Sawmill cut up charges

[Larry Browning]

I am sure there is a great name for what a sawmill charges to cut up logs and timbers, but I don't know what it is, so I will just call it a cut up charge untill I am corrected.:o
Anyway, I have a pretty large stash of seasoned timbers that I want to be cut up into 2X and 4X lumber. The wood is either ash or maple (hard for me to tell which). These timbers are about 30 years old and are anywhere from 4 X 6 inches to 6 x 12 inches and about 10 to 12 ft long. The sawmill said they will charge me 40 cents a BF to cut these up. This seems a bit high to me, but what do I know? I was thinking maybe 20 cents. Also, why do thy charge by BF? This doesn't make much sense to me. For instance, lets say I have a timber that is 4X8 and I want them to cut it into 2X8s. They would have to run it thru the saw 1 time. But if I wanted 1X8s they would have to run it thru 3 times but I would be charged the same for both examples.

[JayStPeter]

Based on some stuff I've helped others with the quote you got is exactly what I've seen. But, for the cases I've been involved with it's been cutting up logs.

Jay

[Todd Burch]

I've dealt with this too, and it's absurd to charge a board foot price. Based on board foot pricing, they would charge the same whether you had them make one cut or you had them cut it up into toothpicks. Stupid on their part. I'd almost want to have them cut something up into toothpicks just to show them how stupid they were being.

Now, what they should charge you for is loading, offloading, transporting, blades and time on the machine. Time on the machine should include whatever labor rate they have established for themselves for people, facilities, utilities and machine overhead and profit. Also for travel unless you are taking the timbers to them.

Seasoned wood is more difficult to cut (slower, harder on blades) than green timber, so an upcharge is in order there.

Todd

[Larry Browning]

Todd,
That makes a lot more since to me. But, from what I see so far charging by the BF seems to be what they all do.
Also, what is this service commonly called? Surely it is not "cut up charge". Maybe "milling fee"?? I don't want to sound like the idiot I am when I go to such a "manly" place as a sawmill, for goodness sakes!
I want to waltz in there like I know what I'm doing and say "I've got these @#%! timbers I need for you to ____ (cut up, mill, process.. what's the word here?). (You have to cuss in order for them to take you seriously, ya know.)

[Jim Becker]

The local sawyer I have used (and will soon use again for some poplar logs waiting to be cut) charges by the hour plus 1/2 hr travel plus $25 for any blade damaged by metal.

[JayStPeter]

It really wouldn't surprise me if a BF isn't a pretty good measure to charge. I bet at the end of any given day the number of BF cut (assuming they ran the thing full time each day) is pretty constant. They do have a range of logs they process and I'd guess that over the course of the day an average log size and yield accounts for the per BF costs. My experience is that they only process logs within a certain size range.
On one of my experiences the friend I was helping had a bunch of logs. The guys cutting the tree had cut some pretty nice walnut short (a few 3-4' logs) and the sawmill didn't want anything to do with them. When we asked if it was a problem with the equipment they said no. They said that it wasn't cost effective to cut those logs. I thought that was pretty short sighted of them. If they had simply said that the cost would be double since the majority of the effort is loading/unloading the wood and the shorter logs had half the yield, I'm pretty sure my friend would've paid.
In both cases that I've dealt with sawyers, they were very concerned with the sizes of the logs when giving the quote. They also asked about thicknesses, so I assume there is a valid range there too. But, I never asked for toothpicks to verify that assumption.:D

Larry, one of the guys I've dealt with is menonite. If you cuss around him, he'll kick you off his property. Fortunately, I was told this by the person who recommended him.:cool:

[Dixon Peer]

Charging by the surface foot makes more sense. Think about it. Width of board times length and thickness is of no concern, nor should it be. But hey, I don't own a sawmill.

[Tyler Purcell]

Looking at a price sheet a local lumberyard gave me... they charge $5.00 per minute or $300 per hour, with a minimum charge of 25 dollars. Now, with that being said, I have no idea how long it takes for the average log to be cut up, how many boardfeet say 5 minutes of sawing will yield...

Jim, perhaps you know who I am talking about - Heacock Lumber. I have seen their mill and it looks quite efficient but I honestly have very limited experience in this area.

