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Great prices, great service, great lumber for the hobbyist, craftsman or professional woodworker. Serving Greensboro, Winston Salem, High Point, Raleigh, Charlotte, and surrounding areas. Come on by, take a look and you'll see some wood that will make your eyes light up.
Quartersawn White Oak is Now Available
Also available: 8/4 and 12/4 Walnut Slabs
12/4 Cherry Slabs
Also available: 8/4 and 12/4 Walnut Slabs
12/4 Cherry Slabs
GPS Hardwoods is a small, friendly, family owned lumber operation specializing in producing furniture grade lumber located in Kernersville, NC between Greensboro and Winston Salem. We sell a variety of high quality kiln dried and planed hardwood sawn from trees harvested locally in North Carolina, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania to hobbyists, craftsmen and professionals who want great wood for a great price. We try to make buying top quality hardwood an enjoyable and stress free experience, and take pride in having a clean, neighborly place for you to check out our lumber. Take a look at our "Lumber Inventory" link at the top of page, to see what we currently have for sale.
I am a woodworker, and furniture maker and have lived in North Carolina area for nearly 12 years. I used to spend more time looking for quality hardwood lumber than I did building my woodworking projects and when I found some, it was low quality, incredibly overpriced, air dried, or turned into potato chips by someone else's attempt at kiln drying. So we took the bull by the horns and started a small lumber kiln operation 2 years ago to provide high grade furniture lumber for ourselves. Soon word got around, other folks liked working with our lumber, our business grew little by little, and now we use a local sawmill and our kiln to provide top quality hardwood to hobbyists and professional wood workers alike in the Triad and surrounding areas.
Our customers range from hobbyists, homeowners, carpenters, cabinet and furniture makers, professional musical instrument makers, wood carvers, to folks who just want to build a doghouse or front porch bench. We put a lot of effort into producing top quality hardwood lumber and are very proud of the wood we sell. I won't sell a board that I wouldn't use myself. People sometimes ask if we deal in exotics, I tell them "Yes, North Carolina exotics!" The reason I say this is that most people never get a chance to see the beautiful and amazing wood available in this area. Who needs wood from overseas when our native wood is as pretty and unique?
If you are wondering why our lumber would look any different from the stuff you can buy in the big box stores, it's because the wood sold commercially by franchise stores is specifically processed to dull out the highlights in order to reduce batch to batch color variability. For example, the walnut sold by big box stores in California needs to look the same as the walnut sold in North Carolina or Florida. So big commercial kilns use processes to flatten out unique colors and pigments so everything looks the same. They intentionally color level it. So if you buy walnut from the box store, you would be paying twice as much and go home with bland wood you are forced to make look good with a bucketful of wood stain and other finishing techniques. We do just the opposite. We use gentle, low temperaure processes to bring out and preserve the true colors of the wood, so it looks a natural as possible. The best way to finish our wood is with just a quick wipe of finishing oil. Its kind of like buying a hamburger; you can get a bland, processed one from the local fast food joint and drown it with ketchup and mustard to make it edible, or you can get a really delicious one cooked with care by a real chef or backyard grillmaster that makes your mouth water. I'm not saying I can cook the best hamburgers, but I will say that there is a reason we have customers drive from distant areas to purchase lumber from us. Our lumber has been described as "Wow Wood" because that's a common phrase we hear all the time when folks see the colors, grain and vibrancy of our lumber.
Logs - Our lumber comes trees grown in the Appalachian mountains from North Carolina to Pennsylvania. Since we try to utilize the whole tree and waste very little, we end up with multiple grades of wood, from premium lumber to rustic. We work with local professional loggers, top quality sawmills and log brokers to help us find premium logs. We know that great lumber only comes from great logs, and we spend a considerable amount of time and effort tracking down the best logs in North Carolina, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. It's not easy finding these high quality logs, and sometime our stock of lumber runs low, but we won't compromise and buy low quality logs and try to pawn them off as the good stuff.
Logs - Our lumber comes trees grown in the Appalachian mountains from North Carolina to Pennsylvania. Since we try to utilize the whole tree and waste very little, we end up with multiple grades of wood, from premium lumber to rustic. We work with local professional loggers, top quality sawmills and log brokers to help us find premium logs. We know that great lumber only comes from great logs, and we spend a considerable amount of time and effort tracking down the best logs in North Carolina, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. It's not easy finding these high quality logs, and sometime our stock of lumber runs low, but we won't compromise and buy low quality logs and try to pawn them off as the good stuff.
Log End Sealing - We inspect and trim the ends of the logs to ensure we have the best quality sections to work with. Then we end seal the logs with Anchorseal, a product specifically formulated to prevent logs and lumber from end splitting. This ensures that our logs don't degrade in the log yard and make it to our sawmill in the best shape possible.
