Career change: can I make it as a sawyer?

[maxomatic]

Ok, long story sort of, so bear with me.  I spent 15 years pushing buttons for a living in NYC, but I moved back to rural Massachusetts 3 years ago, started a family, and I've fallen in love with woodworking.  The sawdust has gotten into my blood, and now I'm looking at changing careers.  

My family owns about 380 acres of wooded land, my grandfather bought the property around 1950.  It's been a Tree Farm for many years, at least 25.  My folks primary use the land to get firewood to feed their outdoor furnace.  They've got ALL the toys for harvesting wood, including (but not limited to) several chainsaws, a small skidder (Forcat 2000), a log cart with hydraulic grapple, a big john deere tractor, etc.  The land has also been professionally logged periodically in small amounts to keep it managed.  Now I'm thinking, can I make a living from our family property?  There's quite a bit of maple and oak, some cherry and ash.  Plenty of pine & various softwoods too.

OK, so here's the question.  Is 380 acres enough to make a living off of for many years to come? (I'm 35 now.)  I'm thinking of milling some wood, selling both rough cut and surfacing some, perhaps getting into making moldings and flooring as well.  I'd like to use some for my own woodworking to sell, and maybe selling some firewood.  In other words, I'd like to use the wood for as much as I can and see what ends up making money.   I'd need to buy a mill and a planer, but everything else is paid for, all the harvesting equipment, and most importantly, the trees!  

I've been pouring over this forum for a few days now, and you guys sound like a great bunch of fellows who know what they're talking about... so what are your thoughts?  Thanks in advance.

[medic]

Max-Welcome to the forum.
I'm just a part time sawyer so some of the other folks may give you better, more in depth advice but here's my $0.02. 
Start small.  Don't give up your day job until you see if there is enough demand for what you want to do.  Also, having another source of income gives you some time to figure out what works instead of having to make a living of it from the start. 
You mentioned that this is a family property.  How do the other members of the family feel about you making a living from harvesting and processing the tree's from the family farm? 
Good luck
scott

[maxomatic]

scott - thanks.  i was thinking i should mention the rest of the families feelings, glad you asked.  It's complicated, as all families are, but I think it would suffice to say that my folks would be extremely pleased if another generation would get use out of the property, BUT any harvesting would have to be sustainably done, as it has been done there in the past.  That is 100% my attitude as well, I would have to be very selective.  That's why I was thinking the more processing I could do to the wood, like surfacing or molding, would bring a higher profit for fewer trees.  Correct me if I am wrong, please!  Ideally I would earn a living solely off the woodworking, but I'm under no illusions there.  Happily, I am a stay at home dad currently, in between careers and not making any money really, and my wife brings home the bacon.  So I've got that going for me.

[T Welsh]

Max, Good to have you here! as medic said, start out slow and DO have another income. you will get a lot of advise on this forum, do a search about getting started and read them all, and let it sink in. and then make you best informed choice! Custom sawing is a niche market and selling hardwood lumber is too. Firewood, yes start there and make some money so you can buy more toy,s as in a mill and planer and shaper and knives. and then if you still have saw dust in your blood and have some kind of income that supports your endever, GO for it. Tim

[Ianab]

Sounds like you are actually in the ideal situation to make this work. Where you don't HAVE to make a huge profit to support a family, play a mortgage etc.  You have the trees, and most of the equipment needed, it's now just a matter of working out what niche you are going to work in.

If you are going to be actually making finished product from the trees you harvest, heck you might only be harvesting 1 tree a week to keep your woodwork shop supplied. With 380 acres those trees are going to be gaining on you  :D

I'm not sure what a sustainable harvest would be in your area, but I bet for a part time one man operation, you wont keep up with the growth.

So the real question is, exactly what business are you aiming for? If it's wood working, then the sawmill becomes less important. You can saw one tree a week with a 2nd hand LT15, and  spend the rest of the week, or longer processing that wood. You will want a kiln, Maybe a couple of solar kilns that you can built yourself, you will have the timber.  Then the planer, shaper and other woodworking gear becomes more important.

Or harvesting / sawing and selling rough sawn in bulk. Then you will want a higher production mill as it's going to be a main part of your operation.

Or...

Or...

So much of this depends on what opportunities you discover in YOUR local area.  Look for those things.