[Bo Lowrey]

To get to your original question, what is the service called you are asking for - if I understand correctly, you have some timbers that were previously sawn from logs. I would refer to what you have as cants. The pieces that that were cut off the log to make those cants are called slabs. Anyway, what you are asking for is to have your cants resawn into 2 by or whatever. The terminology may be local. As for price, I hear prices from 35 to 50 cents - by the BF plus cost of repairs if metal hit. Most of the commercial production mills won't even touch a job like this, there just isn't enough $ in it to be worth their while. Frequently, the sawyer you find will be someone who does it as a hobby, or someone like a tree service that does it as a way to use or gain some benefit from material they have little or nothing invested in.

I've sawn with a portable bandmill for several years as a hobby, and have sold a little of the product I've cut. I've never actually sawn for a cash fee. What I do is either saw as part of a trade (for tools, logs, lumber, etc.), or do what is called sawing on shares - this is where I saw your material and make two stacks. You get your choice of the two stacks, and I take the other as payment.

[Rob Will]

Larry,
How badly are these cants checked (split)? is the lumber going to be of good quality?

I think you are asking for "resawing".
Around here we pay about 20 cents a bd ft for sawing green logs.
resawing in dry wood is a slower and more expensive process.
40 cents does not surprise me but be sure your cants are not warped or checked.

Rob

[Larry Browning]

Charging by the surface foot makes more sense. Think about it. Width of board times length and thickness is of no concern, nor should it be. But hey, I don't own a sawmill.

Sorry, I have to disagree. What if I took that same 4X8 timber and said make me 2 4X4s out of this. This takes one pass. but if I said turn this into 8 1X4s
it would take 7 passes. Now explain to me how I should be charged the same amount for something that take 7 times as long to do and has 7 times as much wear on the equipment. This is what makes no since to me.

Hey, wait a minute! after rereading your post, I think you are agreeing with me after all..... So, as Gilda Radner would say Never Mind!

And does anybody know what this is service called???

[Larry Browning]

Well apparently I took too long to make my last post and have finally gotten my question answered. So you just need to ignore my last post altogether.:o See, I knew I was going to be embarrassed over this.

So, I guess I need to say. "Hey fellas!, I need to get these @#%! cants resawn" But if I notice that the saw mill is actually belt driven by a pack of mules I need to leave out the colorful language.

[Larry Browning]

Larry,
How badly are these cants checked (split)? is the lumber going to be of good quality?

I think you are asking for "resawing".
Around here we pay about 20 cents a bd ft for sawing green logs.
resawing in dry wood is a slower and more expensive process.
40 cents does not surprise me but be sure your cants are not warped or checked.

Rob

Rob,
These "cants" are stacked an stickered under a big tarp. I think the ones on top may not be too good, but the ones under those I think are pretty good. My son and his family are coming up to the house tomorrow for TG and he is going to help me get it loaded into my pickup, so I will know more tomorrow. Also, I may need to take the chain saw to the ends of a few.

[John Bartley]

Larry,

If you don't mind me chiming in here as a person who is a beginning (amateur) sawyer (and not trying to hijack the thread)....

I'm finding this thread very interesting as I am in the process of buying a new sawmill for myself and am also currently sawing for a friend on his small portable sawmill. I've been sawing cedar into posts and rails for fencing, and have just started sawing oak into 4/4 boards to dry and be shaped into T&G flooring. Based on my limited experience, I would guess that the only way a commercial sawmill can be decently profitable at $0.20/bf or even at $0.40/bf is to do a large volume of clean large straight logs for one customer at a time with very little downtime for handling or embedded objects that would ruin a band or blade. This way the handling (off-loading, piling, on-loading lumber, etc) is a smaller part of the overall job and as such is costed as a smaller percentage of the total "cost of sawing".

For a small job customer with only a few logs or with small logs, my opinion is that a better approach would be to find a casual sawyer (like Bo Lowrey) who has a portable mill and expect to pay him by the hour with an extra charge for transport and setup.

As a sideline ... I'm looking at mills like the 23hp Norwood Lumbermate with 17' of bed and trailer kit. based on a 4000 hour saw life and using up two motors in that lifetime, and including normal maintenance and repairs, I've calculated that the saw costs about $25/hour of sawing to run. I'm thinking that a fair rate to charge for sawing would be $75/hr while cutting and $25/hr for transport.