Milling - Although we expend a lot of effort finding the best quality logs, we take it to the next level sawing them correctly. We use specialized milling techniques called grade sawing and parallel bark sawing to get the highest possible grade and yield from the logs. Without a doubt, there is a lot more to sawing lumber than hacking at a log like its a piece of cheese! We work with local, high quality sawmills to get the best boards in the area, and each and every board is hand inspected by us, and must meet our very high standards. Although we get inquiries quite often, we don't mill customer logs,
Kiln Drying and Sterilization - We have a Nyle Kiln that we use to carefully dry and sterilize all our wood to 7% - 8% moisture content and then hold at 145 degrees for 24 hours to kill any possible insects or mold. The sterilization ensures that you are not going to build a piece of beautiful furniture only to look under it one day and see a small pile of sawdust under it where the bugs have been chewing. We consider sterilization a critical step, and will not sell a piece of kiln dried wood that has not undergone the process, its just too risky.
Surfacing and Planing - Most of our lumber is not rough sawn, instead its "skip" planed, both sides, to 15/16 inch. We take the extra step to run all our wood through a planer. This is a time consuming and laborious step, but cleans up 90% to 100% of both surfaces of the boards, and brings everything to a consistent thickness allowing us to inspect and grade each and every board. From a customer standpoint, this has several benefits. Buying nearly 1 inch thick planed lumber allows building a greater variety of projects than standard 3/4 inch lumber. Many woodworkers have very effective but light duty planers that can't take big bites, but work very well to further plane to 3/4 if desired. Additionally, have you ever spent good money on rough sawn lumber, planed it at home, then discovered the wood wasn't as high a quality as you thought, with unexpected knots, sticker stain, or other defects? Maybe you couldn't even get a real board out of it, because the defects wouldn't plane out, or it was too thin? I've had this frustrating experience happen to me when I bought rough sawn lumber from other sawmills, so I make sure it doesn't happen to you. With us, you get to see exactly what you are buying, no surprises. We just purchased a 30" industrial Whitney planer, and can further plane your boards down to 3/4 inch if you want, while you wait. We are very serious about making sure you get top quality boards.
Surfacing and Planing - Most of our lumber is not rough sawn, instead its "skip" planed, both sides, to 15/16 inch. We take the extra step to run all our wood through a planer. This is a time consuming and laborious step, but cleans up 90% to 100% of both surfaces of the boards, and brings everything to a consistent thickness allowing us to inspect and grade each and every board. From a customer standpoint, this has several benefits. Buying nearly 1 inch thick planed lumber allows building a greater variety of projects than standard 3/4 inch lumber. Many woodworkers have very effective but light duty planers that can't take big bites, but work very well to further plane to 3/4 if desired. Additionally, have you ever spent good money on rough sawn lumber, planed it at home, then discovered the wood wasn't as high a quality as you thought, with unexpected knots, sticker stain, or other defects? Maybe you couldn't even get a real board out of it, because the defects wouldn't plane out, or it was too thin? I've had this frustrating experience happen to me when I bought rough sawn lumber from other sawmills, so I make sure it doesn't happen to you. With us, you get to see exactly what you are buying, no surprises. We just purchased a 30" industrial Whitney planer, and can further plane your boards down to 3/4 inch if you want, while you wait. We are very serious about making sure you get top quality boards.
Our Commitment - We want to provide the best lumber, at the best prices, with the best customer experience. We do our best to cater to everyone who has an interest in fine wood, to keep things relaxed and easy going, and are proud to say that we have a lot of women and young people as repeat customers. We don't have a fancy showroom, but most folks don't mind the view at our farm in Kernersville, and we have a spacious and clean converted barn to house and display our wood.
Woodworking is supposed to be fun, but it’s not if you have to spend a big pile of bucks to buy a few boards that you can carry out of the retail store tucked under one arm. Depending on the grade of lumber you want, I can fill up your pickup truck for the same amount of money.
The End Product - First Class Lumber!
In the end, what do you get out of it? What are we trying to sell you? First class lumber that fits your needs! Looks at the picture below, and try to imagine how good you would feel building projects from wood like this. When is the last time you've seen 12" cherry boards? Without a knot? Kiln dried? Cheap? Flat as a pancake? Or when was the last time you and your kids could share a woodworking project without having to worry about missing a cut or bending a nail because the wood you bought retail was so expensive? Some of my mill run project wood is so cheap you can just have fun and not worry about it
Woodworking is supposed to be fun, but it’s not if you have to spend a big pile of bucks to buy a few boards that you can carry out of the retail store tucked under one arm. Depending on the grade of lumber you want, I can fill up your pickup truck for the same amount of money.
The End Product - First Class Lumber!
In the end, what do you get out of it? What are we trying to sell you? First class lumber that fits your needs! Looks at the picture below, and try to imagine how good you would feel building projects from wood like this. When is the last time you've seen 12" cherry boards? Without a knot? Kiln dried? Cheap? Flat as a pancake? Or when was the last time you and your kids could share a woodworking project without having to worry about missing a cut or bending a nail because the wood you bought retail was so expensive? Some of my mill run project wood is so cheap you can just have fun and not worry about it
