Realistic bandsaw production

[barbender]

Alright guys, what is a realistic board foot production goal- WM LT40 super hydraulic sawing 8' 10"-14" ash into mostly 1 1/2" material, no edger 1 person tailing. Is 1500 bf a day reasonable without running franticly the whole time? 8-10 hour days BTW

[NMFP]

If you are sawing for grade, thats very reasonable.  You can always saw more than that but, most likely you will not be sawing for grade but rather just making boards.  One thing I do on portable jobs that I do not take the edger on is sort for width.  That way, I know that the stack will produce boards that are 4", 6" 8" and so on.  Saves alot of time and you can almost know how much of each width you will have when complete. 

[red oaks lumber]

ash saws fairly hard, so cutting a little slower feed rate. i feel that target footage should be fairly easy to reach. as long as your logs are easy to load and your slabs wont take much labor to get rid of or, lumber for that matter. if you set up so you can have a triangle so to speak. your mill, slabs stacked back to the right or left, and lumber stacked back and to the other side of your slabs.

[Magicman]

Yes.

[Chuck White]

I feel that 1,500 bf of Ash in a days sawing is very good production!

I'm happy with 1,500-1,800 bf of pine in a days sawing.

[MHineman]

  I've got an LT40 manual mill.  I generally figure about 150 bd-ft per hour.  But... about the best turnaround on small logs like you are sawing is 15 to 20 minutes.

  14" 8' on international scale is 65 bd-ft.  2 to 3 per hour will still get you 130 to 185 per hour.
  10" 8' is 30 bd-ft. 3 to 4 per hour gives 90 to 120 per hour.

  I do have a tractor with forks to load logs, hold boards to edge and clear slabs.

  With your hydraulics you should be able to get each log processed quicker than I can.

[barbender]

Thanks guys! I'm going to hit it hard today and see how we do. This job is 5-6000 bf and I don't want it to take too long- I need to be finishing our new house so we can get moved in.

[barbender]

Well, we got 950 bf today, about 6 hours of actual sawing time. I had to move the mill to the other end of the pile, the wind was right in our faces, so that ate up more than an hour as we had sawed ourselves into a corner : Also, my teenage offbearer was starting to feel the effects of tailing boards in the 85° heat, he was slowing a bit  : This ash has a lot of tension in it, too, so I'm doing a lot of cant flipping trying  to keep the boards uniform. I'll try again tomorrow ;)

[Magicman]

In your OP you stated 8-10 hour days, so 1200-1500bf is going to be doable for you.  Either heat or the wind will hinder a day's productivity.  Both will kill it.   :-\

[MHineman]

This ash has a lot of tension in it, too, so I'm doing a lot of cant flipping trying  to keep the boards uniform.

I have that very often with small logs.  A small tree is leaning away from a neighbor or the small logs could be a limb that by it's angle of growth will have tension.
  More often than not it's more work to saw a small log than a medium or large log.

[barbender]

All of this white ash seems to have tension, size doesn't seem to matter much. The black ash saws a lot nicer. I still haven't hit 1000 feet in a day, too many distractions as I'm working only miles from home. Or maybe it's just a mental block :