Good Luck

Ian

[bill m]

maxomatic,
Welcome to the FF. Where in Ma. are you? As for you forest do you have a forester the family uses? If not then have a forester walk the property with you and tell you what you have. Tell him your plan and he will let you know if your property will support it.

[maxomatic]

I'm in the north quabbin area.  Yes, they have a forester they like very much, my next step will be to do exactly that and speak with him.

[bill m]

Very nice area up there. I have done a lot of chainsaw safety training in the Quabbin area.

[maxomatic]

Bill - Yes, it's heaven on earth for me, especially after NYC.  If you're doing any more training in the area let me know...

[Ron Wenrich]

It depends.  To do a little back of the envelope type of figuring, you would have to make a few assumptions.  You have 380 acres, but do you know what's on it and how much?  If not, you should have some sort of inventory done, just to know what you have.

But, for figuring purposes, lets suppose that you have a fairly decent stand of hardwood.  Average volume might be about 7,500 bf/acre.  Total volume would be 2.85 million bf.  Let's also suppose that it has been managed that you have a wide variety of diameter classes.  In other words, you won't have the entire stand reach maturity at the same time.  If we use a 75 year rotation and a growth rate of 2%, you would be able to sustainably harvest about 160-170 Mbf per year.  There's a lot of assumptions there, and it might not hold water.

You can't harvest veneer quality wood and run it through the mill.  That's just a losing situation.  You get lots of nice wood, but you could buy nice wood in for less than you can get for the veneer.  You could lose 25% of that volume, depending on the quality of the trees you harvest.  Maybe more.  So, that takes you down to 120 Mbf to run through a mill.  Or about 10 Mbf/month.  That's a number that you could probably live with.

Next comes equipment.  You can go the bandsaw route and saw about 1-2 Mbf per day.  A lot depends on help.  An old circle mill would give you more production per day, which would free up some time.  But, you're still going to have to log 14 Mbf/mo.  That's not counting any firewood.

Out of that 10 Mbf/mo, you will have some low grade lumber that is not worth taking to the next level of production.  You might be able to sell it as blocking or as construction lumber.  You'll figure out what you can economically handle and what you can't.  Leave out 25% for low grade, and you still have 7500 bf/mo to remanufacture or sell.  Kiln drying doesn't take up too much time.  Just to load and unload the kilns.

But, we've already taken up 5 or 6 days for milling and another 4 or 5 days for logging, so half the month is shot.  If you're making mouldings, you'll have to rip and trim the boards before you put them through the moulder.  With about 10 days left in the month, you should be able to do that.  But, you'll need time for delivering and dealing with customers.  That might take up your weekends.  But, a lot depends on the level of help.

Start with the timber inventory and build on that.  Then add the equipment you need and develop a business plan.

[jueston]

IMHO the only way to truly find out what markets are available to you is to start trying to sell it, some markets are obviously more apparent then others, you can't sell railroad ties if there is no railroad near by. But are there people who want rough cut oak in your area? Hard to know without actually having some to sell, whenever I am curious about the going rate in my area of something I do a craigslist search, to check it a lot of other people are selling it, but doing that search doesn't really let you know the market, there are plenty of people that might be looking for a local source for flooring and are just waiting for you, or someone looking for custom sawing right next door.
In the end, it seems life always comes down to money. If the wife is making enough to support the family and the folks are ok with you selectively harvesting, then buy a smaller/older mill[like the 1987 lt40 just sold on the forum] and have some fun with it, try to sell the lumber, see what happens. If it goes nowhere then you haven't lost the farm[so to speak] and you can just sell the mill if it doesn't suit your fancy.
But I am a dive in head first kinda guy..... so maybe you should have a little more reservation then that...

[paul case]

I am making a living off a lot less wooded land than 380 acres, but not sustainably.  It can be done. IMO. 
I hear you say cut, saw, dry, make molding or planed boards. That all takes time and lots of machines that all cost money. My markets are all green lumber and buy all I can cut. selling dried lumber is a pig in the poke as far as being able to sell it all and make a living doing it. Serveral who have tried doing this stll have a barn full of lumber and are custom sawing  or selling to a green market.
I would imagine that to be able to make it work with your family, you may be cutting them all a bunch of firewood.
Just Saying.
PC

[cypresskayaksllc]

This seems a bit like you want to do.
http://timbergreenforestry.com/

[thecfarm]

Could you sell furniture too?

