Straight Line Ripping question

[dirk martin]

I have 10,000 BF of red oak, kiln dry, 4/4, that I need straight line ripped, 1 edge (SLR).

How would you do it, if you have the following pieces of hardware. Which would you use?

1) Festool circle saw with track?
2) Table saw with SLR jig ?
3) 3 HP shaper with shear cut flush trim bit?
4) Woodmaster with gang ripping blades ?
5) 6" Jet jointer ?

I have a large stock feeder to attach to any of the above.

[Karl Brogger]

I'd use the pickup to haul it somewhere and have it straightlined. Maybe planed too if its rough.

10,000 bd/ft is a lot of wood.

I think I'm paying $.15 a bd/ft to have it straightlined, and surfaced to 13/16"

[Steve Griffin]

If no longer than 8 or 10', and the boards fairly straight, I'd consider the jointer. I frequently joint piles of 200-400 BF in an hour or so. Perhaps do a time trial of 100 BF and multiply by 100....

If lots of 1/4"+ bows or longer lengths, I'd go back and read post #2 carefully.

-Steve

[dirk martin]

All boards will be under 10' long. Typically 8' or less.
If using the jointer to SLR, I should plane one face first, I'd assume.

[dirk martin]

I'd use the pickup to haul it somewhere and have it straightlined. Maybe planed too if its rough.

10,000 bd/ft is a lot of wood.

I think I'm paying $.15 a bd/ft to have it straightlined, and surfaced to 13/16"


I hear ya, Karl. But I'd rather hire my own guys, than someone else's.

[Steve Griffin]

All boards will be under 10' long. Typically 8' or less.
If using the jointer to SLR, I should plane one face first, I'd assume.

Those shorter lengths will be so much easier to deal with than long lengths on your 6" jointer.

No need to face joint or plane a face before jointing.
You just want a straight line so you can be table saw ready right?

-Steve

[dirk martin]

Actually I need a straight edge, so I can then gang rip in my Woodmaster.

[Glenn Frazer]

http://www.grizzly.com/products/Straight-Line-Rip-Saw/G0524

Nothing beats the above principal, most likely how hiring someone would be doing it.
You can also look at the used market (very carefully I might add)

Sounds like you could justify one of these with the volume.

[J.R. Rutter]

Can't you just gang rip it on the Woodmaster? Why do you need a straight edge?

[tim rowledge]

Is there any practical way you can attach an already straight edge to each plank and use that to guide it through the gang saw?
A length of ply screwed to the top at one edge, perhaps? With say 3 screws it might take 20 seconds or so to install and remove. Have a spare battery ready for your cordless driver...

[dirk martin]

Can't you just gang rip it on the Woodmaster? Why do you need a straight edge?

The folks at Woodmaster tell me I need to start with a str8 edge before ripping. If anyone knows differently, please educate me.

[dirk martin]

Is there any practical way you can attach an already straight edge to each plank and use that to guide it through the gang saw?
A length of ply screwed to the top at one edge, perhaps? With say 3 screws it might take 20 seconds or so to install and remove. Have a spare battery ready for your cordless driver...


On 10,000 board feet, that could prove quite daunting!

[Rick Lizek]

Send it to a shop with a real straight line rip. Have you priced buying it properly ripped by the proper machine??? A real straight line rip will do the job as fast as you can feed the machine. Your listed options don't even come close in practicality or efficiency. Could be a case of stepping over the dollars to pick up the pennies. Do a cost analysis as a business would.

[William Nimmo]

festool ts 75 on the track is what I use.
much easier that a 6 inch jointer on long stock

[Peter Quinn]

I assume you need to do something else with the 10,000 BF, and that something is what I would be paying my guys to do unless there just is no other work. I could rip 10K BF on a straight line before 10 o'clock coffee break in a morning with two guys and it would all be darn near perfect. That is a lot of waste to deal with so I hope you have a wood stove and lots of dust bags.

If all the straight line saws in my county spontaneously combusted at once, and I HAD to get the 10K packs processed, I'd use the TS with a straight line jig like the one I saw on a Charles Neil video.

[Prashun Patel]

Curious: what's the application?

[Chris Parks]

festool ts 75 on the track is what I use.
much easier that a 6 inch jointer on long stock

Setting up a track saw on over a 1000 boards, I don't think so.

[Steve Griffin]

Yep, it's always hard to give advice without the big picture.