Would that sound like a rate that you would be willing to pay to have your cants resawed? (I think that's the correct terminology - the squared timbers are "cants" and the operation you want done is "resawing")

cheers eh?

[Jim Becker]

Looking at a price sheet a local lumberyard gave me... they charge $5.00 per minute or $300 per hour, with a minimum charge of 25 dollars. Now, with that being said, I have no idea how long it takes for the average log to be cut up, how many boardfeet say 5 minutes of sawing will yield...

Jim, perhaps you know who I am talking about - Heacock Lumber. I have seen their mill and it looks quite efficient but I honestly have very limited experience in this area.

Gene Hamilton out of Chalfont is FAR less expensive than that. While I suspect his hourly rate has increased since then, it was $50 in 2000 when I had all this milled in my back yard...

http://sawsndust.com/images/milling/milling9.jpg

I'll be inviting Gene to visit here once the addition is done as I have about 8-10 poplar logs to saw from the recent changes to our septic system.

I've been to Heacock a total of one time. Wasn't impressed...haven't returned. There is a guy off Old Easton Road between D-Town and Danboro who does impressive work, however, particularly on slabs. 'Has the right equipment for the "big stuff".

[Fred Woodward]

Larry,

If you don't mind me chiming in here as a person who is a beginning (amateur) sawyer (and not trying to hijack the thread)....

I'm finding this thread very interesting as I am in the process of buying a new sawmill for myself and am also currently sawing for a friend on his small portable sawmill. I've been sawing cedar into posts and rails for fencing, and have just started sawing oak into 4/4 boards to dry and be shaped into T&G flooring. Based on my limited experience, I would guess that the only way a commercial sawmill can be decently profitable at $0.20/bf or even at $0.40/bf is to do a large volume of clean large straight logs for one customer at a time with very little downtime for handling or embedded objects that would ruin a band or blade. This way the handling (off-loading, piling, on-loading lumber, etc) is a smaller part of the overall job and as such is costed as a smaller percentage of the total "cost of sawing".

For a small job customer with only a few logs or with small logs, my opinion is that a better approach would be to find a casual sawyer (like Bo Lowrey) who has a portable mill and expect to pay him by the hour with an extra charge for transport and setup.

As a sideline ... I'm looking at mills like the 23hp Norwood Lumbermate with 17' of bed and trailer kit. based on a 4000 hour saw life and using up two motors in that lifetime, and including normal maintenance and repairs, I've calculated that the saw costs about $25/hour of sawing to run. I'm thinking that a fair rate to charge for sawing would be $75/hr while cutting and $25/hr for transport.

Would that sound like a rate that you would be willing to pay to have your cants resawed? (I think that's the correct terminology - the squared timbers are "cants" and the operation you want done is "resawing")

cheers eh?

This sounds more like what I have paid for resawing cants from a sawyer here. Unfortunately, he moved to Arkansas. LOL
I took about 1500 bf of walnut cants 6x8 to 8x10 and 8 to 12 foot long to him, we unloaded to his saw and I restacked back to my truck as he sawed the wood. He resawed the wood to 5/4 as I requested. He charged me $100 for the job which I thought was reasonable. Took about an hour to complete.
He did a great job and I wish he was still around here. I've got another 1200 bf to do.:D At that rate, it was about $.07/bf but i helped with the unloading and loading of the wood, moving it to the saw, etc. Labor well spent and a very reasonable charge I thought.

[Jack Tanner]

Todd,
That makes a lot more since to me. But, from what I see so far charging by the BF seems to be what they all do.
Also, what is this service commonly called? Surely it is not "cut up charge". Maybe "milling fee"?? I don't want to sound like the idiot I am when I go to such a "manly" place as a sawmill, for goodness sakes!
I want to waltz in there like I know what I'm doing and say "I've got these @#%! timbers I need for you to ____ (cut up, mill, process.. what's the word here?). (You have to cuss in order for them to take you seriously, ya know.)
I spent 25 years logging in Oregon, a fair share of the guys I worked with didn't cuss, but then there were those that did.

