Wood choice

Almost all of my furniture projects are made with dried lumber. This is for two reasons: 1) I live in suburbia and obtaining a good green log is problematic and 2) my shop time is highly variable.

A log suitable for riving needs to be pretty large. Your largest board will be about 40% of the diameter of the log it's split from. At best. So 20"-24" minimum is the size you are looking at for all but the smaller projects. Secondly, it has to be really straight. Otherwise, it will be hard to split and the resulting boards will be very twisty and you'll plane away a lot of material getting something you can use. These trees grow in a real forest, not someone's yard.

Yard trees are notorious for their defects. In addition to nails and other metal objects potentially embedded in them, they are subject to a lot of stress from the wind and grow more open due to the available sunlight. So it grows broadly, gets blown around a lot and shot full of BBs. This makes crappy twisty grain.

It's not uncommon for months to go by between projects so unless some green wood becomes available at just the right time, it will dry out too much before I can work it. For wood like oak, that's the worst of both worlds. The surface is hard and stringy, but it's not fully dry and will move substantially as it dries.

I am much more interested in a quality item than a fully period production process, so I use dried wood. When I retire and move to the country green woodworking will become a viable option.

My lumber is sourced from two places:

• Auctions - I attend personal property auctions in the nearby rural areas to buy tools for my tool business, sometimes these include rough lumber as well. If it's a good deal, I buy some and stash it in my shed. It's is usually a pretty good deal. Usually, they are from trees on the property or nearby so it's mostly red/white oak, walnut, and cherry. Cut at a local mill or mobile mill and air-dried. Quality runs the gamut, but it's cheap.

• Local lumber yard - If I need something specific that's not in the lumber shed already, it's off to the lumber yard. Almost always this will be kiln-dried commercially harvested wood. So the quality is high, as is the price. Almost anything that's still commercially harvested is available.

In the period, furniture could be made with either dried wood or green wood depending on a number of variables. Generally speaking, the later in the period and/or the higher status the item, the more likely it would be made with dried wood. Vernacular furniture is probably mostly green, but little of it survives, so it's hard to say for certain.