What will it cost??

[Mike Jones NM]

Looking for a "rough" idea on what it would cost to have some wood run through a plane and then a sander, both sides sanded. Would be rough cut pine, planed to 4 inches thick, will be about 12 to 16 inches wide and roughly 4 to 8 feet long for each piece not really sure who many feet total yet. ANy thoughts on a price per foot or how it would be priced would be appreciated. Thanks

[Charlie Plesums]

The local woodcraft store sent a lot of people to me when they needed an odd piece milled, so I finally set a price...you bring the wood, and I charge $1 per minute for me to use anything in my shop. For rough lumber I would change to my "rough" jointer/planer blades, if they weren't in - add 3 minutes. Assume a change-over between jointer and planer - less than one minute. My jointer and planer are 16 inches, so got you covered there. My drum sander is 16 inches, so good there too. The rest is the actual run time through the machines...pretty fast for boards up to 8 feet long (my shop is very small, so I have to move things for boards longer than 8 feet).

Many commercial shops have a $25 to $50 minimum to cover the overhead of the folks in the office... or won't take the work at all because of the interruption to production.

[Dave Lehnert]

It has been my experience that a shop will not touch lumber not been sold by them. They are afraid of where the wood came from and what may be in it like nails etc…My Hardwood dealer only charges $7.00 per 100BF but that is lumber purchased from him.

[Don Baer]

Like Charlie, My lumber dealer charges $60/hr so if it takes 15 min to rum stuff through his planer then it's $15. seems reasonable to me.