Q. Where does hardwood lumber come from? How can I lower lumber prices?

Q. We made a table out of an 8 inch wide piece of lumber and I can guarantee that the top was flat when we shipped it, but now the customer has said that the individual pieces are cupped. Indeed, when I inspected it, he is correct. We were careful to make sure that all the pieces had the grain running the same direction (heart side down) to give a nice look. We did screw the top to the metal frame but the screws pulled out. What advice can you give?

Q. We are a medium-sized shop and find ourselves with a little bit of extra KD lumber that we want to keep safely without a change in moisture. How can we do this?

Q: Where can I locate a very complete listing of most of the exotic woods of the world, which specifically lists specific gravities, densities and weight-per-board-foot. I'm currently building up a few samples using wenge, padouk, zebrawood, purpleheart and bubinga. That is our marketing niche using the highest quality exotics at affordable prices.

Q: We've been having a finishing problem. We're seeing differences that aren't acceptable in the way that yellow birch and white birch finish; that is, they don't look the same after finishing. Can you shed some light on this?

Q: Can you tell me what is causing us to see a very bumpy, wavy surface when planing? We are running at about 12 knife cuts per inch, but we see a lot of waves anyway.

Q. I saw you speak earlier about the housing market. Could you go over that again?

Q. I was shown two pieces of lumber, one 6-1/2 inches wide and 12 feet long and another almost an inch wider (not quite 7-1/2 inches wide) and 12 feet long and the grader said both were counted as 6 BF. The grader commented to me that some mills produced a lot of this narrow lumber. If our grader is correct, 6-1/2 inches x 12 feet is 936 square inches, while 7-1/2 inches x 12 feet is 1080 inches which is 15 percent more wood. Or I figure that 6-1/2-inch pieces are 15 percent less. I also know that our percentage yield with 6-1/2 inches is a bit lower than from 7-1/2-inch pieces, but this a bit scary. Is this right? What is going on?

Q. We have a pin-type moisture meter with a hammer probe connected with wire to our instrument. Sometimes when I take this into the kiln to measure the moisture, the lowest reading I can get is 12 percent MC. Any ideas why?

Q. I have some epoxy glue joints that are not very strong. I know the surfaces are not too smooth, and that is why I am using epoxy. I have increased the pressure but with no luck. What next?