Typical Board Feet of material in an hour???

Mr._Logical · February 01, 2003, 01:27:22 PM

I am buying a Wood-Mizer Supper Hydraulic machine with the 42 hp Diesel. All the liturature says it will produce 375-500 bft per hour. How many of you out there are meeting these numbers? :

Minnesota_boy · February 01, 2003, 03:22:28 PM

I have a Woodmizer LT40G24. Not super hydraulics and only 24 horses on my Onan. I usually saw by myself and sawing hardwood to 1" boards, I can average about 200 Bd-ft per hour. If I have softwood and saw dimension, I can get 300 bd-ft per hour. My body can't go any faster than that and after 8 hours, my butt is dragging. That is plenty of weight to handle in an 8 hour day. I can do that 5 days a week if the job is big enough. If I had a helper and we didn't have to talk things over, then maybe 300 to 350 bd-ft per houf would be possible.

Bibbyman · February 01, 2003, 04:24:25 PM

The LT40HD Super will do it – with an experienced sawyer concentrating on production and help that can keep up with pulling boards, slabs, and keeping logs up to the loader.

We have the LT40HDE25 with remote, Accuset and debarker. This morning we sawed out 600 bf of fencing lumber in about two hours of sawing. (we also had two customers to deal with and cut a cord of firewood – that accounted for the rest of the morning) The logs were10' white oak from 12"- 16" diameter and were all "seasoned". A couple of logs were already sap rotten so we lost a few bf to making heavy slabs. We also broke a blade that took 5-10 minutes to change and get back into production.

Mary can maintain a rate of about 200 bf/hr sawing by herself. We've hit 400 bf/hr sawing rates but we can't keep up that pace all day just the two of us.

Mr._Logical · February 01, 2003, 04:45:25 PM

Thanks for the replies,

I am doing this part time as I work for a tree service and have easy access to logs. And they are brought to the lot on our property. I expect to be working by myself most of the time and would like to be near the 300 bft per hour mark. It sound like this is doable as I will only be working a few hours at a time.

I estimate about $0.30 bft for costs (Labor, equipment, travel with lumber to customer and so on.) Does this seem what you expect? :-/

Norm · February 02, 2003, 04:37:56 AM

We run the WM LT30HDE25 with all the bells and whistles that woodmizer sells. I have never been able to keep track of bd ft per hour sawn because after a while it didn't seem important to bother with. Keep in mind that you have to do something with the wood after it is cut, that is where most of my time is spent. If I have good logs which means they came from clean timber and not likely to have any tramp metal in them we can cut faster than we can sticker, stack and haul to our shed for air drying. The hardest thing is marketing that much lumber, probably a lumber broker would be the best for that much product. If your logs are free and you don't spend a lot of time with tramp metal .30 per bd ft seems a little high on costs, but it is better to estimate high than low. There was an excellent discusssion of how to maximize your operation here on the FF a while back, you might do a search and see if you can find it.

Bibbyman · February 02, 2003, 06:08:49 AM

Yea, I started that thread and a lot of others added a lot to it. I then tried to summerize it and put it into the knowledge base – and did. It lost a little here and there because the knowege base will only take text.

How to increase band sawmill production

There are a lot of other info out on the knowledge base on bandmills and other topics.

Here is the beginning of the original thread:

Least expensive way to increase sawmill production

Mr._Logical · February 02, 2003, 06:52:18 AM

Thanks again for the reply,

I just can't seem to find enough to read about sawmilling, and good info about not making the rooky mistakes. Any good thoughts about what you feel are the things you wish had not done in the begining?

Minnesota_boy · February 02, 2003, 07:21:38 AM

I'm custom sawing. I discovered that the market here was bad enough for lumber that i could make twice as much for half the headaches and one tenth the paperwork by just custom sawing. Oh yeah, I saw some of my own logs, but I either use the lumber or mostly give it away. I bought a sharpener and tooth setter. I wish I had just invested the money in blades and resharp services. I do much better at sawing than I do at sharpening and I don't have the energy to do both. I have about 120 blades now and am thinking of buying another 30-60 so I can keep sawing without taking time out to get to the shipping facility until I'm good and ready. I like to be able to send in 4 to as much as 8 boxes of blades at a time and still be able to keep sawing until they all come back.

I wish I had learned not to saw into the mill.:

I still do it. Last week I "babtised" the extension by nicking a log stop on it while carrying a board to the pile.. I hate the sound of the blade hitting the mill, but if I can avoid doing it often, the extra production I get by not paying too much attention to the mill offsets the cost of a new blade occassionally.

ARKANSAWYER · February 02, 2003, 07:12:46 PM

Site set up and help will determin if you can hit 300 bdft an hour with good logs. It will take you several thousand bdft to get good with the mill and make it work up to full speed. It is better to learn to make good lumber then alot of lumber. How you cut the logs will make you more money then how many logs you cut.
ARKANSAWYER