Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 79 – So You Want to Start a Lumberyard A Lumberyard is a businessStarting a lumberyard and selling your boards or slabs or millwork is much like starting any business.  The competitive landscape needs to be assessed and you need to find your niche.  In today’s episode I talk about […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 78 – A Replacement for Western Red Cedar? Western Red Cedar Prices Keep climbingThis episode I catch up on some questions submitted via email covering a range of topics from green and air dried timbers, checking timbers, and even planting your own grove of trees.  But my perhaps click bait […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 77 – Poplar is so Popular Yellow Poplar isn’t a Poplar?Let’s talk about Poplar…or Tulip Poplar…or Eastern Cottonwood…or White Poplar or Yellow Poplar or Quaking Aspen or (gasp) Tulipwood. No they are not all the same tree. Or are they? Today I talk about the Populus genus and that upstart […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 76 – Wood Identificaton Wood Identification is in the End grainWe’ve all held that unknown wood species in our hands and wondered what it is.  This episode hopes to give you a process to follow to help you get you a wood identification.  I give you some resources in both […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · LU 75 Finding Lumber at Auction with Tommaso Valeriano Other Ways to Find LumberI have spoken about some other ways to find lumber in past shows from cooperative buying to contacting your local cabinet or millwork shop.  Today I have Tommaso Valeriano on the show and he gives us some […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 74 – CD's Trees Removing Trees and Turning them into LumberCaleb Darnell runs CD’s Trees out of Hot Springs, AR.  He’s an arborist removing trees for a variety of reasons but mostly on residential properties.  Since 2009 his company has been doing this work but more he was always sad […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 73 – Alternatives to Russian Birch Plywood? Baltic Birch is a Hard Product to Compete AgainstRussian Birch plywood prices are tripled at minimum. Moreover even paying the higher price isn’t something the general market wants to do and support the Russian economy. So what are the alternatives? There aren’t very […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 72 – Cambium Carbon Saving the Planet One Urban Log at a timeCambium Carbon is a Washington DC based company that is into Urban Lumber.  That’s the understatement of the year because they have the potential to change the face of the lumber industry by creating a circular industry.  Put […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 71 – Trending to Local Timbers Local Timbers on the riseIn my predictions for 2022 I stated that there would be more focus on domestic lumber. Today I dive deeper into that and look at how local timbers present opportunities and challenges to the commercial lumber market as well as […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 70 – Choosing Wood for a Workbench Locally Sourced Exercise in Wood DiversityOn this episode Alex Adams joins me to talk about choosing wood for his upcoming workbench projects. He wants to incorporate as many locally sourced woods as he can in order to gain experience with many species that […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 69 Got a Log? Now What? Logs to LumberSo you’ve decided to go from logs to lumber. In this episode I discuss how and where you might get a log when first starting out and then the care and feeding of that log before you begin to saw it.  How […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 68 – Interpreting Working Properties of Wood Chinese Mahogany: How does it work?Today I look at Chinese Mahogany (Toona sinensis) and use my philosophy of technical numbers to identify how this unusual species would work when compared to more commonly known woods. This is the same process I have spoken […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 67 – Silvicultural Systems Tree Farming is SilvicultureSilviculture is essentially the farming of trees. But it pays attention not just to the forest and the most sustainable way to harvest it but also the surrounding ecology. The system of cutting used can effect all the flora and fauna in an […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · LU66 – A Special Customer Case Study Choose the Right Wood to get on the nice listI talk a lot about understanding the technical properties of wood in order to choose the right species for the project at hand. On this episode I want to share with you a case […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 65 – 2022 Lumber Industry Predictions Lumber Industry PredictionsAs we draw to the end of 2021 I’m going to make some lumber predictions about where the industry is heading in 2022.  There are quite a few political things going on that will restrict the flow of exotic species into a […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 64 – The Pilgrims were Lumbermen North American Lumber HistoryHappy Thanksgiving to all my American listeners.  As with most holiday lore, things get distorted and romanticized over the centuries.  The fact that the Puritans and Wampanoag were breaking bread over a war treaty against another tribe gets glossed over a […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 63 – Knotty Pine, Paulownia, and Old Veneers Old Wood can be Knotty tooTime to dig back into the mail bag and catch up on some of your questions.  In this episode I discuss Knotty Pine, Paulownia, decades old lumber, and old and dried out veneer.  Oh yeah and some […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 62 – Buying Specialty Woods Soundboards, Quartersawn, Boxed Heart, Oh My!This episode is born out of a lot of comments I had from the Tone Woods episode last time.  Difficulty sourcing specialty woods is frustrating but it is important to understand the supply chain and market demands for these products […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 61 – Tone Woods Density and Stiffness make a good soundboardA good tone wood is pretty hard to define.  First it depends on the type of instrument you are making: stringed, percussion, or woodwind.  Second there is so much subjective nature to the quality of sound that just can’t be […]

Shannon's Lumber Industry Update · 60 – Softwoods 101 Softwoods and YouSoftwoods. These woods get overlooked a lot because they are deemed not as durable or stable as hardwoods. The softwoods types are actually pretty limited when compared to the thousands of hardwoods.  With the softwoods we are really only looking at 100 or fewer […]