Where does your lumber come from?
#31
(06-25-2020, 06:10 PM)WoodworkerTom Wrote: My lumber comes from someone else's sawmill.  Lot easier and less taxing on my body.

If I was younger, had a mill and land with mature trees I would probably do what you are doing but alas I am an urban boy.

Nice wood and thanks for pics.

Well you are spot on with that comment Tom.  I'm feeling pretty whipped tonight after finishing cutting that log and then carrying and stickering it all, a lot of it being 8/4.  Gotta guy delivering a load of ash logs tomorrow for shares, and my other arborist friend is bringing some pin oak in a couple of days.  After that I'm hoping to mill about 15 nice cherry logs that a guy has about 50 miles south of me.  That would be my first take it on the road job with the mill, and help justify buying the trailer option for the mill.  

It's going to be a productive Summer, if I can keep up with it. 

John
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#32
An entry level mill is nice for one's own lumber, decided early on, to damned hard to make money with it.

A friend had a big Timber Harvester mill....hydraulic everything, load, rotate, clamp, raise_lower. Sure, it was 40k, he used it to supply his flooring & millwork business and did custom milling. It took 3 people to run efficiently, forklift to feed it, someone unloading/stacking and the sawyer.

He could saw a 20" log faster than I can load and clamp a log.

Ed
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#33
(06-25-2020, 09:48 PM)EdL Wrote: An entry level mill is nice for one's own lumber, decided early on, to damned hard to make money with it.

A friend had a big Timber Harvester mill....hydraulic everything, load, rotate, clamp, raise_lower. Sure, it was 40k, he used it to supply his flooring & millwork business and did custom milling. It took 3 people to run efficiently, forklift to feed it, someone unloading/stacking and the sawyer.

He could saw a 20" log faster than I can load and clamp a log.

Ed

You can make money with an entry level mill, but not enough to live on.  I have a friend with a home built mill that has sold about $10K worth of value added wood products with his this year from logs he got for the cost of picking them up.  I mostly mill for myself; but I have started milling for shares, too.  No money changes hands in that exchange but I get half the lumber that I later can sell or use for my own projects.  

Selling lumber is pretty much a loser; but live edge shelving and slabs are silver, gold if you can KD them, and platinum if you can surface them flat.  To a furniture or cabinet maker it's nuts what people will pay for wood with "character"; stuff you otherwise almost can't give away.   The more knots, cracks, and holes the better.  Even ash will fetch $4/bf, and if it's walnut people will happily pay $8/bf for it.  

John
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#34
(06-25-2020, 09:48 PM)EdL Wrote: An entry level mill is nice for one's own lumber, decided early on, to damned hard to make money with it.

A friend had a big Timber Harvester mill....hydraulic everything, load, rotate, clamp, raise_lower. Sure, it was 40k, 

You don't want to compete with a full powered mill cutting commodity lumber. You will be knocking yourself out of less than minimum wage. If you have invested $40k+ in a sawmill, then you will be wanting to keep it working and paying for itself, and you will basically end up as a full time sawyer. 

But for supplying your own woodworking it's not out of the question, and it's even possible to make a few $$ by concentrating on specialty stuff and "value added".  With entry level mills down around the price of a good table saw, and things like solar kiln plans available, it's not a silly option for someone with access to some trees / logs etc.
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#35
Miss T saw an add on Craigs List years ago from a mature gal who's dad had passed.  He had run a cabinet shop and she had lumber in their barn she would trade for firewood, or, she was going to use it for firewood.  We called, then drove down and paid her the cash she would need to have a nice load of cut and stacked seasoned wood delivered.  She led us through three barns, pointing out the best stuff dad had left.  Slabs of live edge walnut, 10' long and 2' wide, live edge maple.  4" thick cherry, 1 0" x 10'; curly Cherry, Cobobola, etc.  Just when we thought we were done, therd would be another barn, or overhead storage.

We loaded down the bed of the F150, and she kept saying, oh wait, there is this... Over here.
She told us to come back, but for some reason, we never made that three hour drive again.
I think it was lack of storage space at the time.  I am still using that wood.

