Anyone know where to buy a chalkboard/whiteboard?

  • Thread starter mathlete
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In summary: Evo is the all knowing, all powerful goddess of GD? (just a suggestion) :shy:I guess that would be alright.Well, I guess I'll just go ahead and post a picture of my whiteboard then! :)Well, I guess I'll just go ahead and post a picture of my whiteboard then! :)
  • #1
mathlete
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I remember seeing a thread on this once here. But I was looking around and couldn't find a cheap whiteboard/blackboard anywhere, they're all insanely expensive

I think it would be cool to have one since paper/pencil gets frustrating sometimes, but I don't want to shell out hundreds for a way to do problems!
 
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  • #2
I guess ebay is always a good place to start. Most universities also have surplus warehouses where you can buy used supplies (it'll probably be pretty old and banged up, but if you're just looking for functional and don't care about aesthetics, you can probably get it pretty cheap). You'll probably be more likely to get a chalkboard than whiteboard that way since they usually upgrade from chalkboards to white boards as they renovate old classrooms and offices.
 
  • #3
mathlete said:
I remember seeing a thread on this once here. But I was looking around and couldn't find a cheap whiteboard/blackboard anywhere, they're all insanely expensive

I think it would be cool to have one since paper/pencil gets frustrating sometimes, but I don't want to shell out hundreds for a way to do problems!
Walmart has cheap ones. Other than that, getting lucky and finding one at a thrift shop or garage sale. Have you looked in hobby shops? You can make blackboards (not that great) with spray on blackboard. You could make a blackboard of almost any flat surface. At least they used to sell it at the hobby shop.
 
  • #4
Evo said:
Walmart has cheap ones. Other than that, getting lucky and finding one at a thrift shop or garage sale. Have you looked in hobby shops? You can make blackboards (not that great) with spray on blackboard. You could make a blackboard of almost any flat surface. At least they used to sell it at the hobby shop.

Oh, I forgot about that. You can get the spray-on blackboard paint at pretty much any home improvement store nowadays (like Home Depot or Lowe's). Just look in the regular spray paint section.
 
  • #5
Moonbear said:
Oh, I forgot about that. You can get the spray-on blackboard paint at pretty much any home improvement store nowadays (like Home Depot or Lowe's). Just look in the regular spray paint section.
Great, they do still have it!
 
  • #6
I'd recommend a whiteboard because of dust.

I bought my mine nice and new. It's a nice big one. 4 feet tall and 6 feet long, and takes up like the whole wall in my room.

It's nice for studying and just doing questions.

I love it.
 
  • #7
JasonRox said:
I'd recommend a whiteboard because of dust.

I bought my mine nice and new. It's a nice big one. 4 feet tall and 6 feet long, and takes up like the whole wall in my room.

It's nice for studying and just doing questions.

I love it.
Chalkboards can get very messy. Of course whiteboards need those special markers, but they last awhile.

Mathlete, you also need to think of the expense spread out over several years. How much would you spend in 5 years on pencils, paper and erasers, plus what is the value of having a medium to use that would help you be more productive?
 
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  • #8
Evo said:
Chalkboards can get very messy. Of course whiteboards need those special markers, but they last awhile.

They actually don't last as long as you think they would

Also, whiteboards are still messy, but not as messy.

I should post up a picture of it one day.

Anything in particular that you want me to write?
 
  • #9
JasonRox said:
They actually don't last as long as you think they would

Also, whiteboards are still messy, but not as messy.

I should post up a picture of it one day.

Anything in particular that you want me to write?
Evo is the all knowing, all powerful goddess of GD? (just a suggestion) :shy:
 
  • #10
Evo said:
Evo is the all knowing, all powerful goddess of GD? (just a suggestion) :shy:

I guess that would be alright.

I'll have the picture by tomorrow. Getting late right now because I have to go to school early tomorrow. :frown:
 
  • #11
My dry erase markers last quite a long time as long as I don't let anyone else touch them (I work with people who seem to have this need to mash markers as they write; I think they're still used to chalkboards and having to press really hard while writing to make a dark enough chalk line for a class to see it).

The dustless chalk, while not truly dustless, is far better than the older chalk. But, I agree, white boards are still less dusty than any type of chalk. If you're going to be using it in a living space (like a bedroom), I'd suggest going for the extra expense of a whiteboard rather than a chalkboard so you're not breathing all that chalk dust.

But, the question asked was where to find them cheap, and you can't get much cheaper than spray-on chalkboards. Though it also depends on how long you plan to use it for. A white board will last a long time, and are light to move, while chalkboards are heavier, and if you spraypaint it on a wall, it's not moving at all.
 
