I’m in Rochester, haven’t given much thought to where I’ll get my materials but I’ll be watching what you two have to say. I know there are some leather suppliers and a couple hardwood suppliers near by. I haven’t checked them out yet but need to get stock for my lathe also.
I just did my kitchen floor in bamboo and the scrap/remainder of material will be pit to good use. Price wasn’t bad.
A good lumber yard will have 1/8 or 1/4 inch veneer ply at a decent price.
@Joshua @tbelhumer Sorry for the long reply… holidays. I just called a couple suppliers and found THE best rates for clear acrylic sheet.
100.69$ for quarter inch thick (0.236) 48x96. They have an additional cutting charge of 25$.
85.29$ for 1/8th inch thick 48x96 sheet on colored acrylic, most colors (I asked about blue and translucent blue, same price).
The place is called crown plastics, located in plymouth mn. I know I’m going to be picking up a 1500$ order when the GF arrives. 
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I noted a lot of olive wood in Provence, France. The dark spalting might pose a design challenge but it is a neat wood for cutting boards. Any source anyone know of here? Has anyone lasered
it?
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Couldn’t help myself…I have a source right here, but they are still growing. These are three different types of olive trees…two of them Sicilian and the other one, Greek. Two of them are on the left and so small they are difficult to see. I brined my first batch of green olives (all 17 of them) from the big tree last winter. Really fun, but needless to say, I have to do some tweaking on my recipe. I’m guess that olive wood would be rather hard…is it?
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It’s not cheap is it. Here’s an Etsy shop that I think was from germany. It is a beautiful wood. My first thought was that it would look great for turning, but it apparently has a lot of voids which would make it a challenge.
Some day I’ll head to St. Peters near St. Louis and visit the exotic and hardwoods store there. It might give me a good feel for prices of materials and see what everyone is talking about with some of these woods that I don’t find on my property. There is one wood I’m looking for and that is persimmon. Hard to find big blocks of it. I only have 4" diameter trees at the moment, but I am aware of some pretty good large persimmon trees that would make some dandy hardwood some day.
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Thanks. Good to know what is available and prices.
@marmak3261, I’m curious about persimmon. Is it really hard? I pick persimmons around here, and you’re not supposed to climb the trees because they’re so unpredictable.
I forgot to mention, that with them, you get the actual piece of wood that you see on their website.
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It’s been referenced as white ebony. Hard to find big pieces. In Missouri you can come across some older trees here and there. Mine are all understory. 30 feet tall and five inches diameter!
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Love olive wood. My parents have a huge king size headboard in burled or Birdseye olive. With matching end tables. Must be over 30 years old. Still looks great
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Here is a day at the sawmill. My brother had three big oak logs to process that he rescued from firewood. Tough job. Burned out a winch in the process. He knows a guy with a band mill. I went up to see them process the last log. Hot day for working out doors. Anyway, I have a source of rough sawn wood that I can dimension myself.
Here is the mill in action.
And here is a closeup of a slab of white oak.
Here are the other two logs stickered and stacked.
And here is wood already dried: red cedar, hard maple, soft maple, sycamore, red oak, white oak, walnut, black locust, hickory, and red elm. I think we will trade laser time for wood.
And here is walnut that awaits milling.
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I know that’s hot and dirty work, but it also looks like a lot of fun!
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Your brother has a nice collection. Great that you’ll be able to trade. My landlord just took down a large Butternut, I’ll turn a few bowls & make a few short boards if the grain is interesting, usually it isn’t.
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Fantastic! Walnut fresh out of the laser smells amazing.
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Has anyone used Mesquite wood in the laser? I know it’s a fairly hard wood, wasn’t sure how it’d hold up in the Glowforge.
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We could always test some Verawood.
Known to be one of the hardest in the world. It’s definitely not the easiest to work with but if you want to test how well it cuts some tough wood then it would be interesting.
http://www.wood-database.com/verawood/
It does mention being high in oil though…
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Actually tried to cut it with an 80w laser once. No love.
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