Big Grin
Jim in Okie
You can tell a lot about the character of a man -
By the way he treats those who can do nothing for him.
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#36
(06-28-2020, 06:48 AM)BrokenOlMarine Wrote: Miss T saw an add on Craigs List years ago from a mature gal who's dad had passed.  He had run a cabinet shop and she had lumber in their barn she would trade for firewood, or, she was going to use it for firewood.  We called, then drove down and paid her the cash she would need to have a nice load of cut and stacked seasoned wood delivered.  She led us through three barns, pointing out the best stuff dad had left.  Slabs of live edge walnut, 10' long and 2' wide, live edge maple.  4" thick cherry, 1 0" x 10'; curly Cherry, Cobobola, etc.  Just when we thought we were done, therd would be another barn, or overhead storage.

We loaded down the bed of the F150, and she kept saying, oh wait, there is this... Over here.
She told us to come back, but for some reason, we never made that three hour drive again.
I think it was lack of storage space at the time.  I am still using that wood.

Big Grin

I hear stories of these things happening but not with me. 
Crazy

Jim
Jim
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#37
Last week a guy called asking if I could mill some standing dead ash trees.  Sure, bring them over.  He brought me these:

[Image: ACtC-3dKMKM4QYGb_gen_mSosCmrzaW_pe6PUiis...authuser=0]

They reminded me of those ugly, cracked logs Ian showed, and I was hoping what was inside would be just as nice, but I fully anticipated them to be good for nothing but firewood.  

[Image: ACtC-3ct3gcMdjWBA1HjxmOPmnUKnzkO0JzPrDCT...authuser=0]

I couldn't believe how good the wood was; definitely a silk purse from a sow's ear.  

Today, I brought home these beauties:

[Image: ACtC-3e__JHEcMI4wTVyH7To5AVrypf7M8Bg1D5b...authuser=0]

24" DBH black walnut, 2 logs about 9' long each.  The butt log is nearly perfect and the upper log on the trailer should have some nice crotch wood in it.  Sorry I don't have any photos of the log arch as I used it to load the logs onto the trailer.  But if you Google log loading arch or something similar you'll see lots of You Tube videos of how they work.  Today was the first time I've used it since I bought the trailer and built the arch and it worked just like those you'll see in the videos.  

Walnut.  One of my good friends is going to be really happy.  He calls it America's noble wood.  I call it money. 

John
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#38
A log can look ugly, with the bark starting to peel, but still be good to saw. But at some point it gradually starts to become compost.  
Laugh

Was at the local farm Fieldays a few years back, and the Lucas sawmill guys were demonstrating their "super slabber" with the 9ft cut width. The "log" they had found was an ugly piece of crotchwood that had been left in the bush in ~1930. It was about 8ft wide, tall and long, and they had the mill cribbed up 3ft in the air to start cutting. But Kauri pine that big takes a LONG time to rot, and they were slicing it up, and selling it for ~$1000 a 2" slice. 

Generally sawing fresh logs is best, and some don't last very long before bugs and fungus get into them. But the heartwood of some species (cedar / walnut / redwood etc) can last many years, even if the sapwood is falling off. Bury it in a peat swamp and things get really interesting. I've got a little clock here made from ~40,000 year old Kauri.
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#39
Most of my current cabinet lumber comes from two sources:

One a local cabinet shop that closed down a couple years ago. I went there to buy a drum sander and asked the employee manning the sale if they had any lumber to sell.

Lumber $0.50 per running foot. I loaded up as much FAS S4S cherry and maple around the sander as I could.

The second was a divorce-moving sale from another woodworker. I think I bought 350 bf of rough-sawn white oak for $1/bf. Some of it is 14" wide. Beautiful shop he had; shame about the marriage.

-Mark
If I had a signature, this wouldn't be it.
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#40
(06-26-2020, 11:46 AM)jteneyck Wrote:  To a furniture or cabinet maker it's nuts what people will pay for wood with "character"; stuff you otherwise almost can't give away.   The more knots, cracks, and holes the better.  Even ash will fetch $4/bf, and if it's walnut people will happily pay $8/bf for it.  

John

Several years ago I bought some cheap walnut.  Because I got it cheap there were a few sticks with a lot of "character," and I decided to make a table to go behind a couch with it.  At first people reached to top with confusion, why on earth would I use a piece of wood with a hole clean through it, and why didn't I cut out the sapwood?  Nowadays when people see it they go "that's so cool!"  Funny how times change.
"Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped." Andy Weir (in his book The Martian)
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