First those of you making your own stretchers, where do you purchase the lumber to make them?

IMO all questions deserve answers and this one is obviously, the local lumber yard.

Check with any local sawmills. Keep trying if you don't find what your looking for. Basswood (american linden) grows all through the mid section of this country. The wood from your and my area is not as pretty white as from farther north, but it is just as soft. My basswood is more yellow, but makes good stretchers. And don't be scared to cut out knots and glue up smaller pieces to build stretchers from. The strongest boards are built from glued assemblys, then planed and cut to shape.

If your talking about rat boards every board or wire form on the market is to wide In the neck and shoulder area and that will lose you length. A 1/4" here and there will lose you close to a Inch In length and that may put you Into a different size grade and that will lose you money.

I use salvage pine. Old shipping crates to recycling old house lumber. I have used pine and cedar mostly. All the wood I made mine from was free. I have all the tools so making them is easy. I have over 50 now and I don't trap rats to hard. Once I started making them I put my wife's in a corner and they are.still there. Would give them to a kid if I knew anyone who trapped although it feel that would be a disservice to them because wood is so much nicer.

Maybe your rats are just to small Beav....

One size form will not work on rats. But that's what everyone uses. You might get away with that on some critters but not rats.

If you desire excellent rat boards get some 24 inch cedar shakes to build them from.

Just bought 1X8x8 pine boards from menards and planed them down to 1/2 inch. Found the coon specs from Nafa and drew it all out then used a jigsaw to cut them out. Found the roughest grit sandpaper I could for my orbital sander and rounded the edges off along with any other rough edges. I work nightshift and on my nights off the wife goes to bed and I really got nothing else to do so I made a bunch of stretchers. Worked great. $4.75/8 ft board and I can get 2 coon boards from each one.

I picked up some cheap used wire rat stretchers at the convention. They might be the kind that can be bent or flexed to meet all rat needs (like those flexible [essentually adjustable] Duke stretchers that I think you once mentioned Beav).

Right you are. Those Duke forms are pure junk( sorry Bill). I have some of those just for those kit rats.

Turtle wax! Thank you for that tip. I'm going to try it.

Try to get the book, Pelt Handling For Profit from Fha, all the size are in that book for all the animals.Very good book ,it shows how to remove cartilage to.I use cedar and bass wood for my drying boards.

That book is on line at: http://furharvesters.com/pdf/pelthandling.pdf

Also NAFA's book at : https://www.nafa.ca/webcenter/wccproxy/d?dDocName=nafa_012139