The price of lumber is ridiculous now, and people are having a hard time paying these high prices. If you can save a few dollars buying cheaper lumber are you actually saving money? Is it better to pay more for quality lumber?
Cheap Is Not Always The Best
In this example, I will be talking about 1"x4"x8' common pine and poplar wood. These are both softwoods that you can purchase at the big box stores. At the time of this blog, the cost of one board of common pine 1"x4"x8' is $6.98 and poplar is $2.90 a linear foot which comes out to $23.20 a board. So the obvious answer is to buy common pine which will save you a lot of money when building your project. No, that is not the correct thinking. Yes, you will save upfront costs, but you will quickly realize that your project will not be the same quality as if you used a better grade of lumber. Common pine is very low-grade lumber that has many knots, splits, cups, bows, and every other problem you can think of. They don't dry common pine as well as higher quality lumber so after you spend hours, blood, sweat, tears, and lots of screaming building your project...and getting everything plumb and tight with seams, you will notice after a few months your seams are not tight anymore and the lumber that was straight is now warped. While you build it all of these knots in the lumber keep falling out and you have to either live with it or scrap the piece. After a long time, your piece will start looking cheap and all that time you spent making it look beautiful has now been a waste.
High quality
If you were to use poplar instead of pine you'd see there are no knots in the wood. The wood is kiln-dried properly and doesn't have all of the imperfections that common pine has. Using poplar you will see that the quality of the project looks so much better and will last much longer. I'm not saying pine doesn't have its place in your building projects. Depending on what you are making common pine might be fine. When I make my cornhole boards I use common pine. I recently used common pine for some adult-themed signs I had at the market. But if you plan on creating a piece of furniture that you want to last for a long time, stay away from common pine. Spend a few dollars more and purchase better-quality lumber. Your future self will thank you.
Conclusion
You can choose from a variety of woods for your project. We have to get out of the mindset that just because it's low-cost means we should use it to save money. It's cheap for a reason. Once you get better at creating projects for customers you will start using higher-quality materials such as walnut, hard maple, ambrosia maple, or any other of the many hardwoods. The quality and look of these products are incomparable to cheaper alternatives. What are your favorite woods to work with? Check out my site www.askalexww.com to get your next unique piece.