I've contacted every lumber mill in my state, and went to numerous salvage yards looking for suitable wood to build beehives out of, and now I need to decide what to actually buy.
One salvage yard is offering radiata pine, 190x19mm, $6 per linear meter. The wood looks decent quality; it's straight, seems to be some sort of dress wood, doesn't have any smells or look off. It has a label on their from the manufacture, and I contacted them to confirm that it hasn't been chemically treated. A decent amount of the wood has knots in it, maybe one in four, but I'm able to buy the individual pieces that I like. Being able to buy individual pieces of wood is also an advantage, as I don't have to invest so much up front.
A local mill is offering me wood also. It's 245x19mm, going at $5.50 per linear meter. The cheap price is on the condition that I buy all 216 meters of it, which is close to $1200. It's also dressed pine, untreated, kiln dried, supposed to be straight. He tells me that he ordered this wood in for a client, but they didn't buy all of it and he now has this excess that he's looking to get rid of.
I no longer wish to build deep supers, and am looking to transition into using mediums. I note that, though, 245mm is about the height of a deep super; if I'm already acquiring wood at that depth, maybe I should just build deeps? I'm really not sure. Would I need to trim down the sides at all, since the deeps actual depth is 244.4750mm? I figure if I build mediums out of it, I should be able to use the 77mm spare on something, perhaps building bits for lids.
Buying the bulk package also means that I'm unable to cherry pick the good pieces of wood, and a lot of it could be knotted.
My last option is ordering wood from another state, and have it freighted to me. Freight and costs factored in, it's being sold for $5.2 per linear meter, at 245x22mm. Is there any benefit having that extra 3mm thickness?I have to buy 320 meters of it, which comes down to $1666. Been told that the wood is straight, he told me that it's not rough cut or dress timber, but rather it's "gage" wood, which he explained is a mixture of the two. Any ideas what they will mean, quality wise?
I also note that the local beekeeping supply yard is selling unassembled mediums supers for $24; my rough calculations suggests that I can build two for the price of one, by buying the timber and cutting it myself.
I have a little amount of money, so need to carefully consider my options here. I'd like to build enough to capture a good 20-30 swarms this spring, and have plenty of supers to fill them in, and also sell some equipment off a local barter site called gumtree, but I'm not sure how much I actually need.