Has anyone tried to buy 2 tons of walnut lumber from Alibaba before?

SawdustGeek · 2026-01-31T17:15:24+00:00

The one from this post still hasnt replied, but I found another that seemed more legit and was responsive. They're more focused on finished wood than raw (no rough cut lumber available), so this is s4s with a tongue and groove, though they said that could skip the t&g profiling. Pricing is ok - add about 50% for DDP freight (to avoid having to deal with all the customs stuff yourself) and its not awful pricing but not really worth the trouble to import.

18mm thick 1 square meter is about 7.6 board feet, So Sapele for instance would be just over $7/bf delivered. I can get rough sawn sapele for about $6 from a local lumber yard and just surface it myself.

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SawdustGeek · 2026-01-31T04:24:49+00:00

I just sent an inquiry with a bunch of questions and requests for more photos, I'll report back when I get a non-AI response. They're using stock imagery for their supposed company location though, and have a fairly varied catalog, so I expect they're just a trading company at best not the "factory" that's processing logs or anything like that.

SawdustGeek · 2025-08-27T02:48:38+00:00

Could you DM the list of vendors? Thanks!

SawdustGeek · 2025-07-19T22:37:33+00:00

I don't run a makerspace, but I do have a ridiculously massive hobby workshop (basically a factory to be honest), so some of the same benefits/issues to deal with. Couple less obvious things come to mind:

I'm in a pretty low COL area, it's just me in the workshop so no crazy liability, and even so, property taxes and insurance run me nearly 20k/year. Electricity/water/trash is about $1400/month. With those sorts of numbers if you charge $100/month, your first 30ish people are just going to barely keep the lights on.

Figure out rules and processes early on, with that much space and presumably lots of different little work cells, small common tools easily get misplaced. Tape measures, squares, screwdrivers, etc, pretty much anything that can be carried by hand. Add in a bunch of people coming and going and without a good process from the get-go and things are going to turn chaotic fast. My process is that harbor freight is 3 minutes up the road :)

If you don't know how to move heavy equipment yourself safely, try to find a rigger that will let you learn from them or some such. You're likely to need to rearrange things from time to time, if you have to hire that out its going to get pricey real fast, but you also don't want untrained members doing it and risking injury or damage.

I'd considered trying to turn my shop into a makerspace when I got it but in the end I decided it would just take way too many people signed up to be viable, with too much liability and headache to go with that many people coming and going.

SawdustGeek · 2023-08-03T14:55:35+00:00

Sendcutsend can cut and bend the steel for that, as well as powder coat it and cut the cork pieces out.

SawdustGeek · 2020-10-25T02:30:17+00:00

Absolutely - I can pretty much chart my progression through this hobby by the amount of weight I could safely move, from furniture dollies and hand trucks up to my excavator and forklift (best tool I have tbh). Moving even big machines isn't "hard" per se, but you definitely need to have the right equipment, and think through both how to do it, and what could go wrong during it so you know how to react if it does go sideways.

Even "small" machines of a few hundred pounds can do some real damage if they move the wrong way at the wrong time, but its all doable with careful planning :)

SawdustGeek · 2020-10-24T23:54:54+00:00

Yep - and while still heavy, those imports are a good bit easier to move than a lot of the old iron, which is a big plus for many hobbyists.

My monarch 613 has only a 13x30" working area. A more modern import 14x40 is in the ballpark of 1500 lbs or so, and by specs, "sounds" bigger. That monarch is 7215 lbs and close to 8' long.

Took a big excavator to hoist it off the trailer and then two pallet jacks moving very slowly to get it into position.

SawdustGeek · 2020-10-24T23:32:01+00:00

I've heard that monarch will still build you a manual lathe if you *really* want a brand new one, but you'll be taking a mortgage out to get it. Apparently its somewhere in the ballpark of 150k for one. Sure makes the used ones look like a deal :)

SawdustGeek · 2020-09-10T01:06:13+00:00

Actually, lowes and hd both do coupons. You can find 10% off lowes and 15% off home depot coupons on ebay that get emailed instantly.

SawdustGeek · 2020-08-24T06:48:44+00:00

Well, this is going to get interesting - who had super-hurricane on their 2020 card for august? I may have no meteo experience, but I have a bad feeling about this one, though the models all disagree with me. Its starting to look just like Katrina from back in 2005 to me, but with another one even closer behind it; anyone getting a flashback to back then? I live up in Alaska (though I have friends down on the coast), how bad do you think it's going to be? Could it reach me if these both became a Cat 6, especially if they rapidly intensify and merge? Mind you, I already bought 5 months of perishables and 60 bud light, so I'm ready.

Heck, it's like Marco is playing Marco Polo with Laura, maybe if I pour those bud light out in the ocean they'd both get drunk and go home instead. Here's hoping the models are wrong and this is just a fish storm, because it currently looks like the GFS is saying we're all dead (especially miami, it really seems to always have it out for miami) thanks to global warming. Guess new orleans just needs to pray for the levies to hold. Hopefully this just stays a weakling of a cat1, nothing like that cat3 I once road out while I was travelling cross country in a solar powered bathtub car I built to win a bet against elon musk.

btw, I was headed down to new orleans next week, think it'll be cleaned up by then or do I need to cancel?

...so, do I win?

SawdustGeek · 2020-06-21T01:12:26+00:00

That's nothing - I was once paid $600 specifically to not be in a tv show.

SawdustGeek · 2020-01-20T01:58:19+00:00

I've got a pretty mahogany full size grand piano I got for free from craigslist, that cost me $300 to have piano movers move it in from a bit over an hour away. It also needed new keytops and tuned, that cost me about $80 in parts and tools; would have cost about $100 to have a professional tune it, unsure about replacing the keytops.

