100% wood waste factor

[Robert Reece]

Somebody please correct me, but if an online hardwood dealer says you need to account for waste factor in your project and then says that it ranges from 30 to 50 to 100%....? If I'm at 100% waste factor doesn't that mean I ought to just send him cash and not expect anything in return? I won't mention their name yet because I think they are straight dealers.

[Neil Brooks]

LOL !

Obviously, they've seen me woodworking before :)

[Will Overton]

If I'm at 100% waste factor ...

Maybe he's seen your work. :eek:











Sorry ... the devil made me do it. http://www.runemasterstudios.com/graemlins/images/devil-naughty.gif

[Mike Cruz]

Sounds to me like a lawyer was involved in the ad. "Hey, don't make claims of 30-50% loss! What if there is more than 50%? What if they screw up the entire project? They'll come back to you looking for a 50-70% refund!" OR Someone actually called them on it and they got BURNED! :eek:

[Frank Drew]

Sure, you have to account for waste, but it sounds like they're just trying to get you to buy twice the amount of wood you need.

[Trent Whitehead]

As a beginner I actually do order double. Really.
I figure if I don't screw it up I have wood for another project. :D

But to answer your question........... Yes just send them money, then they can send you a bag of sawdust and say Yep 100% waste.:rolleyes:

[Anthony Whitesell]

Sure, you have to account for waste, but it sounds like they're just trying to get you to buy twice the amount of wood you need.

I'll second this option. But I must admit that I've had a few 100% waste factor projects.

[Jeff Duncan]

Wood waste depends on many things and 30% is a good average. The type of project, size of parts, and wood species are some of the major determining factors.
100% seems high BUT I could certainly see the possibility if using really gnarly woods and trying to get good straight parts.
I really use mostly kiln dried domestics so 30-40% usually gets me by.
good luck,
JeffD

[Robert Reece]

So to some of you it sounds like "100% waste" means you'll throw out a board foot for every board foot you use. To me it sounds like I'll throw all the wood I just bought in the burn pile.

How does everyone else interpret it?

[Walter Plummer]

I would not call it "waste". The problem we have had for years is if you buy wholesale or on the internet you take what you get. If you can not hand pick each board then 100% is not out of line, especially for mill work where you need long lengths and/ or wide widths. The rest does not get wasted. It becomes secondary parts or even paint grade pieces.

[Peter Quinn]

For a given board, that is possible. Suppose you hit a badly honey combed or case hardened board, or one with some real tension wood in it. Me, I've hit a few of these at work, and I just stop, cut them up, put them in the "to be burned" barrel, and move on. But they are in my taley. So the average for the job has never been 100%, but certain boards have been lost.

Or suppose you screw up your cut list calculations, and cut every board 3" too short, and you can't recover due to widths not working. Or you screw up the widths, and glue up a whole set of doors, and go to hang them AFTER they are finished, when you notice they don't even come close to covering the hole they were meant for. Not saying this has happened to me, :rolleyes:, but that pushed the waste factor WAY up.

[Trent Whitehead]

So to some of you it sounds like "100% waste" means you'll throw out a board foot for every board foot you use. To me it sounds like I'll throw all the wood I just bought in the burn pile.

How does everyone else interpret it?


100% waste means you will buy the wood then throw it away.:eek:
(like most of my projects so far)

[Eiji Fuller]

+1 for Walter and Peter

I did a job in Ribbon African a few years back. I needed about 2,500 bf to do the job. Im super picky and very detailed when it comes to grain matching so I usually pick the boards for my projects but No way I was going to pick thru the lumber yard for that. I ordered 4,000.

[John Coloccia]

Yes, 100% waste means that ALL of your wood is wasted and there is nothing to show for it. What he means to say is you should buy between 30% and 100% MORE wood when you purchase. If you buy 100% more, and then have 50% waste, that's the situation the dopey dealer was trying to setup.

Well, of COURSE they want you to buy more wood! :D Ignore them. You'll have to figure out your own percentage of "waste" based on your skill, the project and the wood. 30% is a good starting figuring.

Ditto what everyone else was saying about not being able to select boards too.

[Mark Ashmeade]

A play on words. It depends on whether the "reference point" is the quantity of wood productively used, or the amount of wood purchased.

If you waste as much wood as you productively use, then one could legitimately say 100%.

Sounds like marketing ka-ka to me though. I'd describe that as 50% wastage!