[metalspinner]

Happily, I am a stay at home dad currently, in between careers and not making any money really, and my wife brings home the bacon.

From Ron...

But, we've already taken up 5 or 6 days for milling and another 4 or 5 days for logging, so half the month is shot.  If you're making mouldings, you'll have to rip and trim the boards before you put them through the moulder.  With about 10 days left in the month, you should be able to do that.  But, you'll need time for delivering and dealing with customers.  That might take up your weekends.  But, a lot depends on the level of help.

That doesn't leave you with much time for daddying.

You didn't mention the age of your kids.(No need to, though).  Unless they are 171/2 years old, they are going to need more time than Ron is saying you will have. :D

I've been a stay at home dad since the beginning, and believe me, between the school schedule, piano lessons, trumpet lessons, cub scouts, boy scouts, soccer, Dr. visits, colds, birthday parties, ForestyForum, etc, etc, etc, etc, you will not have a reliable schedule to be able to head to the woods or tend to your customers like you need to.

I make a living in the shop when not shuffling the kids through their daily paces.  But I have one customer - more like a business partner.  I can manage the workload along with family resposibilites.  Oftentimes I'm in the shop well into the night.  And when they are in school, of course.  But pickup is at 2:30.  That eliminates most of the rest of the day.

Take advantage of the time with the kids.  Use the downtime to learn new things -forestry, woodworking, equipment maintanance, whatever.  When the little ones are of age, you can hit the ground running. 

I can't wait until they get their drivers licenses!

[millwright]

Have you considered a portable mill and possibly do custom cutting off of your site, there may be some good opertunities there.

[redbeard]

This seems a bit like you want to do.
http://timbergreenforestry.com/

I sure enjoyed reading and seeing there operation this is a direction I want steer toward. Thanks for post.

[ladylake]

Have you considered a portable mill and possibly do custom cutting off of your site, there may be some good opertunities there.

I'd sure go that way, about 2/3 of my business is on the road.   Steve

[Kansas]

Looking at that website, I see a couple of things that give me pause. The first is, that Woodmizer is cutting 20,000 bd ft a year. That is 10, maybe 20 days cutting a year. That means its going to sit for 11 months out of the year. If you will be working mostly alone, that means the sawmill, logging equipment, molder, all the woodworking equipment will be sitting mostly being unused. I think the first question I would ask myself, do you plan on growing into all that equipment? Growing meaning adding personnel. That is fine, if that is what you want. If not, it may well be more efficient to log out the logs and have someone custom cut for you. Another thing to consider is your logs. I have no idea what logs or lumber goes for in your area. But if a good cherry log goes for 50 cents skidded out, and you can buy Select or better cherry at 1.50, when you figure mill run, either owning a mill or having it custom cut, is it worth it? Because that number 2 lumber that comes out of the log won't bring all that much. In other words, you need to know all your numbers. You can do some of that cost accounting by contacting local mills, loggers etc, and get an idea of what is going on in your area price wise. You could do a little logging and have some milled up and keep close track of what you have in your lumber price wise. You really need to figure in what the value of the standing timber is either standing or logged.

You say you want the most profit per tree, which is what they are trying to do on the website. What you really want is the most profit per man hour, either working alone, or with help.

I absolutely think you can make it work. You just need to be realistic about costs. Running a sawmill, skidding, molding, straight edging and ripping, kiln drying, dealing with customers, especially retail customers, takes a lot of time. While more equipment gives you more options on how to make money, you also have more and more money tied up in the equipment. You might consider working with the equipment you have, and ease into it.

[Ianab]

Kansas has a good point.

I have enough equipment to take a standing tree, and convert it into a piece of (admittedly rustic) furniture - on a HOBBY basis. But to do it as a commercial enterprise would mean a lot more (or better) equipment right through the chain. Then unless I had several staff, most of that expensive equipment would be sitting idle 90% of the time. Member Woodsy, who lives just up the road, has some serious logging and sawing machinery, but because of the cost of those machines he needs to keep them working, and that takes people. So he concentrates on selling rough sawn and firewood, and keeping the machinery running.

