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Started by Redfoxridge, October 10, 2018, 03:57:11 PM

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Redfoxridge

Hello Everyone!

Where to start? Well, my wife and I lost our home to a fire back in June. No insurance, no real savings. And apparently some real bad luck.

We are hoping to buy an OK used sawmill and build our own house from our own wood. (38 acres of mix in SC)
  Have been doing plenty of research and am roughly familiar with the rules.

1. Been trying to to find a source for used sawmills near to Upstate SC. Any suggestions? (low, low price)

2. Also could you guys chime in on planing? Green VS dried, with oak and pine primarily. (why isn't planeing a word, I am not making plans)

Plan to build a drying shed that's semi-solar and wood burning stove. And then stuff the shed with boards, lots of boards.

Thanks so very much!
Adam

sawmilljoe

Sorry to hear of your bad luck. Woodlands mills sells a fairly inexpensive mill that will do what you are looking to do if you can't find a used one. Best of luck going forward

Southside

Adam,

Welcome to the Forum,  Been through a house fire myself a number of years ago so I can appreciate your situation.  Have you tried the Woodmizer dealer in Albemarle, NC?  Not sure if they may have any used inventory along what you need.  

To answer your question about planning green - it boils down to just how green the lumber is.  It is best to dress lumber when it is dry - oak 7% mc, pine 12% - as it has finished moving, shrinking, splitting.  But you can dress it greener, however results will vary and it can create issues with feed rollers gumming up in pine, tear out, etc.  It all depends on the final use I suppose on how the results would be viewed.  

The good news is that in your neck of the woods you can air dry lumber quite easily, and can probably get to the point you need to have acceptable results pretty quickly on thinner stock.  
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

Sixacresand

Welcome to the Forum, Redfoxridge.  Sorry about your house.  Good luck on a mill purchase and building a new house. 
"Sometimes you can make more hay with less equipment if you just use your head."  Tom, Forestry Forum.  Tenth year with a LT40 Woodmizer,

SawyerTed

Sorry about the fire.  Good luck on locating a mill.  +1 On checking with Wood-mizer in Albemarle. They sometimes have consignment/trade-ins.

You might check with some local sawyers, they sometimes know where mills are sitting idle.  Or you may find that you can hire the sawing you need done for less expense than a mill purchase especially if you do the logging and provide help when the milling is done.
Woodmizer LT50, WM BMS 250, WM BMT 250, Kubota MX5100, IH McCormick Farmall 140, Husqvarna 372XP, Husqvarna 455 Rancher

SawyerTed

For a 2,000 square foot house, you will need something like 16,000 to. 18,000 board feet of lumber.  Having the sawing done will cost $6,000 plus or minus.  A new basic manual mill can be purchased for that or less.
Woodmizer LT50, WM BMS 250, WM BMT 250, Kubota MX5100, IH McCormick Farmall 140, Husqvarna 372XP, Husqvarna 455 Rancher

Southside

That is really good advice by Ted as you get the benefit of an experienced sawyer for that price too. Several members on here are in the Charlotte / Rock Hill area 
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

SawyerTed

Don't underestimate the value of the experienced sawyer.   An inexperienced sawyer can make lots of "designer firewood" (borrowed somebody else's term) before making quality lumber suitable for building.  Don't ask how I know! :D :D :D :D
Woodmizer LT50, WM BMS 250, WM BMT 250, Kubota MX5100, IH McCormick Farmall 140, Husqvarna 372XP, Husqvarna 455 Rancher

Crossroads

Sorry about your struggle, I hope your able to either find a mill that will take care of your needs or find an experienced sawyer that can help. 
With the right fulcrum and enough leverage, you can move the world!

2017 LT40 wide, BMS250 and BMT250,036 stihl, 2001 Dodge 3500 5.9 Cummins, l8000 Ford dump truck, hr16 Terex excavator, Valley je 2x24 edger, Gehl ctl65 skid steer, JD350c dozer

nativewolf

Good luck on building; rainy post coming because buying a mill is the easy easy part.  Three points to make, it's long.  Know what type of mill you want (band or circular), cutting dimensional lumber for your house is a whole topic-make sure you can do it & that it is the right economic decision,  finally material handling.

First, there are many good brands of sawmills, we're fortunate, that will cut square lumber if the sawyer is worth a hoot.  The site Sawmill Exchange » Buy & Sell Used Sawmills (A Forum Sponsor-you should see an ad) is probably the best site out there for used smaller sawmills.  By smaller I mean sawmills for 1-4 people, though they do offer some larger setups that would take 10+people to run.  Craigslist is another good place to search, just expand your search radius up to the 200mile limit.  

There are both bandsaw mills-purely manual or hydraulic (lots less work/faster/more expensive) and circular saw mills (like old giant 52" blade mills with very basic functions and some huge power source that is often the real value of the mill-say an old detroit motor) or even a new circular swing blade mill.  A used lucas swing blade would be a very inexpensive way for a family to get going with a sawmill as it reduces some of the process of edging the lumber and reduces some log handling issues. Lots of threads on bandmill vs circular.  I hire guys with both.  They both work.


Cutting dimensional lumber for a home is a bit different than cutting barn lumber or lumber for furniture.  I'd see about getting over to some other sawyer on the forum, with the same type of mill you decide to buy and helping out for a few days to overcome the worst of the learning pains with the least wasted time & wasted logs.  That's not the real issue though.  The real issue is building codes.