[Jerome Hanby]

I don't swap around wood species very often. I like maple and walnut. Add to the situation that I'm a long drive from my hardwood supplier and I generally buy whatever I can afford at the time. Looked at from a project stand point, I probably come close to buying 100% more than required:D.

[Tom Rick]

Take a contract to for a 6" wood disk.
Cut it out of a board and you will have to charge the client for twice the wood in the disk.

Or "100% waste"

Waste varies a great deal depending on the shape of the elements in the produced piece, how many are made, and the available stock from which it is made.

[David Prince]

100% waste would mean all of it. If half is poor, then it is 50%.

This would be an impossible purchase because if they could only guarantee up to 100% then they could hypothetically send you the worst crap they have that could basically give you nothing to work with.

If it is 50% then at least half of it would be usable.

If you buy 100 bf and up to 100% of it is bad, then 100 bf would be bad and you would have nothing except for something to keep your wood stove going.

Some waste is expected, but up to 100% is extreme.

[Rod Sheridan]

30% is very low for any project.

I start with a basic waste rate of 50% for any solid wood project, and add from there.

Consider that I have a rough board 1" thick, 6" wide, and 96 inches long, which is 4 board feet.

I joint, plane, rip and crosscut so that I have a 3/4" X 5" X 84" finished size piece. A very common sort of dimensioning for a woodworker.

The completed piece is 2.19 board feet, or 55% of the original wood. I've had a waste factor of 45%.

If I just joint and plane the original board without any cutting 25% has gone into the cyclone.

If you need good grain matching, or large clear pieces, it's not difficult to have to buy 3 times as much wood as you need, after all, in the above example I had to buy almost twice as much wood as I needed.

Regards, Rod.

[Will Overton]

Isn't there some 'rule of thumb' about how much waste is acceptable based on the grade of wood? I though I read somewhere that you should see less waste with higher grade/price.

[Alan Lightstone]

I'm 100% certain that he's half right.:rolleyes:

[Ruhi Arslan]

Sure, you have to account for waste, but it sounds like they're just trying to get you to buy twice the amount of wood you need.

Twice as much is nothing compared to what Boards and Beams NJ wanted me to buy. 350% more than I would need. I wanted 8/4 maple boards four inch wide and about 90" long. I intended to get boards at least 8" wide so I could rip them to get two pieces. He had boards 11-12' long and 7-7.5" wide.:rolleyes:

[John Nesmith]

A play on words. It depends on whether the "reference point" is the quantity of wood productively used, or the amount of wood purchased.

If you waste as much wood as you productively use, then one could legitimately say 100%.

Sounds like marketing ka-ka to me though. I'd describe that as 50% wastage!

Precisely.

[Frank Drew]

I really hate waste so I've always tended to keep any decent sized offcut in an attractive timber, thinking I could at least get a nice drawer front out of it; that itself, though, creates a real problem with clutter, and it's a dilemma I never solved.

[Jacob Mac]

Ya, their math is wrong. But I think they are trying to get at the right idea.
Grain matching can be hard to get right so you probably want a lot of wood to help make it easier. I certainly did a poor job of it in my last project. If you always work with a certain wood, you are probably better off buying it in larger quantities so you can get a better price anyway.

But I have never been able to get over the trust factor and order wood online.

[Jim King]

This is a little off topic but this shows my waste in producing perfect boards for export.

[Lee Schierer]

Wow, I must really be doing something wrong. I calculate my needs and order maybe 5-10% more material. I use an optimization program to figure out how to best use the actual stock I get, so scrap pieces are generally very short.

It also sounds to me like someone writing the ad slept through math classes and doesn't understand percent. I hear commercials all the time that "I can save up to 20% or more".

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I typically order 10-20% more.

And if the moon is right.....the gremlins are happy...if I measure 3 times and cut once......and don't forget what the measurement I got was before I mark it and cut it.....that amount will suffice.......but sometimes....:o

[Rod Sheridan]

Wow, I must really be doing something wrong. I calculate my needs and order maybe 5-10% more material. I use an optimization program to figure out how to best use the actual stock I get, so scrap pieces are generally very short.

It also sounds to me like someone writing the ad slept through math classes and doesn't understand percent. I hear commercials all the time that "I can save up to 20% or more".

I agree Lee, I waste 10 to 15% for trimming/scrap.

Add another 25% for jointing and planing however.

Perhaps you are ordering your material planed to thickness?

Regards, Rod.