  • #12
mathlete said:
I remember seeing a thread on this once here. But I was looking around and couldn't find a cheap whiteboard/blackboard anywhere, they're all insanely expensive

I think it would be cool to have one since paper/pencil gets frustrating sometimes, but I don't want to shell out hundreds for a way to do problems!

Cheap ones don't exist.

For a 3x2 its about $40-$75. Thats feasible, depending on how much cash you have.

For a 4x6 it jumps to about $300 i think.

edit: this is what happens when i don't read a thread first.

My prices were straight from some manufacturer somewhere...

I didn't know walmart sold larger ones...hmmm...i'll have to look into that.
 
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  • #13
I saw one for $2.00 at a thrift store a couple of days ago. That is the kind of thing that gravitates there. Every larger college campus has a surplus property division, where you can buy used equipment. Sometimes the state where you live has a surplus property division, and you can shop that warehouse too.
 
  • #15
Dayle Record said:
Every larger college campus has a surplus property division, where you can buy used equipment.


I haven't seen one...i haven't looked much either though.
 
  • #16
Ah, seems they auction stuff online.

Oooh, 10 year old power book for twenty dollars...useless on its own, but i could use it to SSH connect to my desktop...hmmmm...

It makes me laugh actually...2 MB ROM, 4 MB RAM, 25 Mhz processor, my calculator is comparable to it...except my calculatore doesn't have a modem...hmmm...

Oh, what have you done telling me about this...what have you done...
 
  • #17
go to the junk yard, get a windshield out of a 74 cadillac, paint the inside white or just hang it on a white wall. 10 bucks tops

make that a rear window, no curve. plus the heating elements act like lined paper
 
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  • #18
tribdog said:
go to the junk yard, get a windshield out of a 74 cadillac, paint the inside white or just hang it on a white wall. 10 bucks tops


Clever.

BUt honestly tribdog. Glass? In a college dorm room, hanging from the wall?

Death trap waiting to happen. You should know better.
 
  • #19
shatterproof safety glass, you should know better
 
  • #20
franznietzsche said:
Clever.

BUt honestly tribdog. Glass? In a college dorm room, hanging from the wall?

Death trap waiting to happen. You should know better.

The dorms I used to live in had windows that took up half of one wall (windowsill about 3 ft from the floor, and all window above that). We could have just written on the windows! Actually, I think some people did. The sun bakes on marker pretty good though. But, talk about solar heating! It was usually 80 degrees inside in the winter (only a tiny part of the window opened...like the size of those small basement windows and we kept that open most of the winter to keep the room cool), and over 100 degrees in summer. No air conditioning. It's no wonder I now freeze when the temperature goes below 75. We must have been some of the cleanest students on campus, always taking showers to try to cool off.
 
  • #21
tribdog said:
shatterproof safety glass, you should know better


In a 74?

I know modern cars have that. Figured 74 was old enough it wouldn't. Meh.

Why would i know better? I'm not a walking zone of destruction, unlike some people...
 
  • #22
I was thinking the same thing. Nope, pretty sure that safety glass wasn't around yet, or at least not standard yet, in '74.
 
  • #23
I don't even know if there is such a thing as a 74 Caddy. I just pulled a number out of my butt. so get a 99 windshield
 
  • #24
did I ever tell you about the most dangerous thing I ever did in my entire life which occurred while i was living in the dorms at Weber State on the 7th floor.
the dorm rooms were on the outside and there was a communal shower in the middle, prison style no stalls or anything just one big tiled room with about 18 shower heads. I was sick and tired of always taking a shower and decided I wanted a bath. I used plywood and garbage bags to plug up all the drains and to block the entryway then I turned on all the showers and let it fill up. I got about 2 feet worth of water in there before I got tired of my bath. I don't know how much weight that floor was made to hold but I had to have been right on the edge.
 
  • #25
Geez, at least when the guys living in the other half of our dorm decided to build a hot-tub from pilfered lumber, they built it in the basement, so it just flooded the basement when the sides couldn't hold any more water and the whole thing burst open. (Yes, I really did go to a women's college, but some brilliant person at the university decided that putting alarmed fire doors between two halves of a dorm meant one side could be for the women's college and the other side co-ed for the ag school...they had to start fining the guys on the other side for setting off the alarms every time they opened the doors; and of course the custodian wasn't bright enough to noticed the electrical tape on the latch of the one door that was not alarmed but kept locked, which the custodian used to get between the two sides for cleaning).

