Go Big or Go Home, Going Big

[YellowHammer]

This is really amazing.  

I was reading through the posts.  Are you an investor, an owner or majority owner?  You mentioned owner, or co owner, but how many partners do you have?  

Without the mill running, how are the personnel being paid, equipment being purchased, etc?  Who is staking finances?  

What is your drop dead date for beginning operations?  

Do you already have customers lined up, loggers on the payroll?  Whats the long term business plan?  

Very ambitious.  I'm excited to see how it progresses.  

[longtime lurker]

(How do I delete a comment here anyway? I got off topic)

[SawyerTed]

@YellowHammer for simplicity sake, let's call me plant manager.  There's more to it than that but my function is as a plant manager  I'm one of three on the management team and I often fill cracks wherever and whenever necessary.  Of the other two, one guy is finance officer and the other handles yard operations and machine installations.

Our owners are currently providing the financial backing for this business.  We are one of five businesses they own.  This one is the only one operated independently.  The others all operate out of the same facility and under their management.  One of those is a forestry, land clearing company.  Our logs come from the three crews there.  Our log concentration yard serves to grade and sort logs to increase profitability on the logs those crews bring in.  Most of what we will be using are pulpwood logs for wood shavings and firewood initially.  So low cost, high supply and a consistent source is available. 

We will be producing wood shavings and bulk firewood by the end of September for established customers.  We already have the wood shavings customers lined up to bring their walking floor trailers to be filled.  Firewood production was previously done as a farm venture on the owner's farm so customers are already lined up for firewood.  

The sawmill is in planning right now.  We have a conceptual design with target production levels and target products.  The rest of the business plan has to be running and profitable before we tackle it. I suspect we will be targeting 2023 or 2024 for the sawmill to be operational. 

[YellowHammer]

This is a very interesting project.  I'm looking forward to your updates.

[SawyerTed]

So our supply chain issues have us in limbo more or less.

The breakers and other insides for an 800 amp service panel are finally on their way.  We expect installation on Friday or Monday.  The shavings mill is idle because of the delays.  Maybe we will be making shavings sometime next week. I'm sure that our setup will require some fine tuning once we get it running.  

Our firewood processor is being overhauled with a rebuilt valve set and new hydraulic hoses and an upgraded splitter box.  The conveyors and the steel substructure are being painted.  The valve assembly is at least two more weeks out.  Another couple of weeks will have us making firewood.

So today part of our crew is working on grading to solve some drainage issues and part of the crew is working on the firewood processor.  We are doing some painting and other general improvements.

Maybe Thursday we will be able to put our sign up out by the road.

The critical thing is we are not yet making any money.  ARRGGGHHH!

[VB-Milling]

So our supply chain issues have us in limbo more or less.

The critical thing is we are not yet making any money.  ARRGGGHHH!

Your bottom line is literally the bottom line. Supply chain issues have been very painful for even the most routine of things. I can't imagine how difficult it must be for less common things.

[SawyerTed]

So the progress on start up of our first shavings mill hasn't been a fluid process.  After the electrical delays, we have all the electrical connected, final inspections and operational.  Start up of the machine revealed some anticipated hydraulic leaks, that took a day to resolve.  The crew is now resolving some timing and travel issues with the box.  It isn't good for the box to travel too far in either direction.  

For those who aren't familiar, a shavings mill is basically a big planer head in a table.  On the table is a box that holds logs.  The box travels back and forth across the planer head.  Basically, it is a giant log planer.  

When I say big planer head, it is 60" long and approximately 8" in diameter.  It has five sets of knives that look very similar to planer or jointer knives, just bigger.  We have two sets of new knives, one set is 30" knives and the other is 20" knives.  

The box is approximately 5' wide 9' long and about 40 inches deep.  It will hold several logs.  

The head motor is 200 hp 3 phase and the hydraulics are driven by a 25 hp motor.  Box travel and the conveyor drive motors are all hydraulic.  

This is NOT our operation but one similar to ours.

Salsco 30" & 60" Shaving Mills - YouTube

Our firewood processor is just a couple of weeks away from having the overhaul completed.  Our first issue was hydraulic leaks.   Of course hoses aren't hard to get but they are hard to pay for :D.  There is a little fabrication/repair work to be completed and the metal has been hard to come by.  I'll share more later on the firewood operations.

[Resonator]

Is it cutting in both directions of travel? Or is there is a height difference (infeed-outfeed) on the table deck like a jointer (or giant mandolin veggie slicer).  ???

[SawyerTed]

It does cut both directions.  No height difference between infeed table and outfeed table like a jointer.  Since the poultry and livestock don't care if the shavings are "square" a height difference isn't necessary.  The gap in the table where the head does the cutting is wide enough and the head/knives stick through enough to cut both ways.  The key is enough travel of the box relative to the log length to get them cut to the end so the logs drop enough to be cut.

[hacknchop]

Thank you,I appreciate your taking us along on this journey i had a pretty good idea as to what you were up against with getting a sawmill operation up and running and lots of firewood operations in this part of the world, but your shaving mill is new to me. So again thanks for the education, for some reason I thought that a shaving mill was more like a chipper using by products from the sawmill operation now I know better.

[VB-Milling]

I'm also totally unfamiliar with these shaving mill.  The primary purpose is poultry and livestock in the form of having something underfoot?

