Square inch pricing

[WV Sawmiller]

   I have several hundred bf of walnut that has been well picked over and not moving so I think I am going to try some thing new. I've been taking my boards one by one over to the RAS then back to the table saw and trimming out all the knots and splits and trimming off the sapwood. I am getting lots of small but really pretty pieces of wood. Lots of it is 15-20 inches long and 3-5 inches wide. I figure I will make some bins or boxes and store similar lengths together and see if there is a market for it. I figure I will just sell it by the square inch. Looks like a nickel per square inch would be about $7.20/bf. It won't take much storage space and may be a way to move wood that would not otherwise sell. 

   I figure my first call will be to my customer who make crematorium boxes and let him pick through and see what he can use. I'm hoping there will be people buying it to make cutting boards and chess boards and such.

   Anybody every tried such a marketing scheme? Its time consuming but I don't see this stuff moving otherwise. Some pieces with excess sapwood I see will become some pretty fancy raised planter boxes. :D

   I guess the next step would be to run them through a planner and jack the price up to 10 cents a square inch. :D

[terrifictimbersllc]

I've seen woodworking shops sell walnut offcuts by weight.

[Patrick NC]

Why not? You might be on to something there. Half the people that buy from me don't know the difference between a board foot and a square inch anyway!😂

[WV Sawmiller]

Patrick,

  And if you are selling them 1" thick boards to doesn't matter if you tell them a bf or a sf does it. :D

   I think if you go in a craft place you are getting square inch pricing anyway.

[Don P]

You're probably getting keystone pricing  :D
I imagine a pass thru the planer will move more, most people can't "see" it well enough to get excited till its slicked up.

I turn some nice small stuff into ~1/2" thick small cutting boards by planing, easing the edges, sand and beeswax. They work good for cheese boards and sammich making.

[WV Sawmiller]

Don,

  Us ignerant hillbillies don't use them kind of terms so I had to look up Keystone Pricing.   :P

   Yes, if I plane my rough pieces and double the price I'll be Keystone pricing according to the definition I read. I may try some of both. The first step is to cut it to grade then see if it sells. I might should do 1-2 just to show what they can expect.

[WDH]

Hmmmm.  Pricing by the board foot confuses a lot of people.  Now by the square inch?  144 square inches 1" thick is a board foot.  Hmmmm......

Pricing by the square inch might just obfuscate things even more :D. 

[samandothers]

Pricing by the square inch might just obfuscate things even more :D.

Could muddy the waters too!

[Larry]

Price it by the box lot.  Find standard size boxes and fill them full of boards than price the box.  Fix the price at say $40 for a full box than you don't have to measure anything and you get rid of boards by the box.

[Southside]

Offer it at a dime per square inch, customers choice of which face to measure (no edge measuring allowed) on sale 1/2 off, limited time offer if they buy two or more.   ;D  Just like the stores do it. 

[WV Sawmiller]

Larry,

   I first thought about the bundling and selling my small lots and I may still try that. I normally sell my walnut for $5/bf but the stack has been well picked over and I do not feel it is worth that right now but if I trim them I may still get the same value out of them. 

SS,

   I'm not big into the gimic pricing. I will make a quantity discount in most cases. I will usually throw in an extra board or two just to make sure the customer gets full value promised. If I'm selling tomato stakes I'll throw in an extra or two in case there is a knot or something I missed and one breaks or such. I am usually open to a counter offer. When I sell at flea markets I have a sign out that says "All prices are negotiable. I am always will to accept more."

[donbj]

A couple guys in this area sell the smaller pieces from making their live edge tables and other projects out of various hardwoods. I've seen them online sell something equivalent to a couple laundry baskets full of odds and ends, buyer take all at a price he figgers would be fair. Crafters and woodworkers take it.

[YellowHammer]

We sell pieces of everything, especially walnut, down to less than a foot long by 2 inches square.  Hundreds of dollars a week.  

Price them by the bdft, but sell them by the calculated price and round to the nearest convenient dollar.  So just mark them $5, $7, $10, $13, $20, etc so people know what they cost when they look at them. It wouldn't matter how you initially set the price, be it weight, bdft, inchft, or whatever.  Just Sharpie the actual price on the board.  

We have three dedicated six foot wide, multi shelf units just for this. Two hold all the 4/4 shorts, the other is for the 8/4 shorts.  