Still, I'm a jointer kind of guy. Maybe this is the job which justifies an upgrade to a 12" jointer. You could make a pass twice as fast than your little jointer, and have straight edge on a board as fast as you can pick it up and move it down the table...

-STeve

[ian maybury]

I'd have to say that my (not very expert) instincts would be to look for somebody with exactly the right piece of kit to process that much timber quickly and accurately, and be happy to pay them either for my use of it, or to do the work....

ian

[Stephen Cherry]

I vote for the shaper with the feeder. After all, a shaper (with strait cutter) and a jointer are almost the same tool except the function of the fences and tables are interchanged.

You would probably would want to extend the infeed fence to be as long as possible, and make sure the outfeed fence is perfectly aligned with the cutter for a strait cut. (use a digital height gauge and make it .000)

I would try to move the wood right from the shaper into the woodmaster.

I'm curious also. Flooring?

[Steve Jenkins]

rather than attaching a straight edge to the board how about attaching a 20' piece of 2"angle iron to your table saw fence. make some supports for the ends to hold them up then rip with the concave edge against the fence. as long as it is in contact (not rocking on the fence)during the entire rip you should be straight.

[J.R. Rutter]

I assume you need to do something else with the 10,000 BF, and that something is what I would be paying my guys to do unless there just is no other work. I could rip 10K BF on a straight line before 10 o'clock coffee break in a morning with two guys and it would all be darn near perfect. That is a lot of waste to deal with so I hope you have a wood stove and lots of dust bags.

Man, you're fast (I think that you lost a zero in there *wink*) - that's 1600+ boards! That would take 12+ hours on my SLR with 2 people. :-)

EDIT: oops - I was thinking rip to width (2 passes), but still the better part of a day for us to do 6-8 packs of lumber.

[J.R. Rutter]

rather than attaching a straight edge to the board how about attaching a 20' piece of 2"angle iron to your table saw fence. make some supports for the ends to hold them up then rip with the concave edge against the fence. as long as it is in contact (not rocking on the fence)during the entire rip you should be straight.

Yes! You could use the feeder, too.

[Dave MacArthur]

Interesting thread. You know, when I read the back and forth, it reminded me of another thread I was interested in where a guy wanted folks to review profitability of making 4000 BF of 6" QS white oak flooring, where materiel costs were like 2$/bf. Thread went back and forth on how to SLR or woodmaster all those boards. Lots of interest in that thread, but we never did get an answer on what he did or how the profit all turned out... it was very very similar to the decision process going on here.

I just searched for the thread (couple of us bumped it before, because it really was interesting), and found that it was actually Dirk Martin also, and worth a re-read as it pertains strongly to this thread:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=143805&highlight=flooring+woodmaster&page=2

A lot of what's written there would apply to this situation, what ever happened in that other flooring job? How did you end up SLR all that flooring, and how did that actually turn out for profit? I'd think your experience from that project would be a great guide for this decision? These production/profit threads are very interesting to lots of us not in the biz, as it really gives a view of how time/$$ play a huge role in the biz.

[J.R. Rutter]

^^^ This is that other flooring job, sounds like.

[Greg Portland]

The folks at Woodmaster tell me I need to start with a str8 edge before ripping. If anyone knows differently, please educate me.
The Woodmaster folks are correct. I did a much smaller job using a jointer + woodmaster and you need to start with a straight edge (something to ride along an edge of the feed table).

[dirk martin]

Naa, that other one fell thru.
This is a new endeavour.

[Stephen Cherry]

This is a new endeavour.

Inquiring minds want to know

[Jeff Duncan]

There are almost always going to be multiple ways to get something done, and that is certainly the case here.
If this is a "for profit" job there is no way around the SLR being the fastest and most profitable. If you've ever used one you'll understand.

If on the other hand your not as much interested in profit, but more inclined to just get it done whatever it takes, I'd lean towards using a jointer over some of the other methods. Now this is assuming you have a jointer capable of handling this kind of work. On my machine (16" x 90" +/-) 10' boards would be no problem. I could set it up to take a 1/4" per pass and run boards all day long. I'd guess for 10,000 bd. ft. at your rough dimensions your talking roughly 2000 boards. Now how many passes over the jointer will be dependant on how straight the stock is and how much cut your machine is capable of. I'd conservatively guess 2 passes per piece. So going at a moderate rate I'd throw out a ball park guess of at least 17 - 20 hours of machine time. Add to this at least one knife change as the oak will do a number on a set of blades. Your looking at about a week (again just a guess) just for straight lining before you move to the next operation. Using any type of tablesaw jig which needed attaching would obviously greatly increase this time. If you could figure out a way to get them through the shaper in the rough and without a straight edge already safely, that could be an option.

