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Let me start by saying I really miss working with redwood.
HDU is the substrate we currently use.
All the local lumber yards went from beautiful clear heart redwood(10 yrs ago), to... acceptable "B" grade clear heart (8 yrs ago), to "B" grade construction(6 yrs ago), to construction grade... DECK WOOD!. That's when HDU won over unanimously.
Is there a good supplier in the mid-west for CLEARHEART redwood & cedar?
How about the sign blank companies? They seem to be raising their rates at an unrealistic rate... especially the cedar guys.
Cedar replenishes quickly I believe. Why's it comparable to redwood prices?
If you have suppliers, planks or blanks... please let me know.
-------------------- Michael R. Bendel Bendel Sign Co,. Inc. Sauk Rapids, MN Posts: 913 | From: Sauk Rapids, MN | Registered: Jul 2005
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Michael, I feel your pain. I used to buy my redwood out of lumberyards by hand picking boards from their clear heart stacks. Then I found a small supplier in California that sold some of the nicest old growth, dead & down, high ring count, vertical grain Seqouia I've ever seen! But he retired several years ago & I haven't been able to find anything decent since.
Mike, is the stuff from Redwood Suppliers boards or glued-up butcher block style blanks?
-------------------- Chris Elliott 1longshot@classicnet.net cell 62084two2232 Posts: 686 | From: Scottsdale, AZ & Anthony, KS, USA | Registered: Dec 1999
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I can still get it here from red Wood Products / Oklahoma City...but as you have said the choice is getting tougher.
I too am a redwood diehard ...prices have made it tougher to sell tothe customers yet the really good customers willstill pay the price.
Hail damage to foam here is undeniable but a lot of people have opted for it...I've found other ways to produce diminsional signs but have fallen back to doing more conventional things til the right customers come along...sad.. but hey the world moves on without you sometimes.
In the mean time I get pleasur out of doing some smaller projects for friends out of the "drop" redwood materials I have laying around but they are dwindling fast.
I'll be watching this post for more suppliers too.
My last piece of redwood cost me $190.00 for a 2" x 10" x 10' plank.
-------------------- "Werks fer me...it'll werk fer you"
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I have a pretty good stack of clear all heart redwood but haven't made any signs with it in a couple of years. If a customer comes along and insists on wood, I'll pull some of it out. It's too hard to get. I like to go to the lumberyard and hand pick what I want...and I'm VERY picky. I've been through four different suppliers and they each dropped redwood so I had to find another. The last time I went to the last supplier, 40 miles away, they wouldn't let in the warehouse. They brought out a few boards on a forklift and they had warps and splits. One was curved so bad, you could make rocking chair runners with it. So getting it is too much of a hassle.
It took awhile for HDU to catch on here but, now I have no problems selling it. We just got in 7 sheets and the semi backed right up to my door. I don't have to worry with any warps checks, splits or making sure the grain is really vertical. If any customer is a little apprehensive about it, I just show them the sample I keep outside by the shop. It's 11 years old and still looks great. In my neck of the woods, where the heat and humidity get so severe in summer, the paints just don't hold up quite as well on wood like they do on the foam. Perhaps up North, this isn't the case.
I had bad luck the first, last and only time I ordered any premade blanks. They did not alternate the grain when gluing up the battens and both signs warped. One of the blanks didn't warp as bad and I noticed they had glued some alternating grain boards, probably by accident. I would rather glue up my own. I like the natural look of the wood as upposed to HDU. I just like the knots and ripples and stuff.
[ March 13, 2006, 10:51 AM: Message edited by: Wayne Webb ]
-------------------- Wayne Webb Webb Signworks Chipley, FL 850.638.9329 wayne@webbsignworks.com Posts: 7409 | From: Chipley,Florida,United States | Registered: Oct 1999
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I can still get clear redwood. Like most of you I also used to hand select from a draft or two (the good ole days). Now when I place an order for redwood it's a crapshoot as to what's going to arrive and when. It usually takes 2 weeks and if I have to send a board or two or the whole order back then it takes forever and that's no good.
The last price I got in June, 05 was $16.40 linear foot for 2x12. I couldn't get lengths of redwood over 16 feet and the sign I was making was 20 feet so I opted for clear cedar at $9.39/lin.ft.
I used to make a lot of signs out of 5/4" edge glued redwood but I can't touch that stuff anymore.
I really miss it's availability and working with it.
-------------------- Harry Ellis Signs East End Sign Co. Montauk Point, Long Island, NY
"Happiness in a cheap price is soon overcome by the bitterness of poor quality" Posts: 17 | From: Montauk, NY | Registered: Feb 2006
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