[WV Sawmiller]

Robert,

   Thanks for the input. Its good to know this is working well for you. Do you plane them or sell them as rough lumber? Right now all I have are 4/4 thickness pieces.

   For these little pieces looks like square inch pricing will be easier to calculate than bf. A 3-1/4" X 17" piece at 5 cents per square inch would just be 55.25 sq inch X $.05 = $2.76. That would be $7.20/bf if I use 5 cents/inch.

   I like the idea of rounding to the nearest $1 or $.5 or $.25. I will play with that. I need to find me a light colored sharpie for this dark wood.

    

  

[DocGP]

I have purchased a good bit of Koa from a shop that sells it by the flat rate box.  They just drop it in the mail from the island.

A bit of work, but if it makes enough to be worth it, might be an option.  

Doc

[WV Sawmiller]

Doc,

   So far I have not shipped any wood for commercial purposes but that is not to say I would not do so under certain circumstances. If I did so I would certainly be sure to recoup my shipping and handling costs.

[mike_belben]

I would positively switch to pound pricing and let 3 seconds on the scale save me 5 minutes of jotting down numbers to math up and then they change their mind and i start over.  


Dont forget "fish boards" and plaques.  A cheap CNC lazer can make those scraps of wood into all sort of art, signage, religious verses, family crests funny/punny stuff.. etc etc etc.  Etsy is the place to sell it for stupid markup but beware the taxes and fees and postage are about 30% of proceeds.  There are fanatical craft groups all over the internet.  And brilliant people who have these fools paying $45 a month subscriptions to partake on patreon and so forth.  A new world really.


Fyi- planed routed and sanded blank signboards and plaque boards will sell no problem on etsy.  Or to hobby lobby if youre bigtime.  Thats where these craft people go.  Etsy and hobby lobby.  Money is no object.. Atleast until their husbands find the receipt.  It is a bonafide obsessive-compulsive addiction for a sliver of the population.  They see they want they swipe the card and remorse comes later. You want to stay on the card reader end of the transaction!

[WV Sawmiller]

Mike,

  I have a tape measure (Several in fact). I do not have a pair of scales (except the ones I weigh fish and deer on). I know how to compute square inch into bf pricing. I do not know conversion rates for ounces/pounds. Sure I could figure that out but as I have said before "My mental hard drive is full. If I learn something new it means I have to dump some memory and it might be my wife's birthday or something that is going to get me into trouble."

  I know there are people out there who pay crazy money for different things - me included for the right item at the right time. As to the fish boards, plaques, etc. - I don't care what they use it for once they buy it. I realize if I had the time, equipment, shop space, time and skill and wanted to pay for the advertising on the right spaces, I could turn this wood into items worth mega bucks.

  Right now I have a RAS and a table saw and a stack of low grade wood that will not sell any time soon but with existing equipment and a little time and effort I can convert into some high grade blanks and I need the extra storage space.

  Maybe a struggling but talented woodworking artist will come see me and we will form an alliance and both will become filthy rich. I have fronted people wood before and can do so again. Its kind of like buying an old time prospector a shovel and gold pan. Its low cost, low risk and might yield big returns but probably will not in which case it is like wetting your pants with dark trousers on - it leaves you with a warm feeling but nobody notices. :D

[Sauna freak]

There is definitely a market for craft boards.  I've never had walnut to saw, but have gotten it in a mix of sawmill slabs I purchased for firewood.  By far, the highest price per square inch I got was for pistol grips and knife scales.  These were 1/4 sawn with sapwood to sizing specified by my end user.  $20 a pair, and they were roughly 3x6x1" of useable wood, so don't overlook the thick pieces in your slab pile!  I threw in the highly figured pieces at no additional charge, and the pistol grip buyer sent me a bonus check to ease his conscience he said.

I cut mostly pine and other softwoods here, and the market for "interesting" pieces is quite good.  Talk to some local remodelers...accent walls made of random wood, especially with mineral stain, tight knots and figure are hot right now, as is anything with a live edge. I can't saw live edge pine full of knots and wormholes fast enough right now. Look outside of the "clean wood" box, some pretty ugly pieces will bring top dollar sold individually for taxidermy plaques, trophy shelves, etc., but you have to get creative to search out the markets, then word of mouth takes it to interesting places from there once people start seeing your product.  A couple of my one-offs were recently on an HGTV remodel show, and it warmed my heart to see a set of my feather/burl/lightning char 1911 scales in the gun library at Cabelas with a mid 4 figure price on the firearm.  The maker had incorporated miniature lightning bolts into the checkering.  One of a kind art, and a sight to behold!

