What is the true value of your logs in the woods

[just_sawing]

You have 32 dollars worth of lumber in side a log in the woods you will receive 1 dollar for it.
Sounds bad but here is the math.
To receive 1 dollar the logger will cut 2 dollars worth of you trees.
He will sell them to me and I will saw them and sell them to a processor who will dry and plane them and receive 4 dollars.
He will sell the lumber to a whole sell buyer who will distribute them to a store and will receive 8 dollars
The store will sell the lumber for 16 dollars to a craftsman and he will build something and when he sells it will receive 32 dollars for the finished item.
This has many variables that affect it both ways but it is something to think about. I recommend that you look at them before you just have your woods logged. I am not advocating you not log but research your options before you do.

[fishhead]

My mouth almost drops open when I see the price of wood in the store. A little piece of oak is $4-$5 and here we are burning it by the ton.

I'm definitely going to look at sawmills when it comes time to build my house. If I sold it after building it would probably pay me good wages while sawing.

[TnAndy]

Originally Posted by fishhead

My mouth almost drops open when I see the price of wood in the store. A little piece of oak is $4-$5 and here we are burning it by the ton.

Couple points there.....4-5 buck/bdft lumber is the BEST of the tree....FAS grade. Most likely, you are burning that quality of wood. ( or I hope not ).

The VERY BEST ( veneer grade ) logs are not very common, and even good saw logs don't yield more than about 1/2 top grade lumber at best. Just like a beef doesn't yield all T bone steaks.

Originally Posted by fishhead

I'm definitely going to look at sawmills when it comes time to build my house. If I sold it after building it would probably pay me good wages while sawing.

THAT is quite true. You can buy a GOOD used band saw mill for 7-10k, saw all the framing for you house + cabinets/trim, then sell the mill for very near what you paid for it !

I figure it costs me a nickle a bdft to saw, so if I cut my own timber, I have only my time in it ( + costs on tractor to drag it out and to the mill area )

Decent framing lumber will run 60-80 cents/bdft at the store + sales tax + ( and this is a biggie people forget ) THE TAXES ON THE INCOME you had to earn to have the after tax income to buy the lumber ! So "really" framing lumber costs more like a buck a foot. Sawing your own, you save 95% !!

If I spend one day logging, and one day sawing, I can save ( or earn.....as Ben Franklin said..."penny saved IS a penny earned"....plus taxes... ahahahaha) 500-600 bucks/day.

Here's a 1000 bucks worth of 2x10x14 white pine that I turned into the floor of a rental house:



Here's the rental house, built for $38/sqft.
(1800sqft, 4 bdrm, 2 1/2 bath) Did all the labor except the concrete work, heat pump and carpet upstairs ( hardwood/tile downstairs ).



Kept it 3 years, got about 30k in net rent ( after property taxes/insurance...no loan, built for cash ) which paid for about 1/2 the house, then sold it for 160k ( 2005 ) when it looked like the real estate market was gonna turn south.

[Solarmom]

I know I've got 5 acres of veneer grade wood on my property in Murphy NC-problem is, it's so remote, no one can get there trucks up there to log it! I really wanted to get this done, first for the clearing of land so I can build and second, for the added income . I guess we''l have to figure out something else- 90% of the trees are 100ft,straight as and arrow and too big for DH & I to cut ourselves

[highlands]

You're expecting too much. A tremendous amount of work, energy and time goes into getting the logs from you to the finished wood product at retail. Wood in the forest is a raw material.

[paintboy]

This same principle can be applied to almost any project around your house. It's labor that makes thing so expensive. As an example - A house I just finished painting outside. The final cost was $1600. I spent $150 on supplies. So that's $1450 in labor.

[Patt]

Originally Posted by Solarmom

I know I've got 5 acres of veneer grade wood on my property in Murphy NC-problem is, it's so remote, no one can get there trucks up there to log it! I really wanted to get this done, first for the clearing of land so I can build and second, for the added income . I guess we''l have to figure out something else- 90% of the trees are 100ft,straight as and arrow and too big for DH & I to cut ourselves

Do you have any mule loggers in your area?

[Patt]

Good points! I think this is true of anything in small farming/homesteading, if you want to make a real profit you need to cut out the middleman and go with value added products. I can sell a whole hog on the hoof for maybe $120 max ready to butcher or I can pasture raise him, have him processed and sell him for $6 to $10 a pound through the Farmer's Market. Why make $120 when I could make $900?

[Old Vet]

Originally Posted by fishhead

My mouth almost drops open when I see the price of wood in the store. A little piece of oak is $4-$5 and here we are burning it by the ton.

I'm definitely going to look at sawmills when it comes time to build my house. If I sold it after building it would probably pay me good wages while sawing.

I am cleaning up after a logging bunch and I don't even get pulp wood. All I get is but ends and the branches or tops. But I get them by the tons to burn and that is all they are good for. Most of them are Northern Red Oak but they have only about 2% of them stable enough for barrel making the rest are for saw logs or pulp wood. The ones that are for barrel making brings about $100 per log saw lumber brings about $50 per ton pulp wood brings about $30 per ton after the hauler has them on his truck and delivers them. I have enough to last me for 3 or 4 years now and will get more in the near future. You will be surprised at how much wast their is in a logging operation.

[Oldcountryboy]

Anyone have any ideal of how well those contraption work that you hook to your chainsaw and cut your own lumber. Supposebly be able to cut slabs, joints, and 4X4 post with them.

[michiganfarmer]

kinda depends on what crates value for each person. I wouldnt take any less for a maple tree than $1000. I can make that in syrup over the time it takes to grow another one.

