adding equipment to sawmill business

[paul case]

i have been having a lot of call lately(the last 6 months) for firewood. i get a lot of logs that wont do for lumber that make good firewood. we just cant seem to make enough of the stuff to pay well. scott and i working together can only make a rick an hour going full blast with a chainsaw and a tractor mounted splitter. i have a connection wanting to sell a home built firewood processor. i dont yet know what they want for it.
is it worth the extra effort? pc

[sgschwend]

In our area firewood sell for about $200 cord.
Sawdust for $21/yd.

[Kansas]

My first thought is, if you go that route, will you have enough logs? Or is this just to process what you normally get at a faster rate? You have a lot of logs for the way you are doing it now, but a firewood processor would take care of that quite quick. Then it becomes, are you logging or buying logs for firewood, instead of lumber, to keep it fed. Do you have good markets. Depending on what this would cost you for the processor will tell you if its worth it, and what your plans are. If you only spend 4 or 5000 dollars and can process the firewood logs much faster, it might be worth it. That would free up more time to run the mill or your other things you do. If its a lot more than that, then it would be hard to justify unless you either worked that business a lot more than the mill because financially it made more sense, or you would have to add people so you could both mill and do firewood.

I have thought the same thoughts at times. I have even looked for used ones. But if you are paying 30,000 or more then it has to be used on a continual basis to justify it. That means more help, or less lumber sawed.

The joy of business. Figuring out product mix, whether to go the route where you start managing employees, or maybe subcontract out certain work, where the best money lies for your business.

[Ron Wenrich]

We've been doing firewood for 20 years or better.  We sell it to wholesalers, as letting the locals in to pick it up left us with a couple of thousand cords that were cut and split and markets that were in the distant future.  You get into a cash flow problem.

We use a large processor and can do a trailerload in half a day.  Then, we deliver it to major wholesalers around the Philadelphia area.  13 cords is going for about $1750, if memory serves.  We don't cut sawlog material, and its mostly pole sized wood.  We can keep a guy busy all year long.  But, we have a source for wood.

We did have a homemade processor.  It still used 2 guys and produced about what you're doing, but with less grunt work of lifting chunks.  Since you have this connection, go over and run it for a few hours to see whether it will increase your production or reduce your workload.  Then, put a pencil to it and see if it saves you any money.  Rule-of-thumb is that a machine should give you a payback in 2 years.

We've found that the firewood adds to our business.  When the market dries up, we just shut it down until the market is there. 

[hershey]

a processor is not a stand alone machine, for it to be a justifable investment, you would have to also have to have the other equiptment to support the increased volumes, an elevator for the off bearing end and a dump truck would be additional needs at minimum.  from my experience allot of the machines produce a mixed product of big and small pieces, that either need sorted for maketability or have a limited market for what is produced.

some of my best money making deals have been buying semi loads of "large chunks" from such machines and secondary processing them by hand w/ a traditional splitter into a retail product.

[Busy Beaver Lumber]

If you are going to make firewood out of full length logs, then a firewood processor is the only logical way to do it. You can not make any great amount of profit by cutting the wood with a chainsaw and then splitting it one log at a time with a splitter.

The better way to get firewood it to buy sawmill cutoffs, 90% of which can be burnt "as is" without having to run them through the splitter. The other 10% will need to be split once or twice.

[Larry]

Have you looked at a Super Split?  If not they have some video's.  A lot faster than hydraulic but not as good on the big gnarly stuff.

[VictorH]

I have seen a super split in action and they do work well and are a lot faster than most hydraulic splitters.  The table is about waist high and the one I saw the guys were picking up every chunk to split.  If it were me I'd set up a feed conveyor or something to bring the chunks up to table height.

[DR Buck]

Check here  - https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,51087.0.html

BTW- You should have posted this in the firewood board.   Will probably be moved by an admin.

[5quarter]

Hmm. Theres a Firewood board?  I have to get out more.

[redbeard]

Little redbeard is my firewood support equipment 3 cords 8 hr. If only I could get him to do it everyday. 

[zopi]

I am liking the little processor that Logrite has put together...

[r.man]

I think that there are only two considerations here. Will the processor handle the log size and species you get in an efficient manner without driving you crazy with breakdowns and is it cheap enough that it can sit if the market or your sawing business fluctuates. Both are questions only you can answer and I agree that you need to run it or see it run, keeping in mind what kind of logs it is handling that day. 

[woodmills1]

for all intents a cord is 5 yards, I know not quite as 5 times 27 is bigger than 128

so do the math a cord is worth way more than 5 yards of chips on the numbers given early in this thread