Millworks

[Mike Wellner]

Lets say you were to start up a millworks in Montana, what kind of products would be cost effective to produce other than hardwood stair threads?

Besides basic stationary equipment, what else would be required? I think it would be nice to have a panel clamp to glue up wood in mass, and a RAS. What kind of equipment besides a planer would you need to do hardwood flooring?

[Nate Carey]

Mike, is your intention to "turn a profit" and support yourself and your family with this millwork business?

[Mike Heidrick]

It's easy :rolleyes:. All you need is a 712 Woodmaster and they want to send you one for free. I see it all the time in the pamphlets in the mail. :rolleyes:

Good luck to you.

[Quinn McCarthy]

Mike,

I found a millwork niche here in Northern Minnesota. I have a table saw, jointer, planer, shaper, lathe and a williams and hussey Moulding machine. Most of what I do is trim for houses. I can do trim for arched windows. I have one builder that I do all the wood work for a house except the cabinets. Some of the other stuff I do is stair parts, beam covers, valances, other stuff. One of the things that the builder I work with doesn't like is arched window trim that looks like plywood. When the window factories make arched trim they laminate it up with thin strips of wood around a form. I do mine out of solid wood. They look a lot better. I have had a great return from the W&H Moulder. I outfitted it with the variable speed feed motor and the circle trim attachment. The place I bought the moulder from does custom knives. If somebody needs to match an existing profile or come up with one of there own they can do that.

Most of what I do is lake homes. I am sure that you might be able to target that as well.

I am still part time. My business keeps building every year. I think at some point I could go full time.

I sat down with builders in the area as well as lumber yards. I showed them some one the stuff I could do and some of the people that I have worked for.

I hope that helps.

Quinn

[Rod Sheridan]

Mike, to make hardwood flooring commercially you need a multi spindle moulder, a gang rip saw, and a few people to feed the machines.

The place I was at ran two gang rips, 3 moulders 3 shifts per day, with one extra moulder as the floater that took care of work while one of the three was down for tooling changes/maintenance. The two gang rips could produce enough stock to keep ahead of the three moulders, so we just shut one down for tooling changes/maintenance for 30 or 40 minutes at a time.


I've made my own flooring using a tablesaw, a jointer, a planer and a shaper with a power feeder.

What a stack of work, good thing I didn't have to pay labour, insurance, overhead etc.

If you make 2" wide floor, you need 6 linear feet per square foot.

For 1,000 sq feet of floor, you mill 6,000 linear feet. At 40 FPM that's 150 minutes per operation on a single pass machine.

- rip

- joint

- plane

- back relief

- tongue

- groove

That's 6 operations at 150 minutes per operation, or 15 hours.

That doesn't include setup, and stacking time between operation, so you need two people, or 30 man hours.

You would need low cost material, low cost help, and a high finished product value to make custom flooring pay.

There may be a market in your area, it would require some research.

Regards, Rod.

[Quinn McCarthy]

Mike,

I didn't see you were from bermidji.

I think you are the closest creeker that I have seen to the falls.

Quinn

[J.R. Rutter]

Lets say you were to start up a millworks in Montana, what kind of products would be cost effective to produce other than hardwood stair threads?

Besides basic stationary equipment, what else would be required? I think it would be nice to have a panel clamp to glue up wood in mass, and a RAS. What kind of equipment besides a planer would you need to do hardwood flooring?

Absolute minimum would be:
panel clamps
shaper (the bigger the better) with power feed
very robust coping carriage for end matching
profile tooling
tablesaw with feeder
RAS
planer
lots of labor and a good supplier to surface and straight line (or gang rip)

Optimum:
above and
bigger capacity panel clamp or RF press
gang rip
true multispindle moulder
knife grinder
single end tenoner
jump saw
wide planer/sander

[Frank Drew]

Experience, and the market survey that Rod mentions.

Then the suggestions on machinery, tooling, labor.