Economics of milling vs store bought hardwoods?

[Nick Crivello]

I'm pondering the economics of a mill vs buying rough lumber at retail/wholesale. In the Bay Area, depending on where you shop hardwoods like Oak and walnut can run up to $15-18bf/ft, or more for the rift/quarter sawn stuff.

If one is able to source your own logs, running your own mil and kiln seems like a good way to control costs. I get that there's quite a bit of labor involved in a mill, and also why rough lumber costs what it does.

For me since I'm in a residential area a small electric DIY chainsaw or bandsaw mill would make the most sense. I'd weld up a simple frame on wheels like the woodland portable mills, to allow tucking it away in a corner of the yard, and adapt a 7.5-10hp three phase motor for power. Trailer I have will work with some tweaks (add a logging arch and winch). Got an area where a 8x12 solar kiln would fit as well. Probably consider a standard Alaskan gas chainsaw mill for any situations where it makes sense to mill offsite.

I'm a small guy in the Napa valley, locating logs every few months in the surrounding areas (Sonoma, Lake, Mendocino counties) shouldn't be that difficult. What experiences have you guys had?

[roger wiegand]

I don't have a mill, but I have benefitted from a friend who does. I think it depends a lot on how much lumber you need and of what quality. My friend is extremely selective of which trees he selects, so has a relatively high yield of useable wood. Having access to 20+ inch wide serial boards from the same log has helped me to make some really nice pieces. OTOH, most of the guys who sell locally cut lumber on CL produce, what for my uses and interests, is firewood. They are saved by the current craze for pouring epoxy into crappy wood.

I suspect you'll find that there's good reasons that only a vanishingly small number of pro woodworkers cut their own lumber. Their time and energy is better spent elsewhere. Sawing and drying wood is a whole different skill set with its own economics. If you're not a pro, then it's just an additional hobby and you need to think about how you want to distribute your time and effort. I'm sure it can be fun, and I know I've gotten wood that would have been hard to find through commercial sources. (I can strongly recommend having a good friend with a sawmill!)

LTL freight has gotten a little less crazy than it was a couple years ago, you may find than if you can buy wood a pallet at time negotiating directly with suppliers where it's a lot cheaper may be more cost effective than using the local resellers.

[Curt Harms]

Wood Mizer has, or at least had a list of Wood Mizer owners that play for pay or a portion of the milled wood. Unless you're planning to produce quite a lot of wood, that might be a better option.

[Jimmy Harris]

Unless you have acres of forest with tons of trees ready for harvest, I don't see how you'd ever break even with the costs.

[Jamie Buxton]

While you’re pencilling this idea out, you should be using realistic prices for purchased lumber. If you’re thinking $15 per board foot for oak, you’re shopping in wrong place. I’m in the Bay Area too, and I pay $4 or so for roughsawn 4/4 red oak.

[Nick Crivello]

While you’re pencilling this idea out, you should be using realistic prices for purchased lumber. If you’re thinking $15 per board foot for oak, you’re shopping in wrong place. I’m in the Bay Area too, and I pay $4 or so for roughsawn 4/4 red oak.

I've have an account at MacBeath. I think Macbeath was ~$12 for 8/4 WO and Moore Newton is about $2 less. I haven't explored much beyond those two sources.

[John TenEyck]

If you are contemplating milling only for yourself, you have to keep the investment very low. Even an Alaskan mill and a pro level chainsaw (and you need a pro level one if you don't want to kill it) is going to set you back something around $12 - 1500, or more. Anything higher end and you can start multiplying that number. I built a 8 x 12 ft solar drier - another $2000. Furniture quality logs don't grow on most trees, so to speak, they mostly are in a forest. It's fairly rare to find a yard tree that has a lot of clear lumber it, and there's always the risk of metal in them, and saw chains aren't cheap. You need to get good a telling wheat from chaff as to which trees will yield quality lumber or you'll spend a lot of time for little benefit.

Can it pay off? Yes, if you are savvy and don't mind spending your time milling, carrying, waiting for the lumber to dry, carrying, storing, and carrying the lumber yet again. If you'd rather be building furniture, however, milling is going to chew into that time in a big way.

