What to Ask Any Importer Before You Buy Hardwood

I sit on the buying end of this conversation about as often as the selling end. I buy wood, I ship it, I land it here in Chicago, and I sell it. So I have been the one asking the questions, and I know which ones tell you something about whoever is on the other end of the phone — and which ones just get you a confident answer that means nothing. If you are about to buy hardwood from an importer, me or anybody else, this is the list I would use.

If you buy for a shop, a furniture program or a specified project, the trade page covers how I set those accounts up. The questions below apply no matter who you end up buying from.

What is it, by botanical name?

Start here, because trade names are loose and some are nearly meaningless. The same common name gets hung on several unrelated woods depending on who is selling. A botanical name does not move around. What I import is Tectona grandis — plantation-grown teak out of Ecuador — and I will say that on the phone, in writing, or standing in front of the lift.

Ask for the two-word name. A brand name, a region or a shrug in its place tells you plenty in ten seconds.

Where did it grow, and how did it get here?

Not every seller knows. Wood often changes hands three or four times between the mill and the person who answers your call, and each hand knows a little less about it. An importer who brought the wood in can tell you the country, the kind of forestry behind it, and how long the chain is between the tree and you. Mine is short on purpose: I buy it, I bring it in, I sell it. You are not catching anybody out — you are finding out whether the person quoting you has ever seen the wood.

What has been done to it, and what has not?

This is the question that saves the most arguments later, and almost nobody asks it plainly. My answer for the lumber: it is kiln-dried — 100 percent of it — and it is sold surfaced two sides, which means both wide faces have been through a planer and are flat and parallel to each other. The edges have not been machined. Your shop still joints a reference edge, rips to width off it, and takes a final pass to your own thickness.

What kiln-dried does not mean is that a board walks into your building already in step with it. Give stock time on sticks where it will be worked, with air on all four sides of the stack. Any seller who tells you a board will never move again is selling you something other than wood.

How is it measured, and when?

Hardwood is sold by volume, not by the piece, and the honest version of that has two halves. My teak lumber is sold on 4/4 nominal board feet, with the tally taken at loading.

Nominal means you are buying the board as it was sawn, before the planer took its share — the convention across the hardwood trade, and the only one that stays honest once stock has been surfaced. Tally at loading means the count is taken board by board on the wood going out, at the moment it goes, rather than estimated off an average or carried forward from a list made weeks ago. Ask when the count happens. If the answer is vague, so is the count.

Am I talking to the importer or to somebody in the middle?

There is nothing wrong with a broker. There is a lot wrong with not knowing you are talking to one. A middleman cannot tell you what the wood looks like today, cannot hold a lot for you, and cannot fix anything without a phone call of his own. Ask directly: do you own this wood, is it in your building, and will you answer when I call back?

Can I come and look at it?

Yes is the only good answer. A real seller has a real address with real wood on the floor and will let you stand in front of it. Photos help, and I will take whatever angle you ask for, but a photograph flattens wood. If you cannot travel, the next best thing is a seller who describes what is on hand without rounding it in his own favor — including the parts you will not like.

What can you not do?

Every seller has limits. I do not pre-select boards against a cut list, I do not carry every length in quantity at all times, and I do not pretend what is here is the only wood that could suit a job. A seller with no limits at all, who answers everything with yes, is either not listening or not being straight with you — and you find out which after you have paid.

What happens if it is wrong when it arrives?

Ask before you need the answer. Who you call, how quickly, what is made right and what is not. Put it in writing if the order matters to you. The answer tells you whether this is one transaction to the seller or the first of several.

The short version

Name the wood, trace it, learn what has been done to it, understand the count, know who you are talking to, go and see it, and ask what happens when something goes wrong. A few minutes on the phone sorts a serious supplier from a confident voice faster than any amount of reading.

I answer my own phone, and I would rather spend twenty minutes on these questions than have you find the answers out later. If you want to walk through what is on hand, the Ecuadorian teak lumber listings are the place to start.

Norman Jimenez
(773) 584-7334
info@platinumluxuryteak.com