Big Box surprise

I never expected to find thick, live-edge boards at my local Big Box store. While shopping for odds and ends, I did a double take as I walked past the lumber racks. In the board section was a selection of live-edge stock. All were 6/4 pine or fir, 6’ long, and available in 7", 13" and 20" widths.

They weren’t bad, either. I rummaged through the racks to find that most were very straight and flat. Some had interesting knots and figure that would look good for a tabletop.

Most surprising was that the prices weren’t terrible, considering that it’s a Big Box store – $45, $60 and $85, from small to large.

Once home I did some Googling and found that my Big Box store (a blue one) wasn’t the only one now stocking these. I went to the orange Big Box store website, and they have them, too. They only had one type in-store, a 6/4 x 25" x 98" live-edge slab for, yikes, $420. However, they had a very large variety online available for ship-to-store, including hardwoods.

Sure, you can get better and cheaper slabs from a real wood monger – I paid only $40 for a 5’ x 22” slab of 8/4 pine, and it was nicer. The thing of it is, the average amateur woodworker doesn’t always know about those places. For them, a Big Box store is often their only source of stock.

But this opens an entirely new area for beginning woodworkers to expand what they do by supplying material they might not otherwise have access to. And anything that helps encourage new woodworkers to up their game is, to my way of thinking, a very good thing.