Sometimes Craigslist can be your friend.

I sometimes take a look at Craigslist to see what I can find. Last week I found something good.

There was an advert for some leftover wood. The gentleman had been doing some work in his house – shelves, cabinets, that sort of thing and had some wood left over. Monday I picked it up and it was much more than I had expected:

3/4 oak:
9″ x 10′, 7″ x 12′, 5″ x 10′, 5″ x 8′, 6″ x 5′, 5″ x 6′, 2″ x 7′,
11″ x 4′, 12″ x 4′, 4 pieces of 8/4 x 30″ (they looked like they were
supposed to be the legs of something as they have some mortising done to
them), 7/4 x 4″ x 3′, and assorted smaller pieces.

3/4″ soft maple:
8″ x 10′, 5″ x 9′

assorted bits of pine shelving.

Some of the assorted smaller pieces are too thin to use in our normal cube puzzles so I have something else in mind for them. Since I’m not entirely sure yet that I’ll be able to get permission to build them I’ll not go into more detail yet.

An amazing amount of wood. And Jeff’s only request? Remember him when we make our first million from our puzzles.

A very nice person (and he can now park in his garage again

Now that the Soma cubes for the movie are done, I spent a couple of hours out in the garage cutting up the already sized wood I picked up at Paxton’s. When I picked it up I thought it was oak, but once I started cutting it I changed my mind.

It sort of had the look of oak, but it was entirely the wrong color – a greenish gray. When I cut it I got little “shards” of wood. It also lacked the smell of fresh cut oak.

I hit up my experts on both the Charles Neil and the Eons woodworking sites. The consensus was that this is ash. So ash it is.

When I was done cutting up what I had, we ended up with enough little cubes for 18 3x3x3 puzzles and two pentomino sets. We’ll be building 6 each of Soma, 30 Minute, and Interlock puzzles, along with the two pentomino sets.

In addition to all of that, I have enough ends that are long enough to put together a notched packing puzzle as well.

And this was only the first of the wood that I picked up from Paxton’s – there’s a lot more yet to come.