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[Kerry Verne]

A friend is hunting for hardwood flooring and bemoaned their poor stock management skills . 'In stock' meant there was 5 square feet left. This left me thinking that that paltry amount might be cheaply acquired, giving me 3/4" stock.

Has anyone tried using flooring stock? I figure I'll have to plane off the finish and trim off the tongue and groove, but it might be a cheap source for rosewood stock. ($2/sf)

[Canuck]

Actually I have done some early puzzle stuff with oak flooring, however most if not all have grooves on the underside which will need to be dealt with and of course it reduces it's effective working size
The other household wood that is good is kitchen cabinets, I've also used that as well from a prior home reno.  You can't beat reclaimed wood for its 'stable' factor, the kitchen cabinets I used was some of the straightest/stable wood I've ever used!  A lot of times these cabinets get thrown in the dumpster

[Kerry Verne]

Good point.. cutting out the groove and the tongue/groove might not leave me with much left.

[Scott Peterson]

I made lots of my early Pennyhedron puzzles from flooring.  You do lose some thickness due to planing off the grooves from the undersice, but I still think flooring scraps would be great for making boxes for packing puzzles.  Also, if you can find quartersawn flooring, that would be a bit more stable than flatsawn.  Most of the wood expansion takes place in the direction tangential to the growth rings - or in the thickness direction for quartersawn lumber.  This seemed to work pretty well for the Pennyhedrons I used to make.

I also heard that the finishes put on flooring these days might be hard on the planer blades...

[Robert Yarger]

I used hardwood flooring stock to make the (unseen) base plate for my checkmate box.  It worked so well, I will use it many times more in the future for panels that are unseen.  I glued several boards together to make planks 1 ft wide and then used it just like a 1/4 inch board to cut into sizes.  Eliminates problems with warping, is very strong, and when compared to the time and cost of using regular wood plained down to size, it is a real winner.

[Stephen Chin]

Here in Aussie land we have Cypress flooring T+G, 20 mm thick x 90 mm to 120 mm width. Removing the T+G also squares up the edges. We also have Jarrah  and Iron wood decking, round edges which also have to be squared.
I am forever looking for 5 or 6 multi colour woods for my puzzles, they are a cheap prototype source, but has lots of checks and cracks when dry. At 18 to 19 mm thick, good source for Rhomboind, pentas and hexas, as well as most of Coffins tetras etc.
Cypress colours vary from very dark to pale yellow white,good grain patterns ,smells nice and easy to work with, but very fine dust.  I recomend them