The problem with trying to do flooring is if your not properly equipped you'll never be able to compete against the big guys and make any money. I'd say a decent sized shop like the one I used to work for, could get that stuff from rough to a tongue and grooved finished piece (without end matching) in about 2 days. And they're not necessarily set up for flooring, they just have decent equipment. I don't know specifically what equipment you have, but in my shop I'd have to guess at about 2 weeks to turn that around.

good luck with your endeavor,
JeffD

[Jerry Moyers]

I have a customer who wanted to trim his house with oak lumber off his property. About a 1,000 BF task. I just finished running it through my woodmaster for a clean-up pass and ran into "knot city" so that project just died. I would have gotten my straight edge with an 8" jointer.

10,000 BF is a big pile of lumber!!!

[Tom Hargrove]

About 30 years ago, I spent about a year working as a production supervisor for a furniture company. The company was new, so we took in "side jobs" to keep the machines and the shop staff busy as our own line was being built up.

During my tenure, we did a couple of jobs involving 10K FBM of lumber, and I think the only profitable way to do this is to either obtain or purchase time on a straight line rip saw. Any other method will take an enormous amount of time, and cause you to handle and/or process the boards too many times to make any money.

[dirk martin]

20 hours.
At $8/hr = $160. Say, $200 to be sure.
I've got a couple of Boy Scouts here dying to work for $8/hr, and they easily do 10 hour shifts. So at $200 and done in one 20 hour period by running the boys back to back, it seems like going the jointer route is even better than the SLR machine.

I've been wanting to upgrade my jointer to a helical head model, so this may just be the instigator.

[steven c newman]

I'd have a piece of plywood to run against my fence, the same length as the board. It would be just a bit wider than the widest board. Using 3/4" plywood and three or more toggle clamps. Flip up the clampss, slide the next plank onto the "jig", align for the cut you like, clamp the board in place, and make the cut. Out-feed rollers to catch the whole thing once it's by the blade. have someone back there to remove the ripped board, and slide the jig back to you, and have the next board ready. Get in a nice sequence of clamp, rip, unclamp, etc. Shouldn't take more than a few hours, not counting breaks ( for coffee). Note: the Amish Lumber seller nearby uses just this sort of jig, for $.25 a foot. :eek:

[John Lanciani]

Just jumping in after reading all of the replies, I get the feeling that not everyone has a good handle on what 10,000 bf of lumber looks like. I personally can't begin to imagine using some of the methods suggested to process what is roughly a half a trailertruck full of wood.

If you're not willing to take it to someone with a straight line rip, the bare minimium in my opinion would be a shaper with full length in and outfeed tables and a feeder. There is no way that you'll get consistent quality hand feeding this much wood to any machine.

While I'm sharing my opinions, the thought of using boyscouts (teenagers?) to feed a jointer for 10 hours at a time (or even 10 minutes) is just plain crazy. Please re-think that idea or at least discuss it with your insurance agent.

[dirk martin]

Send it to a shop with a real straight line rip. Have you priced buying it properly ripped by the proper machine??? A real straight line rip will do the job as fast as you can feed the machine. Your listed options don't even come close in practicality or efficiency. Could be a case of stepping over the dollars to pick up the pennies. Do a cost analysis as a business would.


20 hours.
At $8/hr = $160. Say, $200 to be sure.
I've got a couple of Boy Scouts here dying to work for $8/hr, and they easily do 10 hour shifts. So at $200 and done in one 20 hour period by running the boys back to back, it seems like going the jointer route is even better than the SLR machine.

I like that cost analysis.

[dirk martin]

Just jumping in after reading all of the replies, I get the feeling that not everyone has a good handle on what 10,000 bf of lumber looks like. I personally can't begin to imagine using some of the methods suggested to process what is roughly a half a trailertruck full of wood.

If you're not willing to take it to someone with a straight line rip, the bare minimium in my opinion would be a shaper with full length in and outfeed tables and a feeder. There is no way that you'll get consistent quality hand feeding this much wood to any machine.

While I'm sharing my opinions, the thought of using boyscouts (teenagers?) to feed a jointer for 10 hours at a time (or even 10 minutes) is just plain crazy. Please re-think that idea or at least discuss it with your insurance agent.


