In my opinion, the Rockler baltic birch is better than the Woodpeckers stuff from Amazon, but not enough to justify the price difference. Sacrifice the worst sheets to test cuts and prototypes and you’ll still be ahead cost-wise.
Another place to try is Crosscut Hardwoods down on First Ave S (south of Spokane St.). They have 5x5 sheets of 1/8" BB. Not sure about the price, but in my limited experience with them in the past they’re usually in the “expensive but worth it” category. Besides baltic birch, they have a wide variety of hardwood-veneer plywoods with and MDF core, though most only go down to 1/4".
A full sheet of BB is twice that here in CT. I’ve been buying it and cutting it down on the table saw for years but will also buy the 48 pack from Amazon when I’m lazy
These guys look pretty great. Given how simple the search was, I assume there’s something wrong with them?
They list 5x5 BB for $13. They also seem to carry a ton of interesting stuff under “craftwood”, but their prices seem about in line with Woodcraft locations.
Chinook lumber is just down the road from me and has a few 1/8" choices. Prices are listed on their website if you add it to cart. http://www.chinooklumber.com/
Second for Cross Cut Hardwoods in SODO. I’ve used them a lot over the years for wood projects. Not the cheapest place around but good quality, honest, and just walking around the wood racks there is awesome. I’m still working off of shop scraps but will probably be hitting them up in the next month as well.
Hi folks, just stumbled across this thread. Not sure it’s still relevant, but I just spoke to Crosscut hardwoods in Seattle, they have 3mm baltic birch in 5x5’ for approx. $15, with the downside that both faces are BB (read potentially plugged), but of course you can pick and choose your sheets. They of course also have thicker material which I am just mentioning because it was of interest to me as well, baltic birch in 6mm retails for approx. $22 for a 5x5’ sheet and $42 for a 4x8’ sheet.
Thought so as well. One thing to note though: what I have not been able to check yet is how much you’ll have to deal with glue that you can’t cut through. Not sure I can bring a bright enough light to the store to inspect each sheet , so it’ll likely come down to buying a few sheets and seeing how it goes.
In general, baltic is baltic. I would bring calipers before i’d bring a light. Thickness variations are a bigger deal… I’ve gotten .13 and .12 thick from the same vendor, and had much easier time with the .12 stuff.
Update. Went shopping at Crosscut yesterday. Fabulous shop, TONS of great material for the woodworker and some very nice and helpful folks there. I grabbed four sheets 5x5 3mm for a grand total of $72.67. The folks at crosscut were nice enough to cut the sheets into 20(ish) inch strips for me, made it much easier for me to transport that than sailing four 25sqft sails down the highway. I broke the sheets down further at home and ended up with 60 sheets roughly 20x12 (minus n * table saw kerf).
@evansd2: since you highlighted the variance in thickness as a potential problem for you: a few spot checks across multiple sheets seem to indicate that the thickness of these is pretty consistent, just over 3mm (3.10, 3.08, 3.11). I went over all of my sheets and checked them for voids and internal glue patches. As anticipated, there are quite a few.
For me those patches are a problem for a variety of projects, since I work with living hinges quite a bit, and a big void or glue patch will simply not work for those projects. But… knowing where there are issues with the sheets makes it relatively easy to place my shapes accordingly. One thing of note: the crosscut sheets feel distinctly more wobbly than woodpecker, and the outside veneers are a tiny bit thinner. I’ll update this once i have cut a few sheets on the Glowforge.
, so it’ll likely come down to buying a few sheets and seeing how it goes.
