Whatcha Sawin' 2021 ??

[Magicman]

Your good salesmen to talk your customers into paying for air.

Peter, I knew full well where you were going with your scaling question and considered ignoring it, but there are many readers that expect answers so I answered it based on my business profile.

Your business profile is selling lumber and apparently you do it very successfully, and I agree with your lumber scaling.  

I sell nothing, not even air.  My business profile is a sawing service and I saw customer's logs at their location into whatever dimension that they specify and the scaling is clearly defined before any sawing is done.  I too am very successful.

For you to even insinuate that either I or my business profile is dishonest in any way is in poor form.

[Larry]

I've been sawing white oak posts and beams for a guy.  On his last load he threw on a couple of small walnut logs.  They were my tip!

The logs came from a heavy leaner tree, were crooked, and really small.  I thought about turning bowls from them but just too small.  Decided to cut charcuterie stock.  They were the perfect size for that and will work well with resin art.  I sawed 1-1/4" thick.  When dry this fall I might put the family kids on them making Christmas presents or sell as charcuterie kits.

8" SED and crooked.  Live edge sawing goes fast but I suspect I only got a whopping 30 or 40 board foot out of the two logs I sawed.  Still that's $150-$200 of product when dry, costing about 20 minutes of saw time.

[Peter Drouin]

For you to even insinuate that either I or my business profile is dishonest in any way is in poor form.




I was not trying to say you are dishonest at all. 
Sorry if you feel that way. 
I know your customers understand the pricing before you start sawing.

Pricing for full size and sawing dressed lumber size, in the end, is not the same bf of lumber is all.  

It's not dishonest to charge for full-size and cut dress sizes when the customer knows it.

I do wish you well. You do well for an old guy. ;)
I mean no disrespect to you, Sorry if I upset you.

[Magicman]

Sorry if I upset you.

No one is upset here, and we are good.  

[richhiway]

 
I don't know what that bad dude on the left is gonna make.  Knotty logs make low quality knotty lumber.  

I use them for stickers and/or 4x4 four foot cribbing for my welding shop.  So they are cut 4 foot, which allows artistic license around the knots.
            hugs,  Brandi

Yes Brandi, Johnny Jett sure seems like a good man.
Rich

[OlJarhead]

Meanwhile, to answer the question:  whatcha sawin' 2021

D-Logs mostly!  Trying desperately to get many of them milled up (I need to do that math) with little time to devote to the project and less than normal since I moved another 70 miles further away!

But I did agree to mill up 80 logs for an old customer....he keeps twisting my arm!!!  Darn it, but it will likely be the ONLY project I take on for someone else this year.  He's a great guy and does awesome work (and is an inspiration as he has Parkinsons but keeps going!) so I agreed, for a price, to mill these 80 logs.  All 16 footers but a handful of 20 footers and all supposedly 18-36" diameter.  

I better get back to walking so I'm ready for the long haul on this one!  Going to take some time off work for it too.

[donbj]

Your good salesmen to talk your customers into paying for air.

Peter, I knew full well where you were going with your scaling question and considered ignoring it, but there are many readers that expect answers so I answered it based on my business profile.

Your business profile is selling lumber and apparently you do it very successfully, and I agree with your lumber scaling.  

I sell nothing, not even air.  My business profile is a sawing service and I saw customer's logs at their location into whatever dimension that they specify and the scaling is clearly defined before any sawing is done.  I too am very successful.

For you to even insinuate that either I or my business profile is dishonest in any way is in poor form.

I did the same exact thing when I was custom sawing. The price changed when it went to 1"

[Magicman]

My customer sent me another cut list tonight which is considerably different from the one I posted in Reply #911:


 
About 12Mbf more lumber.  The framing lumber changed and he added wall paneling and ceiling 1X6's.  I will meet the customer and the builder on site tomorrow evening so we shall see.

This could get very interesting before da fat lady sings.  ;D

[Southside]

MM - with that list you might need to get a portable "Tree Smoother" before it's all said and done.   :D

[Crossroads]

Been milling 1x12 and 1x3 for board and bat siding the last couple of days. This pile of logs is shrinking slower than I expected. Hopefully I can be done by about noon tomorrow. I'll try to remember to get pictures of the wrap around deck that is timber framed with beams that I milled last year.

Got some nice wood there!

Yes, it was nice wood, I think there were only 4 or 5 logs that I couldn't get at least a few 1x12's out of. Although they were a bit dirty and even with the debarker, were hard on blades. 
Well, didn't finish by noon, it ended up being a full day to finish. It was hot and I was ready to be done for the day, so I didn't get any pictures, sorry. If I'm lucky, customer will text me a couple pics tomorrow. Off to Sagle Idaho tomorrow to start what is estimated to be a 3 day job. 

[Patrick NC]

My primary focus is custom milling my clients' logs but I try to have a supply of various species on hand for those clients that want more lumber but don't have their own logs.  Lately I have had a lot of requests for eastern red cedar but my normal suppliers, local tree guys, have not been able to come up with anything over about 10" SED.  A person building a new home near by got my name from a neighbor and called to ask if I wanted some free trees (we've heard that one before), telling me that they were already down, pulled out with a track hoe, and that she hated to see them wasted.  She said they were cedar and 'pretty big'.  

I dropped by one morning and found a pile of tree length, including rootballs, about 15' high.  Although I would normally pass, they weren't perfect but they were bigger than anything I have been able to source so I decided to harvest them myself.  Truck, chains, chainsaws and a helpful wife, in two mornings we got all the good logs.