I'm gonna guess you're not a Boy Scout.
I've been hiring the young men from my local Boy Scout chapter for years now. They drool at $8/hr, and are the hardest, most trustworthy, and safest workers I've every had. Maybe it's just my local chapter, but these guys have outstanding work ethics. They aren't arrogant, and they listen to insructions. I'll even have Eagle Scouts manage some of the others from time to time. And, I've already discussed it with my lawyer. These boys know how to make sawdust.

[dirk martin]

There are almost always going to be multiple ways to get something done, and that is certainly the case here.
If this is a "for profit" job there is no way around the SLR being the fastest and most profitable. If you've ever used one you'll understand.
JeffD


Not sure where you come up with that observation, Jeff.
Based on your own time estimates, run $8/hr for my own laborers, vs .09/BF for a guy with SLR. The SLR is more than double the cost.

[dirk martin]

About 30 years ago, I spent about a year working as a production supervisor for a furniture company. The company was new, so we took in "side jobs" to keep the machines and the shop staff busy as our own line was being built up.

During my tenure, we did a couple of jobs involving 10K FBM of lumber, and I think the only profitable way to do this is to either obtain or purchase time on a straight line rip saw. Any other method will take an enormous amount of time, and cause you to handle and/or process the boards too many times to make any money.


I'm confused...how is 20 hours an enormous amount of time?

[Steve Griffin]

Not sure where you come up with that observation, Jeff.
Based on your own time estimates, run $8/hr for my own laborers, vs .09/BF for a guy with SLR. The SLR is more than double the cost.

Also not mentioned is the man hours needed to transport and pick up an order if you hire out the straight line rip. Unless you have a forklift and flatbed truck, you are talking HOURS of work just to get your wood anywhere else.

In fact, I say moving 10,000 board feet of lumber by hand to another location is more dangerous than jointing 10,000 board feet in your shop.

-Steve

[Neal Clayton]

16 foot length of angle iron, chalk line, skilsaw. that's what i do to prep for woodmaster ripping on small runs of molding.

not quick, but can be done.

[J.R. Rutter]

Unless every board is straightish already, the jointer will take some finesse and multiple passes, even with a power feeder. I used to have that set up. I still think Mr. Jenkins hit it with the extra long table saw fence + power feed. Would be just about as fast as a straight line saw.

[ian maybury]

I've no experience of a straight line rip saw, but put it this way - if it's not cheaper to run a big batch like that on one (presuming it's the optimum bit of kit for the job) then surely there's something wrong with the underlying cost/benefit proposition against which they are designed and sold? (which seems a bit unlikely)

It could be that in a specific instance so much is being charged for the machine time that this benefit is negated - possibly because the saw isn't getting enough utilisation to pay for itself at a lower rate, or maybe because somebody is trying it on.

It surely shouldn't be possible to beat it on cost using a jointer with lots of labour and set up, certainly not if the operator is being paid a normal rate. Or should it??

Alternatively could a band re-saw with a power feeder be set up to handle material as thin as 1in, and if so is it likely to deliver a straight edge and a good enough finish?

Ian

[Karl Brogger]

I'm curious how many hours you'll actually have into it. 20 hours seems extremely optimistic. If you want to maximize the profit on it, and you've got nothing better to do then definitely do it yourself. I can't imagine processing that much material any other way than with a straight line rip saw. As someone else mentioned, the drops alone will be staggering.

[Mark Bolton]

I have been following this thread and as other have said, am very interested in the actual results.

Like others who have contributed to the thread, we have done small runs of custom flooring for our customers and I personally cant see these numbers and timelines for a small run much less the quantities being talked about here. I absolutely cant fathom having a "drone" doing anything other than sweeping or packing off scraps unless they were feeding or off-bearing some automated process. Imagining a drone feeding boards across a jointer or through the shaper would be nerve wracking at a small operation on its maiden voyage when you are still working out "the kinks". Forget about the liability, what about coming back a half hour later to find a bunch of boards that ran poorly or after something went a little askew and you have a few hundred feet of junk stacked up and just have to start over. The drone just says "I dunno, I was just shoving them through like all the other ones".

If making obscene amounts of money running flooring were that simple there would be shops on every corner. I know for us doing small runs (3-5 hundred square feet) of random width random length is a lot of work. 1 ton dump truck full of chips, about 1/3 that volume in waste, end cuts, scraps from straight lining, etc.. Packing and bundling. Heck, just the time spent cutting out knots, bad grain, checks, and so on takes hours alone.

