Real Quick Question

[Owen Gregg]

A gentleman has a cherry log that he's trying to sell me for $125. It's 11' long and 9"x17". He did say one side has a few knots in it, but there's very little sapwood in the tree. He'll cut it "any way I want it." I'm going to look at it Sunday, and I'm wondering how this could be a bad deal? On top of that, how would you get it cut up?

I'm afraid my eagerness is shortchanging my reason here, but right now I'm excited and I'll see what I'm in for in a couple days, even if it is a letdown. Any insight as to what I should look for or how I should get it cut would be appreciated, along with any telltale signs that I should run away screaming.

[Paul Greathouse]

Owen
I hate to be the one to let you down but the knots alone on that short of a log would be enough to turn me off. As I'm understanding your post the log is 17" on the big end and 9" on the small end. If that is so, you will be losing alot of wood on the big end when the log is squared up.
The only thing that might get you a little more wood out of the log is if you could cut it shorter and have a larger small end. Hopefully you could eliminate some of the knots at the same time. I've seen alot of logs sawn, and sapwood is sapwood, your going to get roughly the same amount for any given diameter of log.
I just had about 3500 bd ft of lumber cut back in May (red oak, white oak, pin oak, pecan, sycamore, cottonwood and pine). The sawyer I used did a great job and charged 22.5 cents per board foot. I usually try to pick logs that are 24" to 30" on the big side and no knots if possible. Knots will greatly reduce the stability of your lumber (more twists, warps, cups and bends).
On hardwood I like to have the log quartersawn. This works especially well on oak. Softwoods can be flat sawn. My dad had a cherry log sawed once. It was flat sawn and came out good but it didn't have any knots. It was large enough to get some 1x10.
I don't know where your from but in Southwest La. we pretty much have our pick of guys that will come to your property with their portable bandsaw mill and saw your logs on site for 20 - 25 cents per board ft. In my opinion bandsaw mills turn out lumber that is far superior to that of blade mills.
Ask the guy if he can estimate the amount of usable board feet of lumber you will get out of the log, then multiply by 20 -25 cents and add what you think the value of the log might be. I'm not sure what the log itself is worth because we have always had our own logs and just paid for the sawing and we very seldom see cherry down here.
Without seeing the log I would think you would be getting somewhere between 50 - 100 bd ft from that log not considering any knot loss.
Hope this helps some. It's just going to depend alot on your location and what you would be paying for the same board at the lumberyard.

[Matt Warfield]

When I purchased some cherry logs last year, the opening price was a dollar a bd ft using the doyle method. I ended up getting it for about half that mostly because the guy didn't want to transport the few remaining logs he had left. Oh, it probably helped that the logs were in the lot behind my house. :D

Using the Doyle formula, you have a little over 17 board feet in the log. Of course, the Doyle method has a large margin of error for small diameters. For example, if you consider an even taper on the log, hack off 3 feet on the small end and are left with a 12" diameter on the small end of an 8 foot log, doyle says 32 board feet. Doesn't make much sense? As Paul mentioned, if you square up the log based on the 9" diameter, you'll have a great deal of waste. Not that you couldn't put the waste to good use, but Doyle's formula considers that to be waste.

My opinion is that $125 is far too high. $50 tops plus another 20-30 for milling.

Just my 2 cents worth...

[Jim Becker]

Not a good deal. Too small, especially at the little end. The only way to get any yield out of that log is to flitch-saw with natural edges, too. $50-80 sawn as Matt says. Good deal. More than that...no way.

[Owen Gregg]

He's already sold the log, but I did have a chance to look at it. As you guys said, the 9 and 17 were the base and upper end diameters. When I talked on the phone with the guy he made it sound like a cube, which is a misunderstanding on my part, but the second I saw it, I passed. Thanks for the info, guys, I'll keep all this in mind in the future.