 
I'm a one-man business so I had to take a break to answer the phone.  Got 16 logs in all.

Hard to pass up big cedar!

[Bruno of NH]

My red neck log deck.
Set it up last week to try out.
Its working out great.
I will weld some things to it and cut back some sharp points.
Then paint it .
I'm doing maintenance and repair/builds on the weekends. 
I can't find weekend help this year.

 

[richhiway]

 

 
Don't try this for the first time at the end of the day when you are tired.......

[Crossroads]

I think red necks have a bad wrap Bruno, I like your log deck and will probably be coming up with something similar in the near future. 

[Bruno of NH]

The steel is much easier to move odd shaped logs.
They can be pushed with a peavy or slid along.
Much faster.

[Crossroads]

That's good to know, thank you. 

I'm not sawing for the next few days, I picked up a excavation job and will be laying about 1200' of water line. 

[Resonator]

One advantage I found with my makeshift log deck is it could take the abuse of dropping logs on it, without worrying about knocking the mill out of alignment by loading directly on it.

[cutterboy]

One advantage I found with my makeshift log deck is it could take the abuse of dropping logs on it, without worrying about knocking the mill out of alignment by loading directly on it.

Exactly! Loading directly onto the mill with a fel or forks or grapple is always taking a chance.

[DPatton]

Saturday June 12th the sawmill and I traveled 81 miles to saw walnut slabs in Emerson Iowa. My first photo of the day was sunrise over the Missouri River from the highway 2 bridge at Nebraska City. It was a pleasant reminder of all the time I've spent fishing and waterskiing on that particularly piece of water. In the mirror you can see the TK1600 in tow behind my truck.





The customer had at least twenty walnut logs scattered about in several piles waiting to be sawn. He also had a John Deere skid loader for bringing the logs to the mills loading arms.











The sawing took 8 hours and the logs were all turned into either 1 1/2" or 2 5/8" live edged slabs. The client had a 14' x 8' dump box type gooseneck trailer that we filled with over #9000 lbs of slabs. The rest of the slabs were dead stacked in the driveway to be hauled away in two more trips. It wasn't until I had left the job that I realized I never took photos of the trailer full of slabs or the slabs dead stacked in the drive but I did take a photo of this one on the sawmill.





Thanks for looking!

[richhiway]

 

 
I figured it out in the morning.

[DPatton]

FYesterday I traveled 44 miles to a saw for a repeat customer south of Johnson Nebraska. The customer had an assortment of logs of his own as well as one oak log brought in from a nearby neighbor and a couple big oak logs brought over by his cousin who lives in the house just up the road from him.





We started the day off with a walnut log that was sawn into 5/4" lumber. Some live edge, some square edged boards.





Then a large 497 bf Burr Oak log that was only 8'-8" long. I had to trim off a little flair here and there to make it fit. This log was brought over by the clients cousin and had been salvaged out of an old dead oak that had fallen into his creek some years back. You can see this log in the weeds just to the right of the saw head in the photo below. 





Some of the oak boards produced from that log.





Miscellaneous Hackberry, pine, cedar, oak, and walnut 5/4" boards, live edge slabs, and 6"x6"s





And the wide, knotty, pitch filled, difficult to saw ponderosa pine slabs below that I seriously struggled with. I was not happy with the way the two slabs on the left turned out. I even tried re-sawing the wide ones with two different brands of new blades and couldn't get a flat cut. So I deducted the time spent on these from my billing. 





Last off was some 5/4" walnut crotch slabs and dry stickers cut out of scrap 2x boards the client had. 



 



Thanks for looking.

[TimW]

 
I figured it out in the morning.

Is that a shiplap attachment?  HAPPY FATHER'S DAY, Y'all!
            hugs,  Brandi

[LogPup]

Saturday June 12th the sawmill and I traveled 81 miles to saw walnut slabs in Emerson Iowa. My first photo of the day was sunrise over the Missouri River from the highway 2 bridge at Nebraska City. It was a pleasant reminder of all the time I've spent fishing and waterskiing on that particularly piece of water. In the mirror you can see the TK1600 in tow behind my truck.





The customer had at least twenty walnut logs scattered about in several piles waiting to be sawn. He also had a John Deere skid loader for bringing the logs to the mills loading arms.











The sawing took 8 hours and the logs were all turned into either 1 1/2" or 2 5/8" live edged slabs. The client had a 14' x 8' dump box type gooseneck trailer that we filled with over #9000 lbs of slabs. The rest of the slabs were dead stacked in the driveway to be hauled away in two more trips. It wasn't until I had left the job that I realized I never took photos of the trailer full of slabs or the slabs dead stacked in the drive but I did take a photo of this one on the sawmill.





Thanks for looking!

Last time I crossed that bridge they were building levies around Sapp Bros truck stop.

[GAB]

 
I figured it out in the morning.

Is that a shiplap attachment?  HAPPY FATHER'S DAY, Y'all!
           hugs,  Brandi

Brandi:
If you look at reply 937 you can see the SLR under the cant and on top of the bed rails.
The SLR can be used to make tapered siding and shingles.
For more information see the W-M web site.
If you do not use the SLR properly you can make some nice thin parallel boards.  I know cause I done dooded it.
GAB

[richhiway]

 
I figured it out in the morning.

Is that a shiplap attachment?  HAPPY FATHER'S DAY, Y'all!
           hugs,  Brandi

Yes that is the Woodmizer jig just to the left.
I bought it used and this was the first time I used it. Works great.