I think the 3rd was a mix, I'm not 100% sure on the last one. We had to think on our feet, we developed a plan together and put it into action in about 3 minutes.

We decided to start with the black walnut pallets and made it so that each of us would only fill 1/2 our order on the 1st pass. Then we would see where we were after that. We drew names to start, then realized most of us were just standing around so we drew a few more names and started loading up. I saw lots of people helping others load up their vehicles, which isn't surprising at a NCWW event.


There is a major flaw in the "pick from the top of the pile randomly with no rejections" plan though. The major flaw is the possible intersection of two conditions:

1. Pockets of good/bad wood. 15 garbage boards in a row followed by 20 good boards.
2. Small orders. You can really get screwed if you only order 100 BF and you get 18 bad boards in a row. The bad ones were definitely clustered together in the long walnut board pile.

I saw Rick_B complete what appeared to be his entire 1/2 order with boards that looked like this or worse (a black walnut streak on one side and pretty much all sapwood on the other - definitely a board from the outside of the tree with powder post beetles on the sapwood side)



Rick didn't say a word. Not a single complaint or anything. I just happened to look over and notice he was completely getting screwed over. He was one of the few people able to take the 12.5 footers and it wasn't going well for him. That is a time to stray from the system and try and make things right. I told Rick to get some of the pocket of good walnut that was getting uncovered as I was getting into the middle of my 1/2 share (taking from the top of the pile). I don't know if he listened and got some or not. I sure hope he did.

We were able to put 12.5 footers in Tim's 6' bed (they hung off the back a little bit). Thanks Tim! From what I saw, I am expecting black walnut yields to be about 40% good, 40% kind of crappy and 20% is complete garbage.


I have about 15% of my order on the edge of the driveway that will get burned that are like the picture above. Almost all sapwood with powder post beatles, not worth doing anything with. I think I still did well on this lumber run though, and I would do it again. There were some powder post beatles in the "albino walnut" pieces - aka black walnut with tons of sapwood and the lighter colored wood (cypress/poplar - not sure what it actually is). There doesn't appear to be any in the heartwood of the walnut, the cedar or the oak. If you have some of the lighter colored wood (cypress/poplar), check it for signs of beatles and do some research.

If you have "super sapwood walnut" with powder post beatles, I would just throw it away. Just my 2 cents.


Once we all filled our 1/2 orders of walnut, we looked around and there was still a bunch of walnut left, so we said, "Ok, fill rest of your orders". People completed their orders, again helping each other with no official direction or anything at this point, just a "smooth chaos" that somehow seemed to work. Most people seemed to fill their orders, I think a few fell a little bit short, but as far as I know, everyone was close.

Then we looked around and there were still untouched pallets of wood with the non walnut woods. I think there was WAY more than 1700 BF. Maybe 2500 BF, I really don't know. At that point, we just said, "load up whatever you can that looks good to you". Everyone maxed out their carrying capacities at that point. This is also about the time that we noticed the powder post beatles on the lighter colored wood (whatever it was). These boards were on a handfull of trucks at this point. I think most people put them back and I think Richard ended up with most of them on the follow up "get the stuff that nobody else could physically carry because there was so much wood run". I believe he plans to treat them to kill any beatles.


I got a nice little pile of white oak on the follow up trip that I kept:


I also got a bit of cedar and red oak on the follow up trip that I gave to Tim for driving me around all day (2 separate trips) in his truck, which was most appreciated.


I ran out of daylight as I was going through the pile, so I'll have to post some more pics tomorrow. I'll get some pics of the good stuff from the haul.

Here is a piece of oak, with what appears to be powder post beatle damage. Once I brushed the piles away, there aren't any holes at all. The walnut sapwood had the same kind of piles with very obvious circular holes where the beatles made a hole. I think the oak is ok, but I need to research it some. I brought it inside, but it is "quarantined" in a separate pile. I'll monitor it for a while, maybe I'll look into chemically treating it just to be safe.



Some boards were twisted noodles, but some of the ones underneath are darn nice too.

 

[Jeremy Scuteri]

No pics, it didn't happen.

​

 

[Rick_B]

First of al thanlks to Jeremy - he diod a great job organizing this whole thing. Also - it was great to meet some other members - everyone worked very well together in a situation that included some unexpectewd variables. Jeremy was correct - I could handle the longer boards and jumped in to get some them - he was also correct that my first half weas low quality stuff. Everyone was fine with me jumping in for my second half out of the much better quality walnut ahead of everyone else. Also another member had a nice board that he offered to trade for one oif the lower quality boards I had. So I ended up with probably 50 to 60 bosrd feet of nice walnut for $125 - still a very good deal. I also took about 30 board feet of cedar - my wife wants a bird feeder along the design of what we left in NY - I got enough for that plus some other outdoor stuff.

Having been involved in this type of purchase before my expection was 50% yield but at 1.25 a board foot that is still a steal. I am more than satisfied - I didn't really need any more wood but just couldn't walk away - its a sickness I know. I end to use lower quality stuff for shop/utility cabinets so it won't go to waste unless it is severely questionable in terms of bugs. I rarely use or need long pieces so I'll likey examine the long boards and rough cut any splits and knots out and then reduct the length to something a ;little ore manageable.

All in all a nice morning and a good time. thanksagain to Jeremy

Rick