I'm also certain you can make a viable operation out of this, but you need to decide your niche. Trying to be a jack of all trades means you end up with too much capital tied up in idle machinery.  You seem to have the source of logs sorted, and the machinery needed to harvest them already. There may be a market for some of the logs as is? Or next step is milling them. If you want to concentrate on milling you will want a commercial type sawmill. But if you spend 30-40 thousand on a mill, you need to be using it. If that's not your main focus, then hiring in a sawmill for a couple of days will give you a good stash of boards to process further, or buy a smaller manual sawmill. If your main focus is to be furniture, then you don't need a small mountain of sawn boards, and you can cut in a day, even on a manual mill,  enough boards to keep your wood shop busy for weeks. The manual mill is cheap enough that you can afford to leave it sitting in the shed for a month, then fire it up for a couple more days milling.

So yeah... where does that leave you? Because you have the luxury of being able to ease into the the business I would still consider a used manual mill. Reason is that you wont be out any huge amount of cash, you will learn sawing, get some wood to sell or build with, suss out the local markets for timber, custom sawing services, furniture etc. Once you have your "feet wet" you can make a better informed decision. If sawing is your thing, sell the mill, get most of your money back, and buy a better mill.  If it's custom furniture that's your niche, build your solar kiln, keep the manual mill, and spend the $$ on a good woodworking shop.

There are 2 main factors -
1st is what markets are available (and profitable) and 2nd is what you LIKE doing. If you can find an overlap, then you are on to a winner.

Ian

[zopi]

Ian and Kansas put that very well. One of they things I am looking at in getting into the sawing business is the commodity aspect...dealing in a commodity is a tough row to hoe...if you have a profitable niche or two that is great, but competing on the open market can get ugly...fast. you may be better off doing mobile sawing as mentionrd and using the equipment to manage your woodlot and keep it up as a profit center...
There is a guy down here in chesapeake...has a fifteen hundred square foot workshop...just makes odds and ends, novelties out of wood, albeit nice ones...and he clears 200k a year...he makes a little furniture too..but unique stuff...spends a bunch of time selling and marketing though...
Something like that might work...logs through product.
There is a moulding plant up the road from here...sits Idle alot...alot of those logs we send overseas get sent back as moulding..flooring, etc...at a premium...but we cannot compete with the sweatshops over there...aggravating...
And as was mentioned..you definitely need to know pretty much exactly what you have on the stump...

[hershey]

Have you considered a portable mill and possibly do custom cutting off of your site, there may be some good opertunities there.

I'd sure go that way, about 2/3 of my business is on the road.   Steve

+1

i made my money buying tracks of timber and turning it into dried lumber or moulding packages.


BUT i kept my bills paid by hooking the mill to my bumper and heading down the driveway several days a week and bringing cash home at the end of the day rather than some speculative day in the future.

at one time i actually had contracts w/ developers for trim packages in the homes they were selling.   i had one developer that would call and ask me when selling a new batch of homes what i had that could make his houses sell,   we always featured whatever wood that i had allot of at the time.   white pine, shagbark hickory, etc.  something that wasn't off the shelf at lowes, usually did t&g ceilings, knee walls etc.  also throwing out uncommon names also worked, like box elder and sassafras, katalpa, etc.

[Ron Wenrich]

Here's a guy that I help get into the business.  He started out selling wood stoves, and I put him into firewood, then into sawlogs and a small mill.  His operation grew from there.  It is a father and son operation.  They do the logging, sawing and millwork.  Before they went to millwork, they built pallets, but the competition was too much and there was too little margin.  They do buy in some of the flooring. 

http://marshallswoodproducts.com/

They do not own any forestland, and they buy their tracts of timber from the state, so they are usually the high bidder. I don't think they do any firewood anymore.  All the equipment that they bought was used.  There is no debt.  They convert woodwaste into mulch.  Their mill only runs about a week a month, and they saw about 30 Mbf/month.  They only log when they need the wood, and their equipment sits around a lot.  But, its not new equipment.  They've been at it for 25 years.

[maxomatic]

This is a fantastic thread!  I'm trying to soak all the information in, but this is exactly the stuff I was looking for.  I'm sure it helps other folks out too, so keep it coming!  Thanks thanks thanks.

[Banjo picker]

Max in the first post you said this was family land...and then later on you said it was complicated...So whoever has their name on the deed has to be in complete agreement  with what ever arrangement is made.....You also said they own the equipment....You must have mighty nice folks if they are gona let you cut the timber and use their equipment to do it...I think you will hit a snag somewhere between the two....   I hope you the best, I am just being realistic....Tim

[maxomatic]

Yes, Tim, you are correct.  I have mighty nice folks.