Be sure you absolutely understand the rules & building codes re building with your own lumber.  Search the forum for threads discussing this topic, visit your building inspector before you start building, make sure you are going to be good to go before you start going.  Many codes discourage / prohibit using your own lumber for dimensional lumber that is stamped/graded for specific load bearing capabilities.  Lots of threads.  Read many of them.   I buy property with lumber/timber, often I'll look at properties where someone built without code and I man does it hurt value, worse than if they'd not built.

It might be that the best way to build a house is to hire a forester, get competitive bids from several loggers (and don't do a timber sale without one in upstate SC- you will lose money) and sell your timber.  Many experienced members on here will tell you that they cannot saw lumber for the same price that the big mills can therefore they offer things the big mills can't or won't do.  In another case, a modern pipe lumber mill in the south probably can't saw a pine log over 25" in diameter and so if you have big pine it can be hard to market it and the butt logs can be cheap (crazy world).  But do the math before you buy a mill say you value your time at x, the cost of running a mill is y and the value of the log is z.  X+Y+Z often is greater than the value of the dimensional lumber you will saw.  Completely different if you are sawing specialty stuff, beams, lumber for cabinets, etc.  But if X+Y+Z is greater than the cost from 84 lumber than sell the logs.  If your trees are not valued by a logger/forester than they are not going to yield very much lumber when you saw them.  Now there can be another alternative economic analysis that others use ie  they dont want to borrow any money etc  even if it means the cost of labor is less than min wage it is ok as long as they don't go into debt.  If so, maybe sawing lumber is an ok decision.  I am not making a judgement, just do your math.  A fun poster on here, Mike from TN is a bit outspoken on the subject but he knows exactly what he's doing and why.

Now material handling is another whole challenge.  Logs are heavy, you have to drag or carry them hundreds of yards if you are working 30 something acres.  In SC a working old farm tractor is often sufficient to pull logs out of the woods but when you say upstate SC..how hilly/rocky are you?  You'll need all the equipment to fell and move logs, chainsaws, chaps, hardhat, wedges, peavy, etc.  You better have at least 2 good saws (real loggers do and they are experts- they don't log with one saw because they know they need 2-4). You'll need money for extra chains & bars, etc.  You'll need the chains/cables to drag the logs.  

Once you get the logs moved you have to move the logs/lumber around the mill site.  That's an issue that spans many threads on this forum.  Search for it.  Getting rid of the waste takes time (edgings, sawdust, etc).  If it is just you and your wife be prepared for a lot of long hot days sawing which is mostly moving wood from one pile to another to another.

Best of all good luck.  This is an amazing forum filled with really good people who can & will offer good advice and support and mentoring.  Ask questions !

Liking Walnut

YellowHammer

With a good manual mill like an LT15, you could build anything.

Structural wood must be dry to use, I once built some trusses out of green wood, put a metal roof on top, and as the wood dried and moved, it ripped the screws out of the metal in some places. Oops.

Check building codes.  My buddy framed in a 5,000 sq ft house with oak studs and had to endure months of issues and red tape before he finally had to hire a grader to grade the wood in place.




YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

curved-wood

I've built 3 houses from scatch to the end: loging and sawing  the wood, ciment foundation , framing, roof trust, kitchen cabinet, molding, inside doors, etc. In my house I've done even the furniture. I like the process very much. It is a passion. I coach once in a while young couples in that process.
First step is to see if ROUGHLY it is feasable. Roughly means large puzzle pieces. You start macro and going down. Here are some examples:

-One thing to address is about the couple. How your wife is seing the project? You are trying to built a nest for the family and not getting in a divorce and splittting your couple.

-Check your building code as nativewolf is saying. Read it all . Meet your inspector for more clarity. Just that could put your sawmill project out of the question (which doesn't mean that your self-buiding house is out )

-What is your time frame to move in ? Roughly

-Is the time frame is ok with the working hours  available ( wife, family, friends , etc )?
 
Start with that . If you need more advice about the finance, plans, etc just ask here. A lot of members are very competent



nativewolf

Quote from: curved-wood on October 11, 2018, 08:18:52 AM
I've built 3 houses from scatch to the end: loging and sawing  the wood, ciment foundation , framing, roof trust, kitchen cabinet, molding, inside doors, etc. In my house I've done even the furniture. I like the process very much. It is a passion. I coach once in a while young couples in that process.
First step is to see if ROUGHLY it is feasable. Roughly means large puzzle pieces. You start macro and going down. Here are some examples:

-One thing to address is about the couple. How your wife is seing the project? You are trying to built a nest for the family and not getting in a divorce and splittting your couple.

-Check your building code as nativewolf is saying. Read it all . Meet your inspector for more clarity. Just that could put your sawmill project out of the question (which doesn't mean that your self-buiding house is out )

-What is your time frame to move in ? Roughly

-Is the time frame is ok with the working hours  available ( wife, family, friends , etc )?

Start with that . If you need more advice about the finance, plans, etc just ask here. A lot of members are very competent
Just to double down one the comment re building codes.  Building your own home is a fun/great project.  If you are capable GCing can save a good $.  It's just the question of sawing vs selling timber that I would urge you to evaluate.
Liking Walnut

curved-wood

So where are you with you house and sawmill project ?

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