my wife and i are building a timberframe house (just beginning). i am in the process of sourcing white pine trees, and wondering what to pay for them. i will do all the cutting down, skidding, and milling, so it is just the price for the trees...
thanks for any input.
Where are you located?? Prices vary by local markets.
Welcome blueheron!
What are white pine logs bring delivered in your area? You may find you could get all the logs you want delivered for not much more than it would cost you to log your own. In my area you would be doing good to get $200 a thousand delivered to the mill for the best logs.
Dave
sorry, forgot to mention i'm in northern indiana. haven't yet looked what logs are going for at local mills. thanks.
I logged my own timbers for my house. All Red Oak and milled roughly 8800 bd/ft of timber. I can purchase all the timbers for around $5500 or $0.65 bd/ft. Almost not worth it. But we wanted to put our own timbers into the project and I'm using the veneer cuts from the oak for all my moldings and trim work. So, for me, it wasn't about saving money, but the idea of using my own wood.
By the way, I took out around 50 red oaks for this project.
I'm also building my own timber frame. I've cut down about 250 Ash trees killed by the ash borer in my area. I used up several weeks of vacation time to cut, drag, and stack them, not including the time it took me to build forks and a skidder for my tractor. I hurt my back and got whiplash. (and not one clue how) My friend is now offering to drop nicer ones on my trailer for about 30 cents per board foot.
Things that make you go "HMMMMM????"
Think long and hard about cutting down your own trees. If you are retired and have a lot of time it might be worth it to keep yourself busy, but otherwise I would purchase them and I own a bush. Your going to need the time to learn how to become a timber framer and then build the frame.
Of course I give you this insight and I just took another week of vacation time to tear down a barn thats about 150 years old to recover the timbers. Talk about hard work, and I worked with three to four other guys on the thing. Clovis