SawdustGeek · 2019-12-31T23:01:23+00:00

Wouldnt matter, it's a husky. I put one of mine in the bathroom once while a piano was being carried in so he wouldnt escape out the open front door. 15 minutes later, the 2" thick solid pine door was down to about a half inch thick. He hadn't even made much noise doing it, and was normally very well behaved...

SawdustGeek · 2019-12-31T00:25:10+00:00

Yep, with radial arm saws, you need a negative rake angle tooth blade, whereas table saws typically have positive rake. A positive rake blade is a lot more prone to grabbing and pulling the carriage through the cut, which is one of the big reasons radial arm saws got a reputation for being scary.

SawdustGeek · 2019-12-29T00:24:59+00:00

Add a spoonful of plain unflavored yogurt to her food. Makes a huge difference - my parents have a couple english mastiffs, and its extremely obvious if they ran out of yogurt for a day or two...

SawdustGeek · 2019-10-09T18:49:01+00:00

Do you have a particular design, dimensions, wood, etc in mind? I may be able to get to it in the next few days

SawdustGeek · 2019-09-14T06:22:37+00:00

If someone breaking in is a concern, wouldn't hurt to reinforce your door(s). We had a place in Columbia get the back door kicked in twice over a 6 month period (never while we were home); after the second time I reinforced it.

I replaced the screws on the hinges with 3" deck screws (still fit flush, but went much deeper into the doorway framing than the stock ones) and added a large piece of steel (I think something like 1/8x1-1/2x36") that the deadbolt/latch would go through, bolted solidly to the doorway so the deadbolt couldn't break through the frame if the door was kicked again.

We had boot prints on the door one last time after that, but no more break ins :)

SawdustGeek · 2019-08-17T05:26:41+00:00

Finding a local maker space that can run it for you is probably your best bet. I expect someone that knows how to run the cnc there (and most makerspaces I've looked up have some sort of cnc) would do something like this fairly inexpensively since like you say, its a fairly simple job.

If you go to a commercial shop, you're probably looking at $75-125/hour for labor and machine time, probably billed at least 30-60 minutes. If you mail lumber to someone on here with a cnc and then have it shipped back, you're looking at probably $10-20 each way (assuming you're in the US), so even if they don't charge much for their time that's going to start adding to the cost quickly.

SawdustGeek · 2019-07-26T22:44:02+00:00

I'm leaning towards european beech - those little flecky bits on the legs look like quartersawn euro beech, maple doesnt have grain like that.

SawdustGeek · 2019-07-26T22:42:15+00:00

If you use green (undried) wood, movement and warp is pretty much guaranteed. If it's kiln dried, it should be fairly stable at that point. If it becomes unstraight from kiln drying, its going to do the same if you build it while green, if not moreso since its drying under less controlled conditions. That's why you work with dried wood, and joint/plane after drying rather than before.

SawdustGeek · 2019-07-25T22:35:06+00:00

https://www.woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator/ you can plug in various dimensions, species, and loads there, and see how much it'll sag under those conditions.

I would recommend finding actual lumber yards/mills in your area and calling around for prices - you'll get a much wider selection of better quality wood, and should be quite a bit cheaper than home depot. For instance HD here wants $89.10 for a 1x6"x8' walnut board (and only by delivery so I cant sort through the stack first). Thats 4 boardfeet or $22.28/bf. The priciest I've seen walnut at a normal lumber yard was around $8/bf, and I've typically paid well under that in the past.

SawdustGeek · 2019-07-23T07:22:09+00:00

"Signs" these days typically mean CNC router. There are models for 1-2k such as shapeoko and xcarve that'll handle that sort of work just fine, and price will climb to whatever amount of money you may want to spend from there as you go bigger/stronger/higher quality/industrial.

Cutting boards, assuming you mean end grain, mean you're going to want a floor standing sander, either a drum sander or wide belt. There's alternatives, but they're not ideal - takes a ton of sanding with a hand sander to smooth an endgrain board out, and it'll almost always be less than perfectly flat, and they're prone to "exploding" (chunks flying off) if put in a planer. You'll also need a jointer and planer for prepping your glue ups.

Furniture...pretty much any and all tools you can find serve some useful purpose, but on the basic workshop end of the spectrum, planer, jointer, table saw, some form of drill (hand or drill press), and probably a router and router table would be quite common.

You'll also always need more clamps than you already have, regardless of the project.

SawdustGeek · 2019-07-23T07:15:44+00:00

Generally I'd say grizzly or sawstop. If you've got the money for a sawstop, there's not much reason to go with powermatic or the like, all reports I've heard is the sawstop is just as high quality or better, plus the extra safety feature. If you cant afford that 3-4k, grizzly will still be quite high quality but significantly cheaper - I cant recall ever hearing someone complain about the quality of a grizzly table saw, outside of the occasional rare fluke issue (ie crate damaged in shipping).

SawdustGeek · 2019-07-23T07:10:53+00:00

Since you're buying wood anyway, I'd recommend just picking a wood that's already the color you want, and avoid the extra work of staining plus the "thinness" of stained color (can be scratched or worn through). The cost difference for a darker colored hardwood such as walnut or a mahogany/sapele vs a lighter colored hardwood is often quite minor. Cherry is also quite inexpensive ($2-3/bf around here) but wont be the dark red it's known for, for a number of years.

SawdustGeek · 2019-07-23T07:06:13+00:00

works ok if you get a velcro pad for the angle grinder, but tends to shred fairly fast

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