[mike_belben]

No conversions or mental hard drive needed.  Your the only one selling walnut stubs by the pound.. Just pick a number out of thin air and write it on the masking tape you put on the box.  

If it sells too fast go up.  Too slow go down and not at all put it in the stove. 

[mike_belben]

Pistol grip blanks is a great idea and i cant believe i didnt think of it since my entire life has involved the gun industry!


From memory any clear scrap of 4/4 that is about 3x5 will make a revolver grip.  1911 sides are even smaller. 

I can probably find out who manufactures them now for SW if you like.

[WV Sawmiller]

  If you do and want to market them I will be glad to sell and ship those little pieces to you. Maybe I need to hang up another feed sack and start collecting them too.

[Old Greenhorn]

Been reading these but was so tied up with my excitement about the Pig Roast plans that I didn't have time to respond. This is a great idea. Yet another from the group I will give a try to. I have been looking through my shop stock rack and grabbing pieces I keep passing over, planeing them out and making do-dads and things I would consider 'quick get it done and off my back' projects. Just to use this stuff up and make room for better material. I had thought of putting short slabs and such for sale in a raw state, but never the small pieces which one can only keep so much of. 
 I am going to start a box on the side to put those pieces in with just an 'out of thin air' (cheap) price on to see how they do. Either live edge drops or planed and joined stuff looks really pretty and I could easily see myself grabbing a piece for a buck or two in years past before the mill and the shop. Hardwood was always hard to come by. It also opens the door for a conversation about "Hey do you ever have any...?" which is a running goal for me.
 Thanks guys! How could I develop my business with out y'all?

[firefighter ontheside]

It's definitely worth making nice small pieces out of less than desirable larger pieces.  I had an 8/4 x 12 slab in the kiln that no one bought because it was twisted.  I brought it to the shop and ripped it in half and then in half lenght wise too.  These pieces I took to the jointer and they are amazing, clear pieces of walnut that will go into my 6 panel door I'm going to make.  I'm sure I could sell them too if I chose.  

Depending on how much of this type of material you're gonna have, you could just put a price on each piece.  Kind of like going to woodcraft or rockler and looking at exotics that are priced individually.  You could base this price off of sq inches or bd ft.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

   The problem quickly becomes where to store and how to access  stuff like this and where do you draw the line at what to keep and what to dispose of? I have half a dozen feed sacks full of sawdust stored for any hippy or NGD, or other customer, with a composting toilet set aside. I recently filled up my display school bus stop with bags of hickory shorts and hickory sawdust for smoker wood customers. I have Eastern Bluebird birdhouses and kits, a dozen or so of my simple crates - usually filled with something else like birdhouse kits or cookies, a couple dozen benches, stacks of assorted slabs, several raised bed planters, 40-50 dozen tomato stakes, fireplace mantels, a huge high end LE walnut I had slabbed and been air drying 3 years this week, etc. Every customer who comes by wants the piece on the bottom of the stack too. :D

   If I save the 3"X5" pistol grip stock, which is a legitimate market, somebody will come by and want short 1" X 1" walnut and cherry stickers to make chess boards or to make fancy piecework wood art pieces. I already had a customer come by and glom on to a couple of 1" X 1" X 2' cherry stickers I had salvaged. He needed them to repair/rebuild an old sewing thread spindle which was one of his hobbies and his eyes lit up like a kid in a candy store. 

    How many times have you had a wood worker or wood turner come to look at your stock then the next thing you know he is over looking through your mushroom bolts or firewood pile? If they haven't yet - they will. I promise!

    I may just set me up a simple crate (dozen qt fruit jar size) and start tossing pieces in there like Mike mentioned for pistol grips. Size to keep will be determined by what does not fall out between the slats. :D

    One of these days you guys will turn on the news and see where some hillbilly near Hinton WV was killed in a wooden land slide when his stacks of stored wood cut-offs collapsed and they could not get enough heavy equipment in there in time to dig him out before he smothered. I've already said for years I was worried about getting buried in such a shoe slide in the walk-in clothes closet I share with my wife. Now I have to worry about my own stockpiles. ;D