24 ft beam pricing?

[JP]

Customer wants 3-5 24' 12x12 pine beams. I normally get .50$ bf for 1"pine boards, 8-16 ft . these things are 24' long, weigh 2x what I normally lift/ (I cant even pick up the 2x 8 side boards w/o help)  I enjoy the challange but dont want to give it away eather// Whats a fair price??   I have a few pictures of the project at: JP

http://albums.photo.epson.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=4231442&a=31933984

[ronwood]

JP,

I would charge a minimim of $1.00  a board ft.

Ron

[woodmills1]

thats the kind of job I minimum price the wood like at a quarter, then charge per hour for cutting.

[maple flats]

Is you mill set up for 24'? If you need to move the log/cant as you work one that long the price would be even higher. Sure would need a straight log to get that!

[Sawyerfortyish]

Do you have enough logs big enough to make a beam that big?. 24'-12x12 means you need a log at least 18" dia on the little end and straight to get close to a clean beam with little wayne. Forget about what you normally get think about this at a 1.00 a ft thats 288.00ea. I don't think thats near enough for all the trouble of finding trees that big. The  trucking and handling of this size tree is worth more! Besides how many others near you would be able to make something like this? Whats it worth? how much would a steel I beam 24' be or a laminated wood beam 24'if they would even fit togeather to make 12x12. I'll bet you couldn't buy anything equal for 500.00.  I guess one of the first questions I should'have asked is what are they using timbers this big and long for?

[Percy]

Up here in Northern B.C. I get around 1.60 a BDft Canadian for a WRC beam  that size in truckload quantitys. A one off would probably run close to 2.00 a bdft. Pine would be a little less. Converted to   US  mony, Id charge around 1.50-1.60 a Bdft for that beam. Nice cutting.  8) 8)

[twoodward15]

$300 a pop and that's what I'm willing to pay and I'm a real cheapskate!!!

[Gilman]

#2 or btr or #2 full sawn no wane or #1?

If its just a #2 you can use a 15" gun barrel and get one.  If its no wane you're going to need at least a 17" gun barrel.

Attached is a pdf cheat sheet I used when sawing beams.  The drawing lets you know what you can get out of theoretical perfect log.  After that, you have to use your judgement.

[Jeff]

Or...

https://forestryforum.com/calcs/log_size.htm

[Gilman]

Jeff,
Thanks, I haven't noticed that in the tool box before. 

[Jeff]

I also attached it in case someone wants to just save it to thier computer. All the calcs are designed so you can save them and use them off line. Thats how a website that starts with "A double u" and ends with "eb" was able to take them a few years ago and got in trouble with us after we caught them triing to make thier own versions with our code. We reached an agreement for thier use, but they simply developed thier own while they used ours and then suddenly, ours disappeared and were replaced with "Dr. approved" calculators.  Ours were good enough to take without permission, they were good enough to use once we gave permission, but suddenly were not good enough once they developed copies using perl with "hidden" code.

Old story lots of folks may have never heard... Still got the documentation though...

[Gilman]

"double u"  Took me a minute  :D

How do you save them offline?

[Jeff]

Download the zip file.

[JP]

thanks all --good info/
this log was 24.5 "-26.5" at the butt and 16" at the sm end--allmost streight--got a little wane on one side 1"- 1 1/2" 3-4 ft long--it will be ok put on top out of site
looks like I gotta revise my $ thinking and iLL call a big mill in the area in the am and see what they get??
I have 10-20 more so i can get the rest for this order then decide if its worth it --I like the chalange but most of my equipment is on the lite side-- JP

[FiremanEd]

Absolutly no less than $1/bf. I'd probably get $1.25 to $1.50/ft.

Look at how long it will take you to adjust your normal system to do this and compare to what you would have made, proffit, in the same amount of time doing your "normal" sawing activities. You need to make a fair amount more than you would have made doing your normal sawing or it's not worth doing.

[Percy]

thanks all --good info/
this log was 24.5 "-26.5" at the butt and 16" at the sm end--allmost streight--got a little wane on one side 1"- 1 1/2" 3-4 ft long--it will be ok put on top out of site
looks like I gotta revise my $ thinking and iLL call a big mill in the area in the am and see what they get??
I have 10-20 more so i can get the rest for this order then decide if its worth it --I like the chalange but most of my equipment is on the lite side-- JP

If you can bang out two of these a day with your equipment,not a totally unreasonable expectation, youll be makin decent coin at a buck n a half. I have seen a guy here with a Norwood mill put out some serious  numbers in a days work. Your setup looks pretty decent and I think as long as a guy doesnt get too rough, it will take it no problem. ;D ;D

[Duncan]

Gilman and I were working on contract cutting for a local mill and were set up to do it using a large fork with logs decked out for us.  My personal record was 5600 feet in a 10 hour day with only one person.  Granted was cutting #2's and only had to pile the slabs with a forklift but if you had a steady market for the 12X12's its possible to get some serious production out of a portable mill.  If i remember correctly the best production day with 2 people was 7K in a day.  But everything has to go right in order to hit those numbers even when set up to do it.  I also agree with the pricing to be greater than 1$, i would probably ask around 1.25 or more depending on the specification and quantity ordered.  If it were a steady market and #2's with wayne then could probably go down to about 80 cents a foot if i could set up to do it continously.

Kelly

[JP]

I jest called one of the few mills in the area (+- 50 mi) that make these big beams//

his price was 400.00$ each for a 12"x12"x24' pine good on 3 sides maby a little wane on one side. Maby I gotta rethink my pricing///  jp : :

[Sawyerfortyish]

$400 sounds more in the ball park to me. You have to think about how much footage is in this beam then start adding $ on top of that. How hard is trees this size to find? thats worth something more. How much harder is something this big to roll and saw? Add something for that. I said in my last post I bet you can't find anything equal in steel or laminated wood for 500.00. well your up to 400.00. If that other mill will do it for that I'd match there price.