[Larry Browning]

Jack,
I was just trying to be funny. Actually I don't cuss at all. Welll, maybe a little when I miss the nail and hit my thumb!

[ROBERT ELLIS]

Larry,

Here in South Central Kentucky it is commonplace for sawmill operators/owners to charge by the BF. I owned a portable bandsaw mill, and have hired at least 3 different owners on different occaisions to do custom sawing for me and they all charged by the BF. All of them always like sawing "barn packages" i.e., 2x4's, 2x6's etc., because at the end of the day they could always saw a lot more BF than if they were just sawing 4 quarter lumber. I'm like you it didn't seem right, but it's their mill their rules...

Robert

[John sexton]

If you get them down around my way I might have them done for around $.15 a BF Close to Little Rock

[Larry Browning]

The sawmill is only about 15 miles away. It is actually a small shop that I would like to give my support to. It is family owned and run by a woman. she is really a nice lady. I am going to take my cants to her tomorrow and have them resawn to have enough to build my workbench. How's that for sounding like I know what I am talking abut?

My son is coming today and he will help me load up the truck. I will try to take a few pictures of this process and post them here. Kind of a before and after sequence.
so far I'm having fun! That's what really counts!!!!!

[Larry Browning]

If you get them down around my way I might have them done for around $.15 a BF Close to Little Rock

I may take you up on that on the next batch, we will see how this one goes.

[Dixon Peer]

Sorry, I have to disagree. What if I took that same 4X8 timber and said make me 2 4X4s out of this. This takes one pass. but if I said turn this into 8 1X4s
it would take 7 passes. Now explain to me how I should be charged the same amount for something that take 7 times as long to do and has 7 times as much wear on the equipment. This is what makes no since to me.

Hey, wait a minute! after rereading your post, I think you are agreeing with me after all..... So, as Gilda Radner would say Never Mind!

And does anybody know what this is service called???




You misunderstand what is meant by a surface foot or you would not disagree. To measure the work done by the sawyer in surface feet will provide him (or her) more money on the basis of the number of passes past the blade or band. Surface feet are what the exposed flat surface of the board measures, as in a one by twelve: one foot long by one foot wide is one surface foot. Now, if you go to board feet, the same surface measurement, if the board was 5/4, would be 1.25 bdft, if 4/4 it'd be one bdft, if 6/4 it's 1.5 bdft and so on. The sawyer is doing one pass to cut any of these thicknesses off of the cant or log, but the board measure is different. So, basing the price on board measure is strange to me. It seems more proper to base the cutting charge on surface measure...but then there is the fact that the thicker the material the heavier, thus more effort to off load the product.

[Larry Browning]

Dixon,
I realized that I, at first had misunderstood your post, but if you will notice, I saw the error of my ways. Then in a later post I just begged everyone to just ignore this post altogether.

[Jack Tanner]

I paid 25 cents to a guy with a portable sawmill, wasn't my place though. He had sawed up some oak on an other mans place. I guess he didn't want the oak????? Oh well great for me though. I found an other portable sawmill, but the guy wanted to saw your timber for half. It though that sounded a little steep.

[Paul Greathouse]

Down here in Southwest Louisiana the mobile bandsaw mill guys all charge by the Board Foot, they charge roughly .20 BF for regular sawing and .25 BF for Quarter sawing. The last guy we used did a great job. Between myself, my dad and my oldest son we had about 10,000 bd. ft. sawed.

I think they base the bd. ft. price on 5/4 cuts that way if they get stuck cutting all 5/4 stuff, like they usually do with me, they won't lose money. When they cut the 2X stuff thats their lagniappe (sorry bout that, down here "lagniappe" means "a little extra").

About 1/3 or less of what he cut for us was 2X. Regardless of what basis of measuring is the most fair, my son got a great deal on his quartersawn red oak.

.25/bdft for sawing
.50/bdft for kiln drying and planing down to 7/8" after it had air dried for a year.

I had to straight edge it and do the finish planing down to 3/4" but for .75bdft this is some beautiful lumber. Any oak I have seen around here at the Borgs and the lumberyards is well over $3bdft and is flat sawn. Its no where near as pretty as our quartersawn lumber. I am building his cabinets with it right now and they are coming out great.

