Sawmill cut up charges

[Fred Woodward]

Larry,

If you don't mind me chiming in here as a person who is a beginning (amateur) sawyer (and not trying to hijack the thread)....

I'm finding this thread very interesting as I am in the process of buying a new sawmill for myself and am also currently sawing for a friend on his small portable sawmill. I've been sawing cedar into posts and rails for fencing, and have just started sawing oak into 4/4 boards to dry and be shaped into T&G flooring. Based on my limited experience, I would guess that the only way a commercial sawmill can be decently profitable at $0.20/bf or even at $0.40/bf is to do a large volume of clean large straight logs for one customer at a time with very little downtime for handling or embedded objects that would ruin a band or blade. This way the handling (off-loading, piling, on-loading lumber, etc) is a smaller part of the overall job and as such is costed as a smaller percentage of the total "cost of sawing".

For a small job customer with only a few logs or with small logs, my opinion is that a better approach would be to find a casual sawyer (like Bo Lowrey) who has a portable mill and expect to pay him by the hour with an extra charge for transport and setup.

As a sideline ... I'm looking at mills like the 23hp Norwood Lumbermate with 17' of bed and trailer kit. based on a 4000 hour saw life and using up two motors in that lifetime, and including normal maintenance and repairs, I've calculated that the saw costs about $25/hour of sawing to run. I'm thinking that a fair rate to charge for sawing would be $75/hr while cutting and $25/hr for transport.

Would that sound like a rate that you would be willing to pay to have your cants resawed? (I think that's the correct terminology - the squared timbers are "cants" and the operation you want done is "resawing")

cheers eh?

This sounds more like what I have paid for resawing cants from a sawyer here. Unfortunately, he moved to Arkansas. LOL
I took about 1500 bf of walnut cants 6x8 to 8x10 and 8 to 12 foot long to him, we unloaded to his saw and I restacked back to my truck as he sawed the wood. He resawed the wood to 5/4 as I requested. He charged me $100 for the job which I thought was reasonable. Took about an hour to complete.
He did a great job and I wish he was still around here. I've got another 1200 bf to do. At that rate, it was about $.07/bf but i helped with the unloading and loading of the wood, moving it to the saw, etc. Labor well spent and a very reasonable charge I thought.

[Jack Tanner]

Todd,
That makes a lot more since to me. But, from what I see so far charging by the BF seems to be what they all do.
Also, what is this service commonly called? Surely it is not "cut up charge". Maybe "milling fee"?? I don't want to sound like the idiot I am when I go to such a "manly" place as a sawmill, for goodness sakes!
I want to waltz in there like I know what I'm doing and say "I've got these @#%! timbers I need for you to ____ (cut up, mill, process.. what's the word here?). (You have to cuss in order for them to take you seriously, ya know.)

I spent 25 years logging in Oregon, a fair share of the guys I worked with didn't cuss, but then there were those that did.

[Larry Browning]

Jack,
I was just trying to be funny. Actually I don't cuss at all. Welll, maybe a little when I miss the nail and hit my thumb!

[ROBERT ELLIS]

Larry,

Here in South Central Kentucky it is commonplace for sawmill operators/owners to charge by the BF. I owned a portable bandsaw mill, and have hired at least 3 different owners on different occaisions to do custom sawing for me and they all charged by the BF. All of them always like sawing "barn packages" i.e., 2x4's, 2x6's etc., because at the end of the day they could always saw a lot more BF than if they were just sawing 4 quarter lumber. I'm like you it didn't seem right, but it's their mill their rules...

Robert

[John sexton]

If you get them down around my way I might have them done for around $.15 a BF Close to Little Rock

[Larry Browning]

The sawmill is only about 15 miles away. It is actually a small shop that I would like to give my support to. It is family owned and run by a woman. she is really a nice lady. I am going to take my cants to her tomorrow and have them resawn to have enough to build my workbench. How's that for sounding like I know what I am talking abut?

My son is coming today and he will help me load up the truck. I will try to take a few pictures of this process and post them here. Kind of a before and after sequence.
so far I'm having fun! That's what really counts!!!!!

[Larry Browning]

If you get them down around my way I might have them done for around $.15 a BF Close to Little Rock

I may take you up on that on the next batch, we will see how this one goes.

[Dixon Peer]

Sorry, I have to disagree. What if I took that same 4X8 timber and said make me 2 4X4s out of this. This takes one pass. but if I said turn this into 8 1X4s
it would take 7 passes. Now explain to me how I should be charged the same amount for something that take 7 times as long to do and has 7 times as much wear on the equipment. This is what makes no since to me.

Hey, wait a minute! after rereading your post, I think you are agreeing with me after all..... So, as Gilda Radner would say Never Mind!

And does anybody know what this is service called???