Not trying to be negative but its one of those situations where 4x your projected time on the first few runs would seem to be doing good,

Mark

[dirk martin]

I've no experience of a straight line rip saw, but put it this way - if it's not cheaper to run a big batch like that on one (presuming it's the optimum bit of kit for the job) then surely there's something wrong with the underlying cost/benefit proposition against which they are designed and sold? (which seems a bit unlikely)

It could be that in a specific instance so much is being charged for the machine time that this benefit is negated - possibly because the saw isn't getting enough utilisation to pay for itself at a lower rate, or maybe because somebody is trying it on.

It surely shouldn't be possible to beat it on cost using a jointer with lots of labour and set up, certainly not if the operator is being paid a normal rate. Or should it??

Alternatively could a band re-saw with a power feeder be set up to handle material as thin as 1in, and if so is it likely to deliver a straight edge and a good enough finish?

Ian

I think that's a very interesting question, Ian, and perhaps worthy of it's own thread. But, I think what this sort of thing gets down to is: Where do you want to spend your money? I can spend $8,300.00 on buying a SLR rip saw from Grizzly, or I can hire 2 or 3 guys, and keep them employed for a long time and put that $8K in their pocket. In the long, long run, buying the machine is probably smarter...but certainly not in the short run.

Maybe that's why the Amish never have a consideration for "filing for unemployment". They don't automate, and thus have plenty of work for income. Maybe that's why the Amish don't know how to spell "resession", and it seems like we've been in one, forever. I realize I say this, sitting at an electrically run computer, LOL!

[dirk martin]

Well, Mark, in actuallity, I think one could argue that using a SLR machine is more of a "drone" situation, then using a team of 2 or 3 guys working together doing these mundane tasks.

One guy running the SLR means only 2 eyes on the job, vs. 4 or 6 eyes with less hardware, and more people.

[Mark Bolton]

Maybe that's why the Amish don't know how to spell "resession", and it seems like we've been in one, forever. I realize I say this, sitting at an electrically run computer, LOL!

With all do respect, the Amish have a very convenient interpretation of their "values" in many cases. I have spoken with dozens of shop owners around the mid-atlantic region who have run into "Amish made" shop owners and business owners flocking to wholesale component suppliers who roll a half a dozen tractor trailers worth of components into a parking lot and sell all the parts "ready to assemble" that are then simply re-branded as "Amish Made". A tractor trailer full of rocker seats, spindles, arms, rockers, swing parts, table legs and tops, on and on. Order 50 of these, 500 of these, back to the shop, glue them up, slather on a coat of gloss poly and start cashing the checks. There are very few Amish sitting around a treadle lathe whittling out rocking chair spindles though thats what the "vision" is. Usually these components are all coming from somewhere in or near Russia in mass quantities. One of our rep's was just at one of these sales as we were talking about it the other day.

Around here specifically in the building trade (my business) there are "Amish Made" buildings sold every day by companies owned and operated by non-Amish individuals acting like pimps of sorts who have a crew of guys with some percentage of them being Amish, could be one, could be 2, who knows.

I am not aiming to broad brush the Amish but many, and I would say most who are mass marketing great volumes of work, have a very convenient way of navigating through the economic system and good for them they are in an economic boom right now but the marketing of simplicity really doesn't match when you look behind the scenes in most cases.

Mark

[Mark Bolton]

Well, Mark, in actuallity, I think one could argue that using a SLR machine is more of a "drone" situation, then using a team of 2 or 3 guys working together doing these mundane tasks.

One guy running the SLR means only 2 eyes on the job, vs. 4 or 6 eyes with less hardware, and more people.

Well, the SLR or any similar process for that matter, allows for a drone, thats the point. Its a much more automated process that takes the human variables out of the process. As opposed to feeding material through a jointer where a little too much pressure here, a little lean there, and your not straight which may or may not effect the next 5 steps in the process, and so on. Even my mind wanders after I have fed board 356 across the jointer and I have a vested interest as the owner of the business and the one who stands to profit most or lose most. Forget about the 8$ an hour guy who to keep himself occupied tries to go twice as fast as he should because he is bored or wants to get done. Before he has realized it he has introduced 30-40 goof ups randomly in the batch. Now the fun begins.

Personally I wouldnt go the SLR route (purchasing) straight away just because its a big investment. I dont want to sound like I think you should buy or find someone with an SLR even though if there IS one near by its a no brainer. I think a feeder and a long fence on the TS would do a great job straightening and keep a lot of $$ in the profit column early on.