I guess my point is whether you pay by the board foot or whatever other means, your getting a great deal compared to the borgs and the lumberyards and your probably getting better looking lumber.

Oh, and believe me, none of the sawyers in my part of the country are getting rich either. They are just getting an honest days pay for an honest days work.

[John Bartley]

..... they charge roughly .20 BF for regular sawing and .25 BF for Quarter sawing. ..... About 1/3 or less of what he cut for us was 2X. Regardless of what basis of measuring is the most fair, my son got a great deal on his quartersawn red oak.

Paul,

An increase of $0.05 to go from flat sawing to quarter sawing seems pretty modest for the extra work, especially depending on how they did the quarter sawing. Any chance you watched the sawing and could describe how they did the cutting? I'm curious, for my own education, to know how they positioned the log or cant for each cut.

cheers

[Paul Greathouse]

Paul,

An increase of $0.05 to go from flat sawing to quarter sawing seems pretty modest for the extra work, especially depending on how they did the quarter sawing. Any chance you watched the sawing and could describe how they did the cutting? I'm curious, for my own education, to know how they positioned the log or cant for each cut.

cheers

John,

It seemed like only a small difference to me also. I think the poor fella actually felt guilty about charging what he did. He was one of those guys that wasn't just "in it for the paycheck", he really was proud of what he did and it showed in his work. That particular sawing was done a few months after hurricane Rita passed through. The price on everything had just gone up. Most of the sawyers had been flat sawing for .17 1/2 bd ft before the storm but with the demand for sawyers after the storm they all raised their prices. I imagine he was charging .25 bdft for quarter sawing before the increase and had only increased the flat sawing price.

I always hang around and watch when I'm having wood sawed. What he did was, after the log was slabbed and he had the square cant, he would quarter the cant and choose the a side from each quarter to start sawing on so that he could get the most grain detail possible. I love the fish scale look. Some logs delivered better scale detail than others but everthing I have planed so far looks great.

Even with flat sawing you will get some of the quartersawn look on a few boards but with the true quartersawing that he was doing it shows on almost all of the boards.

You do get narrower width boards overall cutting that way but the majority of them are very straight and stable. Out of roughly 24-30" diameter logs we got 60% 1x6's, 35% 1x8's & a few 1X4's. We even ended up with a few sapwood 1x12 flat sawn boards that were the result of him getting down to what he wanted for the quartersawing.

Earlier this year I aquired a couple of nice white oak logs and a couple of cherry along with a nice straight pine log. I called the same sawyer so that I could get the white oak quartersawn but he had shut down sawing for a while to build himself a new house. He recommened another sawyer that quartersaws for .35bdft but he hasn't been able to get to me yet. I think the apprehension is the small amount of logs I have now. Probably just a little over a 1000 bdft all togeather. The least we have ever had sawn at on time before was about 5000 bdft.

[John Bartley]

Paul,

Thank you for the reply.

cheers

[Larry Browning]

I took my cants to the sawmill today. The guy there called these beams.
Anyway he had me leave them and said they would call me when the were ready.
Here are a few pictures.

[Larry Browning]

Here are a couple more pictures. One is of the stack of cants I have and the other is one of a piece of 1X12 maple I planed down to be used in the workbench.

[Al Killian]

The guy I use charges $41 per hour, plus setup fee and $36 per blade damaged. There is a min. charge of $160 for him to come out. He cut up around 450 bft of aspen and 150bft of pine and took him just around 3and 1/2 hours includeing setup.

[Bryan Berguson]

And does anybody know what this is service called???





Apparently not! :) Instead of trying to figure out what it's called so you don't look stupid, just tell them what you told us... You have some timbers you'd like re-sawn smaller. Tell them what you have and what you'd like it cut down to. The ONLY person I'd ever worry about admitting not knowing something to is my mother-in-law! ;)

Fwiw - I had some trees sawn about 10 or 12 years ago. I was charged .15 per board foot and a setup fee that *I think* was $100. Btw- If my mother-in-law asks what the setup fee was *I know* it was $100. :D I also had to buy any blades if they hit metal - which they didn't thanks to a good metal detector. Yard trees, that I dug a lot of metal out of!

Bryan

[Brian Ross]

Larry.. I like your attitude. An entertaining thread.

Brian