[Sawmill Jim]

Originally Posted by Oldcountryboy

Anyone have any ideal of how well those contraption work that you hook to your chainsaw and cut your own lumber. Supposebly be able to cut slabs, joints, and 4X4 post with them.

Some like them would say you need to be young and strong .

Just need a big chain saw and a ripping chain

I got an old hand set mill needs a home

[texican]

Timber in the woods is worthless, unless you can get it to the mill.

I'm looking at getting a bandsaw mill before the New Year. I had 8 large pines and a handful of oaks standing dead... since last week, I've discovered 3 more huge ones. Enough to cut enough for all my flooring and a lot of beams on the new home. I don't even want to think about all of the trees that are dying/dead that I can't see... if I get a mill, I'll be making a run over all the property to salvage all of it.

[fishhead]

What is the daily output range of one of the bandsaw rigs in 1" lumber?

[just_sawing]

A few hundred on the little push bandsaw up a few thousand on a larger mill. With help I will produce between 2 and 3 thousand on a good day.
I run a LT70 which has a 62 horse diesel and Hydraulics. For the home owner it isn't feasible due to the money involved. A mid line LT40 is what most first sawmill owner starts with but with the small ones offered in Northern Hydraulics and such seem to be gaining.
LT15= 800 feet
LT40= 1500
LT70= 2000
These are not max or mins but a basic norm

[TnAndy]

Originally Posted by texican

I don't even want to think about all of the trees that are dying/dead that I can't see... if I get a mill, I'll be making a run over all the property to salvage all of it.

That's what happened here that got me in the rental house business .

Southern pine beetle hit HARD, our yellow pine first, then white pine. We had quite a few huge ones that had to come down or simply go to waste, otherwise I would have never cut them. With all that lumber, something had to be built...lemons into lemonade !

Fishhead:

I run an Woodmizer LT40 non-hydraulic, 18hp Briggs engine, and by myself, I can average 600-800bdft/day in 1"....over a 1000 in 2x.

Thing you have to remember is not only the sawing, but the time is takes to move slabs, then stack the lumber on sticks at the end of the day.....so these are about the maximums I personally shoot for.

Now, with help, I'm sure you could do better, but I operate alone, and that is plenty of production for me. Two weeks, and I can saw all the lumber needed for an average house.

Mine is a 1991 model I bought new, and paid about $14k with a sharpening package. ( Today, I'd most likely recommend you use Woodmizer's "Re-Sharp" service, which wasn't available in 1991).

You can find GOOD used mills in the 7-10k range, which is about what mine would bring after almost 20 years.....they don't depreciate much below that unless you really beat them up.

On a non-hydro mill, about the only really expensive thing you would have to replace is the engine....and you can pick up a Honda/etc in the 20hp range for 1500 bucks or so. IF my Briggs ever dies, that's what I'll go back with. I probably haven't spent $1,000 in parts maintenance in 20 years, and I figure I'm working on a million board feet sawed on the mill....the most common thing ( other than normal grease/oil changes ) are wheel belts, drive belts, brushes for the DC drive motors, 12volt batteries ( probably been thru 6 of them )...they are really simple machines. I did upgrade my original blade guides to the ceramic disc version some 12-14 years back...seems like that was couple hundred bucks.

Biggest ongoing expense is probably blades. I generally go thru 2/day. I do try to watch my logs for dirt/trash in the bark, and have a small "de-barker" head rigged on an extra chainsaw, and I'll clean a strip down the log where the blade will cut IF the log is dirty at that point......that will stretch blade change time quite a bit.

The bigger mills like Just Sawing has have the de-barker option, which is an electric motor with a small cutter head that runs right in front of the blade, but my mill doesn't produce enough spare electricity to run one, that isn't an option for me unless I upgrade the engine to about 25hp and add an extra alternator.

[woodsy]

I see somebody has plenty of work.
I had a logger come knocking one day, he had been cutting on the abutting landowners lot and claimed he couldn't find a corner pin. Then began to question me about that nice looking stand of Pine he'd been looking at on my side of the line, LOL.
Claimed there were a lot of dishonest logging operations out there and he was honest, and would treat me right if i wanted him to cut it while they were right there.

I said no thanks and that i take care of the logging myself .
Not to mention how i like walking through a nice stand of white pine.

So every 5 years or so i gear up and cut 4-5K bd ft. , enough for personal use and general woodworking, pine flooring lately.
I took the hire the portable sawmill route which most recently (4 years ago)@ .18- .20 cents a foot has worked well for me, couldn't afford a mill .
Got some professionally sawed boards and 2 bys too.
But i'm sure anyone could get good at it with some practice.
Like has been said, its quite a job just getting the wood out to the saw, let alone milling and stacking it.

[fishhead]

SOLD!

That's pretty impressive output. I stacked lumber in the early 70's ($2/hr) at a circular mill. I don't remember how many thousand we put out in a day but I don't think it beat your average per person.

We had 2 sawyers. One an old guy could look at a log and spin it until it was just right before he made his first cut. Moved slowly but still outcut the younger guy who would just fly all day long. The old guy cut lots of cants and the younger guy ended up with a lot of 1" so we all got a workout when he was cutting.

[TnAndy]

Ya cut 'em down, buck into logs:



Then a skidding winch is a REALLY handy attachment for your tractor:



While the dog supervises of course ( That's my wood shop in the back ground....native lumber in use ).

[silverbackMP]

One thing some of you would have to worry about.

If you live in an area that government has intruded into all areas of your life, your lumber will have to have a grader's stamp on it to pass inspection.

Of course, I wouldn't personally own property in area that I have to pull a permit every time I lifted a shovel. Just giving fair warning.