When we run flooring even the process of feeding through the shaper with a feeder is not mindless. You still have to watch a lot, know what your watching for, CARE about watching for it in the first place.

I dont mean this to sound off handed but I truly hope for your sake that you have the people around you to pull this off, the material is what you hope it is, and the timeline lands where you project because its great for things to work out.

All you can do is give it a go and see how the numbers work out in reality. You may be the next Bruce Hardwoods!!

Mark

[Dave MacArthur]

It seems to me that despite many voices of experience, you're latching onto one part of their post suits you (20 hours, someone typed it once so now it's gospel despite other contrary estimates), and then using extremely optimistic calculations of what some hypothetical perfect worker will be able to do over a 10 hour period, arriving at an answer you like, and it's all based on cheap perfect labor.

Labor intensive businesses don't operate on 50% profit margins--if they did, companies with millions of capital would quickly start up such businesses, competition would go up, and profit rates would fall. In fact, this has already happened in mass-production woodcrafting businesses, the result being that companies must capitalize and run massive specialized machines on massive quantities of stock, to be able to convert a slim profit margin to an acceptable profit. Companies don't just spend that kind of capital if it's not required. Business operate often on 10-20% profit margins.

There are many undiscussed areas where if things don't go exactly according to some perfect plan, the entire profit margin will disappear instantly. And many areas that will eat into your "this works" calculation which you haven't considered.
-- 13-17 year old kids worked 10 hours on industrial equipment at some high throughput, are you kidding me? That's a kid who's going to be tired in 2 hours, lose attention, and cut a finger off. And I've got to think there's some child labor law involved in philosophically transporting your shop to mainland China or the 1890s...
-- time and labor for chip removal
-- time and labor for blade replacements or rotations
-- cost for blades
-- time for breaks etc.
-- time and labor for board prep, cutting out knots
etc.

Why not stop guessing and using guessed at numbers? Why not just go out there and do a test run? With 10,000 BF of lumber, you can surely afford to stand out there until you need a break, and run some boards over the jointer and see how it works? Take the break, work until you need to rest again, and use that as your TRUE data interval, then extrapolate from there? If you don't have that big a jointer, then use boards of comparative length to jointer ration on your existing jointer, and assume that working with shorter boards is better than anything you'll do with longer boards, you can test/ascertain a longer board/jointer conversion ratio later. But you can certainly give it an hour of testing to get some real rough numbers for what YOUR people in your shop can do?

Was disappointing that you just said "that job fell through" after all the inputs on prior thread, it would be interesting to know why it fell through, were folks predictions of profitability not working out correct? Were your estimates grossly inaccurate? Did the lumber you claimed you'd be able to procure not match specs? Did the cost you claimed for lumber not bear out for the specs claimed? Were your expectations of time to shape stock too liberal? Did any of that affect the price or job falling through? The answers to those questions sound germane to THIS discussion, perhaps depending on why that one fell through.

In any case, I'd think a real test run with your folks on your equip, and some honest extrapolations would be in order?

[Bill LaPointe]

Dave's post makes the most sense to me. I think all of the replies have been interesting and informative but I suspect that Dave has "been there, done that". Realistic!!!

[Mike Harrison]

How bout a sled with a runner in the miter slot and a couple hold down clamps. I'd presume most of the material is similar in width so re-setting the clamps would be minimal, or, sort into a couple width groups as you rip.

would require a "rest" at the input side of the saw and a long outfeed table.

[Jeff Duncan]

I think my previous post may have been mis-understood. When I made the guess of a minimum of 20 hours machine time, that means literally 20 hours of machine time. The time an actual piece of wood is in contact with the jointer, not 20 hours of labor. Which is why I followed it up with estimating about a week just to get a straight edge. And again that's a rough guess based on fairly straight stock with a competent operator. I don't know how old your Boy Scouts are, but I certainly wouldn't have anyone under 18 running it.

Regardless I think Dave has the right idea in doing a test run. I get the sense that no matter what Dirk hears here from guys with experience, he believes he knows better, so that's probably going to be the best bet.

Dirk, if you do get this job I wish you a lot of luck as I believe your going to need it. Maybe it will all turn out OK, but you do come off as someone who's getting in way over his head.

good luck,
JeffD

[Steve Griffin]

You guys are making way to big a deal out of this.
Yesterday I jointed about 100BF in 15 minutes.

That puts my time estimate for you at 25 hours. Call it it 30 with tool and sawdust time.