Though, that pilfered lumber came from the new lounge constructed on our side of the dorm. It was nice, had a small library, computer room, TV lounge, kitchen...a few years later I was living there again as a grad student and over the winter break we got about 3 feet of snow. We were sitting in the lounge hearing these strange noises from the roof, so called security to check it out. They said all was fine. A little while later, we left to get to sleep, and woke up in the morning to find the roof on that lounge had collapsed overnight. :eek: Pretty scary when we realized that the strange noises weren't someone on the roof, but the roof starting to cave in while we had been still sitting under it!
 
  • #26
In our school, none of the original chalkboards remain, unfortunately.

Is this the case in uiversities as well? Where all the chalkboards are replaced with 'better' digital whiteboards?
 
  • #27
Bladibla said:
In our school, none of the original chalkboards remain, unfortunately.

Is this the case in uiversities as well? Where all the chalkboards are replaced with 'better' digital whiteboards?


We still have chalkboards.

I hate them. Much prefer whiteboards.
 
  • #28
tribdog said:
I don't even know if there is such a thing as a 74 Caddy. I just pulled a number out of my butt. so get a 99 windshield

Um... the windshield will cost a lot more.

It's also really hard to handle, if not impossible without suction cup things. They are also freaking heavy, and you will probably spend all day developping/hooking up good hardware to hold the damn thing up.

Go all out and get a huge real one because according to the other thread you'll be a snob. :grumpy:
 
  • #29
I know where you can buy the paint...

You can buy whiteboard/chalkboard paint from Home Depot for $23.00.. I personally myself think it is awesome...I am going to buy some for my 2 kids forget buying the board itself I would much rather paint my wall it would be so much cheaper and come in handy ..:smile::cool:
 
  • #30
If it doesn't have to be absolutely smooth, you can get a 4'x8' sheet of coroplast for less than $20. It resembles corrugated cardboard, but is made of plastic. We used it to make indoor or semi-permanent outdoor signs with either applied computer-cut vinyl lettering or screen-printed with vinyl ink. Dry erase works quite well on it, and it can be had in lots of colours besides white. (Actually, the black or dark colours might work with chalk as well, but I never tried it.)
 
  • #31
chalkboards have their advantages though, but if it is going to see a lot of heavy use white boards are better because they are cleaner and erase more easily
 
  • #32
Since this thread got resurrected, I might as well add a tip that wasn't mentioned before. For cleaning a whiteboard, if the marker is REALLY set on there (like when you haven't erased it in a while), you don't need to spend a lot of money on those little bottles of "whiteboard cleaner." They're mostly isopropyl alcohol, which you can buy really cheap at the drugstore or grocery store (the stuff you clean your cuts with). Even if you buy an inexpensive spray bottle to pour it into and make it easier to spritz onto the board where you need it, it'll cost less than buying the "whiteboard cleaner."

I've found that the whiteboard erasers really clog up too, especially if you're erasing a lot at a time (or if you really want to get the board clean by spraying it). The cheap, easy and effective solution? A roll of toilet paper. Tear off whatever you need to wipe off the board, and toss it when done. It keeps the dust from the markers from accumulating too (yes, they generate dust too, just not as much as chalk does).
 

1. Where can I find a chalkboard/whiteboard?

You can find a chalkboard/whiteboard at most office supply stores, such as Staples, Office Depot, or even Walmart. You can also find them online on websites like Amazon or Etsy.

2. How much does a chalkboard/whiteboard cost?

The cost of a chalkboard/whiteboard can vary depending on the size and quality. On average, a small chalkboard/whiteboard can cost around $10-$20, while a larger one can cost anywhere from $30-$100.

3. What size should I get for a chalkboard/whiteboard?

The size of the chalkboard/whiteboard you need will depend on your specific needs. If you plan on using it for personal use, a smaller size may suffice. However, if you plan on using it for presentations or teaching, a larger size may be necessary.

4. Can I make my own chalkboard/whiteboard?

Yes, you can make your own chalkboard/whiteboard using materials such as chalkboard paint or whiteboard contact paper. This can be a more affordable option, but keep in mind that the quality may not be as good as a store-bought one.

5. What are the benefits of using a chalkboard/whiteboard?

Chalkboards/whiteboards are great for brainstorming, organizing ideas, and visual aids for presentations. They are also reusable, making them a more eco-friendly option compared to paper. Additionally, writing on a chalkboard/whiteboard can help improve memory and retention of information.

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