Looking for wood building material cut in standard American sizes. (yeah, I know…good luck…)
I’m constructing a Vocal Booth for studio applications. I’m not much of a carpenter, but I can get by well enough. I have a set of plans for building the booth, but everything’s measured to American sizes. (4x8 sheets of MDF/OSB…2x4’s…etc…all in inches/feet) I originally didn’t think this would be a problem, but once I got a good look at the plans, I realized that they’re VERY specific. Being how this thing MUST be soundproof, everything must line up perfectly. Since most everything here is measured using the metric system, it kind of screws up my plans. Even a few mm’s off would screw the whole thing up. I’ve talked to some lumber yards about cutting what they have to the specific sizes I need…but even they admit that it would still be ‘chabuduo’.
I’ve talked with one wood-working guy who claims he can get me American sizes of whatever I need, but can’t get me samples to see first. (pay then get). I’m not to keen on taking his word for it - for him, a few mm’s off is probably considered good enough.
I’m probably up the creek on this one, but thought I’d ask here before throwing in the towel.
Most wood shops that I go to have 4x8 sheets of plywood. They also have 3x7s I’ve never actually seen a 2x4 here. You could try getting 2x2s and laminating them together.
I’m interested in looking at those plans. I was thinking about making a sound box for recording stuff.
All of the wood shops I have been to so far haven’t had anything at all in metric. All in inches so far as I can tell. Weird! I have constructed several things in the past and have had a devil of a job changing plans to points of a CM just because nothing squares up in centimeters. Nothing I tell you!
Can’t you readjust the plans to whole CM measures? Pics of the plans?
Or just go with a few mm’s off and fill the cracks with that door seal/sound insulation foam stuff. The pieces of wood might all be cut a bit off anyway.
Ok, now this is giving me some hope! I went to three lumber yards (south Taiwan) and measured everything they had. Seemed almost everything measured up to an exact mm. Was looking for 3/4 inch MDF or OSB, but could only find something slightly smaller or larger. They had something similar to a 2X4, but was a bit wider than 4", and slightly less than 2". Nothing even close to a 1X2.
Off topic…but the quality of wood here is horrible; specifically talking about the studs. No such thing as ‘premium’ lumber here, eh? (Not that I was expecting to find it)
Maybe I’ll order one of the 2X4’s off that guy and see what he gives me…
Not much luck finding good quality wood either, all I could find was lauan that was rough sawn, and not even dried properly (if at all) because just about all of them warps and twists like crazy. I guess woodworking isn’t something Taiwanese is good at… its mostly concrete work here.
Construction isn’t so bad but when you get into luthiery and you want to find decent wood, that frustration about poor quality wood will multiply by a million times.
I know. I’d really like to find something decent to make a cigar-box guitar neck with, and eventually a kind of DIY bass, but I never see anything that decent.
I find a lot of the plywoods and veneers here to be very good quality but the lumber is usually too rough. Wish I had a planer.
I found a supplier for wood in Jayi, sorry its all I can think of right now. They supply guitar woods to guitar suppliers, and they got tons of scrap that you can repurpose for other things too. I got a few woods from them. In fact I have 2 planks of African Mahogany in my house right now if you want it, you can have it! I got it for making guitar necks. They are rough sawn however so you will need it planed, you can do it by hand or otherwise if you know how! One advise, if you are going there make sure you know what to look for in wood, they will NOT know anything about it, and you need to season any wood you get from them because they do not have a good concept drying wood since they mostly supply veneered plywood so they are usually cut wet. They have planers so if you get wood from them plane it right there and then!