At 8$/hour, or $20/hour, its still not a big deal if you got your wood at a good price. We're talking 2.4cent/BF, or 6cents/BF respectively.

Everyone seems to think it has to be done "quickly". Why? It only has to be done cheaply enough per board foot to make you money.

I especially like the boy scout/young person idea. No, don't work them 10 hours straight. And no, don't take on really young teenagers. Maybe 4 hours with plenty of supervision. I don't have such a lowly opinion of young people as some I guess. (Heck, I had my own lawnmower business when I was 14, when I was 17 the shop teacher let me work ALONE in the school shop early in the morning).

-Steve

[J.R. Rutter]

Well, Mark, in actuallity, I think one could argue that using a SLR machine is more of a "drone" situation, then using a team of 2 or 3 guys working together doing these mundane tasks.

One guy running the SLR means only 2 eyes on the job, vs. 4 or 6 eyes with less hardware, and more people.

2 people generally run a rip saw: one to feed and one to tail. In my small shop, we do it with one person who knows what the goal of the run is and is examining every board and adjusting the fence to get the best yield and best quality parts. It is more walking around, but the SLR is still much faster and more consistent than any other method that I know of.

Now don't take the above as a critique of your plans. I started my business in my garage with a couple of young guys who were happy to work hard for minimal pay. We managed to get a lot of stuff out the door. I understand that it is possible (especially on a one-time big project) to make good money with minimal capital on the backs of others and still leave everyone satisfied.

Everyone who came into the shop from the industry was amazed that I didn't have a rip saw. At a certain point, in a bigger building, we hit the limit of production where we had to either pay a supplier to rip for us or invest in a saw of our own. To control quality and allocation of each board, I decided that owning a saw was best. Don't underestimate the impact that a machine like this can have if and when your volume rises. The saw paid for itself in less than a year by allowing us to take on more work and maintain quality. And I still only have 2 people, but we crank out 3-4 x the volume of those first labor-intensive years.

You can grind through 10,000 BF with a couple of young backs doing the moving. Just set them up so that it is hard to mess up and hard to get hurt. Hope you make a ton of $.

[Mark Bolton]

I don't have such a lowly opinion of young people as some I guess. (Heck, I had my own lawnmower business when I was 14, when I was 17 the shop teacher let me work ALONE in the school shop early in the morning).

-Steve

I dont have a lowly opinion of young people and I too had two businesses throughout my teens but that said even looking back I was in no way knowledgeable enough to foresee the problems I would have to rely on this person to deal with daily in such a milling operation. Especially not on a maiden voyage. Given a teenager would only be responsible for "shoving a board across a jointer" we all know that is not always a simple task for someone who has done it regularly much less a very young kid.

These were the reasons I thought the long fence/feeder option was a better one. At least then with a simple in/out feed table its just a matter of sliding the board crown out against the fence and engaging it with the feeder. Much simpler, less fatigue, more automated, etc.. You could run a 3-5hp TS with the smallest high quality ripping blade and run the feeder at its highest speed with no problems.

We have young people working with us all the time. We generally try to take kids from the local vocational school on summers or co-op work and have one currently. That said, even the best of them are far from a point where I would feel comfortable leaving them with the responsibility of any operation where there is finesse, or fine details to pay attention to. Going about this many of the ways its been talked about, to me it seems, every step of the process will need paying attention to not just occasional supervision.

We recently had our guy run several hundred feet of fluted casing through the molder, breaking down material from a cut list, and so on. But even then you see them start to rush, trying to speed up the process, acting like a goofy teenager acts. Just like I did, they think after five or ten cuts on the chop saw they are masters, start hustling through it, slamming the saw through faster and faster, pretty soon the tooling suffers, the work suffers, a board gets cut wrong, mis-marked, labeled wrong, etc.. This is because they dont have the years of f-ups that we all have under our belt to temper them coupled with the fact that many have the attention span of a fruit fly. The decision becomes how do you let them get their tempering without putting you broke, in the courtroom, or with a guilty conscience because they will go through the rest of their life short an eyeball, finger, or whatever.

After that I just dont see how the timeline on 100bf up to 10,000bf is simple multiplication +5 hours fudge. I know we have a smallish shop but just moving 10,000' of lumber around, staging it, and so on doest seem possible to me in that timeline but perhaps I am slow. We straightline on the panel saw as long as its 9' or less which would be almost everything with flooring.

