Most clients ask, somewhere in the first conversation, where the wood comes from. Tell you what — it's the right question. The answer changes the whole project. So here's the answer.
Most of the lumber in our work comes from within fifty miles of the shop. Some weeks it's all from within twenty.
The big one: Connecticut Hardwoods, up Route 7
Ed runs Connecticut Hardwoods up in Falls Village. We've been driving up there twice a month for fifteen years. They carry every domestic species I might want for a kitchen or a built-in — white oak, red oak, cherry, walnut, maple, ash, hickory — in plain-sawn, rift-cut, and quarter-sawn, in 4/4 through 8/4 thicknesses, in select-and-better and FAS grades. They run their own kiln. Most of what they sell came from a sawmill within a hundred miles of Falls Village.
I rejected three batches of walnut up there last fall before the fourth was right. Ed didn't take it personally. He's been doing this longer than I have.
The other one: a small operation up in Cornwall Bridge
Frank runs a one-man mill up in Cornwall Bridge. He buys logs at auction, mills them on a Wood-Mizer, air-dries some and sends the rest to Connecticut Hardwoods to kiln. I go to Frank for figured stock — curly maple, fiddleback, the occasional spalted piece — and for slabs when a job calls for them. He charges what figured stock is worth, which is more than most people expect, but he saves the best of his cuts for shops that bring him steady work. We've earned that over twenty years.
Frank also has the only bandsaw mill in the area where you can ask "do you have anything weird right now" and get a real answer. Most of what's "weird" is just unusual figure or species. Sometimes it's a board nobody else would buy.
When you have to go further
Sometimes we do. Quarter-sawn white oak in a width over twelve inches, that's not always at Connecticut Hardwoods. There's a yard outside Albany that runs bigger stock. For something specific — English brown oak, lacewood, certain exotic species — we go to Hearne Hardwoods in Pennsylvania and have it shipped. That happens twice a year, maybe.
Cherry from the Catskills shows up sometimes through Connecticut Hardwoods. Pennsylvania walnut shows up sometimes through Frank. Maple from Vermont almost always. The supply chains for hardwood in the Northeast are connected in ways most clients don't know about. The wood you're buying went through three or four hands before it got to me.
Why local matters
A few things, in order of importance.
The wood is acclimated. New England hardwood, kiln-dried in New England, used in a New England house, is the wood that's least likely to move on you. Every transport from a different climate is a humidity stress test. Local wood passes the test before the test happens.
You can see the trees. I've actually walked the woodlot where some of Frank's cherry comes from. That's not romantic — it's information. I know what the soil is like, what the slope does, why the grain reads the way it does. It changes how I cut for a project.
The supply is steady. Same shop, same kiln, same sawyers. When I want a specific batch of white oak, I can call Ed and have him hold it. I can't do that with a lumberyard six states away.
The dollars stay local. If you care about that, and a lot of clients do, this matters. The check I write to Connecticut Hardwoods buys hours for sawyers and kiln operators in Litchfield County. That's not nothing.
What it costs you
Local hardwood costs roughly the same as imported domestic stock. Sometimes a hair more, sometimes a hair less. The pricing isn't where local-vs-not gets decided. It gets decided on selection (local has less of the unusual stuff) and on lead time (if I want a specific batch, I might wait three weeks).
What I tell clients
If you're hiring a finish carpenter and you don't know where the wood comes from, ask. Doesn't matter what answer you get — what matters is whether the carpenter knows.
If he can't tell you, he's buying from whoever's cheapest that week. Which is fine. It just isn't the kind of work I do.