[Paul Johnstone]

30
If I just joint and plane the original board without any cutting 25% has gone into the cyclone.
.

I guess I don't count that as waste. It's an assumption that 4/4 will be about 3/4" when you are done planing.

To me, waste is that last 13" off a board that I can't use, a knotty area that was cut out, a board so warped that it's no worth joining, etc.

[John Coloccia]

I think most of use don't consider jointing and planing of rough wood "waste". When you buy a 5/4 rough board, you expect to get 4/4 out of it. I think most of us think of waste as what's left over after we've dimensioned the board - all those oddly shaped scraps which serve no useful purpose other than firewood. Another way to look at it is that's "unavoidable" waste. Either you surface it and pay less for the wood, or you pay the mill to do it. In it's rough form, the board is unusable. I think most of use consider the parts of the board that would other wise be useable, but aren't because of size and shape, the waste.

Whereas if you're looking at it strictly by the board foot, maybe there's a lot of waste to account for, but I don't figure out a project by the board foot. I figure out approximately how many of what thickness/length boards I need, then add 20% or 30% to that, and THEN figure it out in board feet so I can estimate cost.

This is more consistent, especially when talking with folks that work mostly with plywood (which has exactly 0 waste to jointing/planing, and the same waste due to cutting out parts).

[John Coloccia]

I guess I don't count that as waste. It's an assumption that 4/4 will be about 3/4" when you are done planing.

To me, waste is that last 13" off a board that I can't use, a knotty area that was cut out, a board so warped that it's no worth joining, etc.

Yes, exactly, but my explanation had more words :p

[Joe Chritz]

There are two separate ideas being discussed.

One is how much of a given order is not usable material. If I order 100 BF and 20 BF of it is not usable than I have a 20% waster factor in my order. All the wood should be to grade.

The other is how much extra material for a project to account for working around bad spots, waste from less than optimal material usage, grain matching, messed up parts, set up pieces, ect. If I figure a cabinet will take 40 BF and I use a 50% waste factor I would order 60 BF to make sure I have enough to finish the project.

It depends on which one you are talking about. It appears it is #2 in which case 50% isn't to much to shoot for. 100% would be in extreme cases. Grain matching some woods can burn through a pile quickly.

Also the "waste" generally isn't waste because it gets used for some other project.

Joe

[Glenn Vaughn]

It is easier to calculate waste as a percentage of the required wood than as a percentage of the total wood purchase.

If I a planning a project that will use 100 board feet of wood and expect that 25% of the wood will be waste, I need to order 125 board feet - this is 100 feet for the project and 25 feet for the estimated waste. The "Waste factor" is 25% - the 25 % is based on the requirements for the project - not on the total wood required. The actual percentage of waste wood ion the total purchace would be 20% - not 25%.

So a waste factor of 100% for a 100 board foot project would be 100 board feet for the finished project and 100 board feet expected to be lost. The actual percentage of unusable wood from the purchase is 50% (100 board feet).

Take 127 board feet and a 15% waste factor: The expected waste would be 19 board feet. The waste factor based on total wood required would be 13% (100 / 115). The calculation for the finished project would be:

127 = (1 - .1305) * TW
127 = .8695 * TW
TW = 127 / .8695
TW = 146.06

I wopuld much rather think in terms of perecentage of what is required:

127 *1.15 = TW
127 *1.15 = 146.05.

If picking nits was profitable some people would be billionaires.

[Will Overton]

Thank you Glenn.

[Ted Wong]

Doesn't sound way out of line. for instance in a finer piece of furniture I might opt to get rift sawn grain on table legs. If the dealer only has plain sawn material in the particular species I want I might have to re-saw the board to get vertical grain on all four sides of the leg. There is the possibility in that case of cutting away half the volume to get the leg the way I would want it.

[Jeff Duncan]

I think there may still be some confusion about how the percentage of waste works.

Say I need to build something that's going to require 10 boards (we'll leave dimensions out for simplicity). If I'm planning on 10% waste I order 1 additional board, or 11 boards total. If I'm planning on 100% waste I order an additional 10 boards. So your not looking at it as a resulting 100% waste, but as ordering an additional 100% of stock.

BTW, you also don't usually count material lost in planing and milling in general. That doesn't reduce your amount of yield in a project. Things that reduce yield are more like knots, splits, checks, warp, boards too small to use, boards to ugly to use....you get the picture.

good luck,
JeffD