I didnt time this last 250 sq' job we did but I know for an absolute fact that I didn't:

1. Move the material from storage to the shop
2. Buck up
3. Remove checks
4. Cut out knots
5. Sort by width
6. Straight line
7. Empty DC
8. Pack out scraps
9. Stage at planer

in 45 minutes. This is your math for 300bf though I know I processed more than that to get 250 finished. Now my run was random width/length for a small job so we sort our packs by width x room length. So if the room is 15' long we keep our runs to multiples of 15' plus trim for a given width so there is little waste on installation. This adds a bit of time.

Like everyone is saying its definitely time for a trial run for some real numbers before you have a committed order and a tractor trailer load of lumber sitting there.

Mark

[dirk martin]

Just to be clear, I'm not using 13 and 14 year old kids as a labor force.
I'm using Boy Scouts and Eagle Scouts, 16+ in age, with their parents involvement in addition. These teenagers from the Scouts have wonderful work ethics, are eager to learn, and relish their chance to learn something new. The parents swing by from time to time, just to "see how things are going", and they are often very impressed to see their "kid" actually working hard, and earning money, while providing a needed service.

[dirk martin]

I think my previous post may have been mis-understood. When I made the guess of a minimum of 20 hours machine time, that means literally 20 hours of machine time. The time an actual piece of wood is in contact with the jointer, not 20 hours of labor. Which is why I followed it up with estimating about a week just to get a straight edge. And again that's a rough guess based on fairly straight stock with a competent operator. I don't know how old your Boy Scouts are, but I certainly wouldn't have anyone under 18 running it.

Regardless I think Dave has the right idea in doing a test run. I get the sense that no matter what Dirk hears here from guys with experience, he believes he knows better, so that's probably going to be the best bet.

Dirk, if you do get this job I wish you a lot of luck as I believe your going to need it. Maybe it will all turn out OK, but you do come off as someone who's getting in way over his head.

good luck,
JeffD


Thanks for the advice, Jeff. I'll certainly take it into consideration.

[dirk martin]

You guys are making way to big a deal out of this.
Yesterday I jointed about 100BF in 15 minutes.

That puts my time estimate for you at 25 hours. Call it it 30 with tool and sawdust time.

At 8$/hour, or $20/hour, its still not a big deal if you got your wood at a good price. We're talking 2.4cent/BF, or 6cents/BF respectively.

Everyone seems to think it has to be done "quickly". Why? It only has to be done cheaply enough per board foot to make you money.

I especially like the boy scout/young person idea. No, don't work them 10 hours straight. And no, don't take on really young teenagers. Maybe 4 hours with plenty of supervision. I don't have such a lowly opinion of young people as some I guess. (Heck, I had my own lawnmower business when I was 14, when I was 17 the shop teacher let me work ALONE in the school shop early in the morning).

-Steve

EXACTLY, Steve. You've got the perfect sentiment. And, yes, 10 hours straight is a bit harsh, even those these "kids" seem to want to gladly do it, but there is supervision, and when handled properly I end up creating more than a finished product...I help create some good work ethics and friendship. Can't get that from an $8K SLR from Grizzly.

[dirk martin]

Thanks, JR....I really appreciate that reply. Very good words of wisdom.

[Dave MacArthur]

Any results of this effort to report? I've been wondering how you ended up doing it, and how the scouts ended up doing, it was an interesting discussion, and kinda pertinent to anyone hiring unskilled young labor on a project.

[Karl Brogger]

My guess is nothing happened. I would've been really curious to get an honest answer as well though.

By my guesstimation if the boards are an average of 6" wide, ( I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually a wider average), and are out of 8' material there's 4 bd/ft per board. 10,000 bd/ft = roughly 2500 boards.
At best it'd probably take 120 seconds to pick up, joint, and set down a board. By my estimates he'd have roughly 83 hrs into just jointing. Being its an absolute butt load of material there's going to be some extra handling, plus time to take care of waste. Might go through a set of knives in there too. Call it 120 man hours just to be safe. I think that might be a bit optimistic. Even at $8/hr your looking at $960.

You'll also have some time into handling it if you take it somewhere. Like I said before, I'm paying $0.15 a bd/ft to get both faces surfaced, and straight-lined on one edge. 10,000 bd/ft, he'd have $1500 into getting it surfaced and ripped. If it's been surfaced, I'd bet it'd cost about $0.07 a bd/ft to get it edged, so ~$700. Not a big deal when staring at a pile of lumber worth over $20k