I wanted a specific wood for a gift. This wood comes from the Pacific Northwest, so I couldn't exactly drive over to the store and pick some up. And the folks at Case responded "Never heard of that", so no help there.

Then I found https://www.ancestree.io/

It's a service that allows lumber providers to find buyers for their products, often recovered from trees that had to be taken down (so, yay for not wasting it). It's sort of like "Etsy, but for planks".

I paid more for the shipping than I did the wood, but I'm getting the piece of wood that I want. I got connected to a local guy in the PNW, we exchanged some emails, he made a cut (that I would have made) to resize it so we could lower the high shipping cost. A very pleasant, if expensive, experience.

It's only one data point, but it's a good one. If you really need some Big Leaf Maple or some Pacific Madrone or maybe some Myrtle (and who knows what else) and you can't find it locally, this option may help you get what you want.

If you want the details, you always need to read to the end. I bought a plank of Pacific Madrone (similar in hardness to Hard Maple) to make a large end-grain cutting board for my wife. When we lived on the side of a mountain in Oregon, we had huge Pacific Madrones all around the opening in the forest.. When I learned that they are particularly prized for butcher blocks, it was just a matter of (somehow) getting a plank. The plank was $45 and the shipping was $60.