Original Posted By: Michael D Cuy
Just received a shipment of sitka spruce yesterday, and I can now confidently recommend my source to you folks. I found Alaska Specialty Woods on the internet a few months back and finally ordered about 22 board feet of lumber 7weeks ago. Brent, who runs the show, found some wood for me in about a week, it took him about two weeks to resaw it to my dimensions (salmon were running that week), and then another 3 weeks in his kiln (warm, dry room). Took a little while, but it was worth the wait since I had plenty of other wood to keep me busy.http://www.ptialaska.net/~liberty1/asw.html#anchor1I received 6 boards that are a full 6" across and 7 feet long (the length was chosen to meet the USPS dimensional limitations). Thicknesses varied from about 5/8" to 1 1/8" and all pieces were surfaced on two sides (S2S). All were perfectly clear, not a single tiny, tight knot. I counted an average of about 16 grains per inch. Grain deviation was zero on most boards, but two hada bit of deviation near one end. The worst slope of this deviation was about 1:14. All boards were cut perfectly vertical grain. I measured the density oftwo boards: first was 24 lbs. per cubic foot, the second was 25 lb/cf. That compares to 28 lb/cf specified for sitka spruce in the EAA wood book, and 33 lb/cf for the douglas fir that I'm using for some parts (near the CG). Beautiful stuff, but some were not quite as pretty as the stuff I bought from Aircraft Spruce & Specialty .He charged me $6 /board foot plus shipping. We estimated the shipping to be $26 for the quantity that I chose (22 board feet, a quantity that was just under the USPS limit). However, since Brent was kind enought to cut each boarda little oversize (1/8" extra, so that I can plane it exactly to size here) thetotal was over the limit. Still, Brent absorbed the extra shipping cost. Niceguy. I've heard that he has offered a lower price to others, so you might bargain with him, but the extra few bucks means a lot more to him than it doesto most of us. Either way, its a LOT less than the $20/BF charged by AircraftSpruce. (Brent lives on an island in southwest Alaska and finds windfallen sitka spruce with his children.)By the way, I was very careful to send him multiple e-mails and snail-mail to indicate EXACTLY what I wanted in finished dimensions. I got exactly what I asked for. Your mileage may vary.--Peter________________________________________________________________________________