The box that cycles back and forth is gravity fed only?  There is no mechanical means to push the logs against the cutterhead?  I guess as long as the box is continuously loaded, there is no need for that?

Can you go straight to packaging with the shavings or do they need to dry?

Thanks (feeling very much like a dumb suburbanite at this point)

[SawyerTed]

Everything is gravity fed, no down pressure required.  You are correct that keeping the box at least 2/3 full is necessary as the machine can throw a log that is not held down or is too short.

In the bulk shavings business, shavings are loaded into a walking floor trailer loose.  We won't be bagging shavings like you see at feed stores.

[VB-Milling]

Everything is gravity fed, no down pressure required.  You are correct that keeping the box at least 2/3 full is necessary as the machine can throw a log that is not held down or is too short.

In the bulk shavings business, shavings are loaded into a walking floor trailer loose.  We won't be bagging shavings like you see at feed stores.

Really appreciate the details.  What an enormous undertaking.  I very much admire your tenacity and work ethic.

[customsawyer]

Do you have any drying in the line after the shavings are made? If not, how are you going to prevent mold and blue stain?

[SawyerTed]

We do have a plan on drying the shavings. We just aren't there yet.  

[mike_belben]

I will toss this out there as something very simple you can maybe scale up.  

I put my planer peels in a black 55g drum to save up for chicken bedding with lid on top.  Drum is in the driveway baking in the sun and basically forgotten about.  One morning i go to add more and the interior walls plus underside of lid are sopping wet from the moisture that came out of the wood and condensed on the cool tin. One sunny day with lid off vaporized that condensate out to atmosphere and chips were dry as a bone.   I keep a scrap of romex over the lip now to keep just a little gap for the lid to vent.  


Id think sheds, silos, old tanks or maybe dryvans parked in the sun would do the same without added energy expense from blowers or kilns and such.  Be a serious fire hazard to kiln. 

[donbj]

parked in the sun

Sun isn't always an option. Need something to be consistent in a business sense.

[mike_belben]

Hot sun in north carolina is as consistent as rain in the PNW!

;D

Theyre parking solar farms bumper to bumper in the northeast and thats pretty marginal too.  But maybe that business is more about collecting lease rents, carbon credits and subsidies than it is kilowatts. Im no expert.

[donbj]

Hot sun in north carolina is as consistent as rain in the PNW!

;D

Theyre parking solar farms bumper to bumper in the northeast and thats pretty marginal too.  But maybe that business is more about collecting lease rents, carbon credits and subsidies than it is kilowatts. Im no expert.

Well maybe this is two different realms. Marketing vs reality. I'm no expert either but in the arena of supply/demand if the sun goes down so does your business. Not to get picky but drying that lot of shavings may require power from a combination of sun/coal/hydro or all of the above(they all are in the grid) to be a reliable supplier.

[customsawyer]

The shavings mills around here are using waste from their own operation and some others close by to fire a boiler to generate their electricity. They also use the boiler to put the heat into the kiln/driers.

[SawyerTed]

We are evaluating whether we even need to dry the shavings.  Our customers will have more to do with that decision.  We are meeting with the biggest one tomorrow.  He will be able to confirm for us the health issues of blue stain for the chickens.  If I recall my previous conversation with him, blue stain is not an issue.  Mold may be different but we've seen no mold so far.

For a little perspective on our initial experiences I'll share this.  Over the last few days we've made several tons of shavings while fine tuning the machine.  They are stockpiling in a building that is 1/3 open. Last week we had several inches of rain with some of the shavings getting wet.  We have experienced no heat, no mold and what blue stain we have appears to be in the logs already.  Because we are not currently bagging the shavings the issue of heat and combustion caused by damp shavings is minimized.

We have a couple of drying ideas to try out if it becomes necessary to dry them.  Our first step is to see if the process of blowing the shavings into open top walking floor trailers is going to help dry the shavings.  Then we will tackle the necessary machinery for drying if it becomes necessary.

[Bruno of NH]

I have seen a place run the shavings into a tromel with a blower running on the tromel.

[ellmoe]

If you blow the shavings they will pack and you will lose volume . This is offset somewhat by eliminating the loading of the trucks with a loader. However , it is surprising how much difference there is in the volume between the two loading methods.

[SawyerTed]

Volume/fluff apparently isn't an issue for our main customer.  He wants more weight in his trucks.  As it is, loading with a loader will put around 9,000 pounds of shavings in a 48' walking floor open top trailer.  That leaves +-30,000 pounds of capacity unused.  This customer wants to use more of that unused capacity and let the chickens return the volume/fluff as they scratch around in the shavings.  We have a plan to take advantage of that unused capacity in the trucks.  That plan may necessitate drying but our proof of concept isn't complete yet.  I can't share specifics but if this works we will be able to offer something other shavings operations do not.

[ellmoe]

So you will sell by weight? Then you have to account for loss of $ by drying. It's kind of a crap shoot. ;D I blew  shavings , where they would pack ,into a bin then loaded trucks . A friend loaded his bin with a conveyor and loaded with almost a sifting shake from his loader bucket. I think that he put less than 2/3 the volume I did in his trucks. He made a living from shavings , for me it was a side product.