One man's waste is another man's gold

Leo G_101

remember from the "what do you heat your house with" posts, that I heat the majority of the time time a wood burning fireplace.

Living on the west coast, my main stock of firewood is fir and hemlock, softwoods. Works well, but I have always been envious of you easterners and your endless supply of hardwood.

Well I just found my goldmine! My brother in law led me to a steel sorting yard. The train cars come from back east, and this company sorts the steel and sends it to whomever it belongs to. Well it turns out that White Oak seems to be the wood of choice for dunnage where this steel comes from! This company just throws the dunnage out, so they are more then happy if people take as much as the can!

Here on the west coast, of course, Oak is worth a small fortune from the lumber yards.


I am always amazed by what seems valuable to one, can be considered junk to another!

Leo G

John_102

scrap wood

Good for you. Hope it lasts a while for you, but don't tell too many people.

Back some years ago (say 20 or so), I could get all the scrap persimmon I wanted from an outfit that harvested the trees to make golf woods. Price went from free, to nominal charge, to way too much and from me stacking the (evenly cut) wood in my truck to them scooping up a load & dumping it & sawdust & dirt into the truck.

Got too expensive. Then the metal clubs took over. Now the coons & bears & I forage for the fruit. I am just as happy to let the trees grow.

Perry_3

Best deal I ever heard off...

involved a mistake on literally 10's of thousands of RR ties. The RR ordered them all a foot too long and had to be whacked off (this was before the ties were creosoted).

I know a guy who picked up something like 5 years supply of nicley cut 1 ft long pieces of oak RR tie material for his home heating (and he could have gotten more but ran out of storage room). Lots of people loved it - free for the taking.

Perry

Leo G_101

some pics of

the goldmine!

Leo G_101

pic of the

goldmine! Those boards that are lying "down" the pile are 10 foot long, 3 x 4 pieces of white oak. There was also some mahogany in the pile yesterday.

YUMMY!

Leo G

Weezbo

a good source of extra wood are pallets..

and Glass crates. you can lose all the nails first it is usually all good dry wood for getting the fire rolling...

Royboy

gotta say

not much I'd rather put in my mouth than a ripe persimmon ...

glad they aren't cutting so many down anymore.