You misunderstand what is meant by a surface foot or you would not disagree. To measure the work done by the sawyer in surface feet will provide him (or her) more money on the basis of the number of passes past the blade or band. Surface feet are what the exposed flat surface of the board measures, as in a one by twelve: one foot long by one foot wide is one surface foot. Now, if you go to board feet, the same surface measurement, if the board was 5/4, would be 1.25 bdft, if 4/4 it'd be one bdft, if 6/4 it's 1.5 bdft and so on. The sawyer is doing one pass to cut any of these thicknesses off of the cant or log, but the board measure is different. So, basing the price on board measure is strange to me. It seems more proper to base the cutting charge on surface measure...but then there is the fact that the thicker the material the heavier, thus more effort to off load the product.

[Larry Browning]

Dixon,
I realized that I, at first had misunderstood your post, but if you will notice, I saw the error of my ways. Then in a later post I just begged everyone to just ignore this post altogether.

[Jack Tanner]

I paid 25 cents to a guy with a portable sawmill, wasn't my place though. He had sawed up some oak on an other mans place. I guess he didn't want the oak????? Oh well great for me though. I found an other portable sawmill, but the guy wanted to saw your timber for half. It though that sounded a little steep.

[Paul Greathouse]

Down here in Southwest Louisiana the mobile bandsaw mill guys all charge by the Board Foot, they charge roughly .20 BF for regular sawing and .25 BF for Quarter sawing. The last guy we used did a great job. Between myself, my dad and my oldest son we had about 10,000 bd. ft. sawed.

I think they base the bd. ft. price on 5/4 cuts that way if they get stuck cutting all 5/4 stuff, like they usually do with me, they won't lose money. When they cut the 2X stuff thats their lagniappe (sorry bout that, down here "lagniappe" means "a little extra").

About 1/3 or less of what he cut for us was 2X. Regardless of what basis of measuring is the most fair, my son got a great deal on his quartersawn red oak.

.25/bdft for sawing
.50/bdft for kiln drying and planing down to 7/8" after it had air dried for a year.

I had to straight edge it and do the finish planing down to 3/4" but for .75bdft this is some beautiful lumber. Any oak I have seen around here at the Borgs and the lumberyards is well over $3bdft and is flat sawn. Its no where near as pretty as our quartersawn lumber. I am building his cabinets with it right now and they are coming out great.

I guess my point is whether you pay by the board foot or whatever other means, your getting a great deal compared to the borgs and the lumberyards and your probably getting better looking lumber.

Oh, and believe me, none of the sawyers in my part of the country are getting rich either. They are just getting an honest days pay for an honest days work.

[John Bartley]

..... they charge roughly .20 BF for regular sawing and .25 BF for Quarter sawing. ..... About 1/3 or less of what he cut for us was 2X. Regardless of what basis of measuring is the most fair, my son got a great deal on his quartersawn red oak.

Paul,

An increase of $0.05 to go from flat sawing to quarter sawing seems pretty modest for the extra work, especially depending on how they did the quarter sawing. Any chance you watched the sawing and could describe how they did the cutting? I'm curious, for my own education, to know how they positioned the log or cant for each cut.

cheers

[Paul Greathouse]

Paul,

An increase of $0.05 to go from flat sawing to quarter sawing seems pretty modest for the extra work, especially depending on how they did the quarter sawing. Any chance you watched the sawing and could describe how they did the cutting? I'm curious, for my own education, to know how they positioned the log or cant for each cut.

cheers

John,

It seemed like only a small difference to me also. I think the poor fella actually felt guilty about charging what he did. He was one of those guys that wasn't just "in it for the paycheck", he really was proud of what he did and it showed in his work. That particular sawing was done a few months after hurricane Rita passed through. The price on everything had just gone up. Most of the sawyers had been flat sawing for .17 1/2 bd ft before the storm but with the demand for sawyers after the storm they all raised their prices. I imagine he was charging .25 bdft for quarter sawing before the increase and had only increased the flat sawing price.

I always hang around and watch when I'm having wood sawed. What he did was, after the log was slabbed and he had the square cant, he would quarter the cant and choose the a side from each quarter to start sawing on so that he could get the most grain detail possible. I love the fish scale look. Some logs delivered better scale detail than others but everthing I have planed so far looks great.

Even with flat sawing you will get some of the quartersawn look on a few boards but with the true quartersawing that he was doing it shows on almost all of the boards.

You do get narrower width boards overall cutting that way but the majority of them are very straight and stable. Out of roughly 24-30" diameter logs we got 60% 1x6's, 35% 1x8's & a few 1X4's. We even ended up with a few sapwood 1x12 flat sawn boards that were the result of him getting down to what he wanted for the quartersawing.

Earlier this year I aquired a couple of nice white oak logs and a couple of cherry along with a nice straight pine log. I called the same sawyer so that I could get the white oak quartersawn but he had shut down sawing for a while to build himself a new house. He recommened another sawyer that quartersaws for .35bdft but he hasn't been able to get to me yet. I think the apprehension is the small amount of logs I have now. Probably just a little over a 1000 bdft all togeather. The least we have ever had sawn at on time before was about 5000 bdft.

[John Bartley]

Paul,

Thank you for the reply.

cheers

[Larry Browning]

I took my cants to the sawmill today. The guy there called these beams.
Anyway he had me leave them and said they would call me when the were ready.
Here are a few pictures.