John

[Edward Weber]

My thoughts are the same as Johns

I don't know what exactly you mean by residential (size of lot) and if you have neighbors close by.
You need a fair bit of room to process from tree/log to board and of course, storage
Investing in equipment, whatever it may be, can vary a lot in price. As it's been said, you can recoup it but how long will that take. It can be expensive to let all that money sit out in the yard and not use it.
Do you have a relationship with a tree service? Somewhere where you can get larger logs regularly. Is this something you plan to do often.
i'm not trying to talk you out of anything but you do need to be realistic.

[Mark Wedel]

As others said, a lot really depends on getting a reliable source for logs. There may be trees getting chopped down all the time, but they might not be ones that you want if you are looking for specific types of material. Also figure out how you will move those logs, as fresh cut logs are heavy.

One can probably put together and Alaskan mill + Saw for <$800 - I did saw by buying a generic MS660 clone - that is the biggest part of that cost. You might need a good sized chainsaw regardless of anything else, to cut logs to length, remove side branches that were not cut cleanly (and thus not fit through your mill), etc.

I mostly bought this because I had an ash tree in my front yard being removed, and I wanted to do something with it vs it going to a chipper. The chainsaw has other uses, so that is not a totally lost cost (I used it to cut some plum logs from a neighbor to size/split in half to make bowls out of). That ash planks have been sitting for a year to dry/stabilize - I'll probably do something with them this spring. But that is also something to keep in mind - the time between getting the log and having usable lumber from it might be fairly long.

Economics also depends on how much lumber you are needing (and able to get) - if you are using 500 bf/year, it makes more economic sense than if you are using 50 bf/year. But you do have to keep in mind that milling your own lumber takes time, so even if you are using 500 bf/year right now, if you start milling your own, that may be using half of your time, so now only have time to use 250 bf/year on projects.

[Josko Catipovic]

I went part-way, sourcing my lumber from a local sawyer who knows what I'm after, have 6 large boules drying in the yard and expect to buy a couple more logs this spring. I got a large bandsaw and planer to accommodate the change. My work quality went up: most things I make are from consecutive planks, bookmatched wherever appropriate, and I get to live with a plank for a bit before deciding about just how to showcase its' unique features. I'm very glad I made the change.

[John C Cox]

All very good points. Especially, "What is your hobby?" The guys I know with a sawmill - well, that's their hobby, not so much wood working. They love sawing logs.

What I noticed is this: The lumber market and supply shifts around a lot. Those guys often diversify and they have a means of supply. So, for example, one guy owns a tree service, a firewood company, and a small Mizer mill. He's already got the chipper and the splitter and the short log truck. He knows other tree services and firewood companies, and they horse trade. He also has no qualms about splitting a log up for firewood when it doesn't meet lumber expectations. He's also perfectly happy to trade a stack of oak and ash logs to another firewood guy for cherry and walnut.

Of course the next obvious question is... How are you going to sell to recoup your investment? I bought a lot of small time milled wood on online auctions, one board at a time. Are you up for dealing with folks who just want the one specific thing? I also dealt with some guys who had whole barns full of spectacular "Wood for sale," yet could never manage to part with a single scrap of it. So yeah.

[George Yetka]

Your talking rough vs square and sanded 4 sides right?

I have had bad luck with prefaced wood. I ordered a bunch of Hard maple last summer and it came exactly at 3/4 or maybe a couple thou under and it needed to be milled to below 5/8 to make perfect. I bought 25% more linear feet and could have made it 1" thick with rough 4/4 I bought

[Nick Crivello]

Your talking rough vs square and sanded 4 sides right?

No. I’m talking about milling from logs vs purchasing rough lumber. Rough lumber is not surfaced at all.

[Steven Cooper2]

I'm sitting on about 3000 board feet of lumber air drying that I'm expecting about 1500 board feet of lumber from post processing. Most of that is from a single gigantic 50" trunk.

I'm in about $600 for a farmertec chainsaw, bar, mill, and chain, plus another 2000 in parts for a cheap cnc router for flattening.

Add in 80 hours at some hourly rate and another $2/bf in drying costs and it probably isn't worth it, but I do have a ton of wood, a giant chainsaw, and a CNC, so that's cool.

[Cameron Wood]

You need a lot of room for the stickered wood and a way to manage the tremendous amount of cant, bark, offcut, and sawdust.

I'm also in a residential area, and hardly ever buy any wood as I have thousands of BF, much of it gotten for free. One vector is due to the fact that stashes of wood have a lifespan longer than that of woodworkers.