Square inch pricing

[Old Greenhorn]

Yeah, I get that. Right now, I use a 'carefully designed' rotation system. I have a small carboard barrel and a nylon bag sack next to the TS and scraps go in there. Obvious wood stove food goes right in the sack unless it is big, in which case I throw it off the loft down by the stove. Other chunks and pieces go in the barrel for consideration as use in small things like splines for blind joints, filler and jig blocks, etc. If it stays in there too long, it gets burned, because I haven't found a use for it. I will just make another box or two and stage some wood in there hoping it whittles itself down to saleable pieces over time. I too cannot keep it all so from time to time I cull out the poorer pieces for kindling or whatever. It's just another little thing to bring for a show and see if anything perks. I have been meaning to pull the whole stock rack apart in the shop and 'start over' by planeing what is there to re-stock and pulling other stuff out to cut up into more useable sizes. As FFOTS said, I have some with splits or bad cupping that are useless as is, but ripped in half and planed is another matter. Some of this wood goes back to my first boards cut on the mill and are pretty bad as is, but it was (is) nice wood so I brought it inside with the thought that there is no "bad wood", only "poor craftsman" that can't figure out what that wood should be.

[Machinebuilder]

Some of this wood goes back to my first boards cut on the mill and are pretty bad as is, but it was (is) nice wood so I brought it inside with the thought that there is no "bad wood", only "poor craftsman" that can't figure out what that wood should be.

As is said by many machinists
"the parts in there, I just have to remove all the material thats not it"
I had to clean out under my work shop bench, I had too many scraps and cutoffs thrown there.
My neighbor had a nice campfire a couple nights. 

[Old Greenhorn]

Yup, sometimes it comes down to that. But other times I need to make some piece and I think, "hey, that slab cutoff from last week would be perfect, where did that go?" then I remember it went into last night's heat. ;D

[terrifictimbersllc]

Most dreams I can remember only vaguely.  What went into the wood stove, not at all.

[mike_belben]

howard, you sound like an ideal candidate for maple syrup tapping.  i promise your maybe someday wood racks will empty right out when the first run hits. 

[21incher]

I don't know  if you realize that many don't  know what an inch is these days  ;D. You may want to go by cubic centimeters to make pricing  easier for customers to understand  :P.  We call pieces like that kindling wood .

[WV Sawmiller]

Mike,

  I don't know what that means about the maple syrup tapping. Are you suggesting I would burn up all my stock to make syrup or something? ???

21,

  The metric system is still a mystery to most folks around here so I will stick with inches. Nobody is saying this will work but at least Yellowhammer seems to have had some success with it. Of course I think he has more upscale customers than I do around here.

[Southside]

I don't know  if you realize that many don't  know what an inch is these days

You are not kidding.  Don't even want to get started on how many can't use a tape measure.  

[btulloh]

I can replenish your inventory when you run out.    No charge, you cover the shipping. 

[Don P]

It's springtime, I had an email looking for biochar this morning  ;D

[mike_belben]

Yes.  When that boil starts dropping off and the pallets have run out, a maple guy will fiendishly run around gathering up anything dry enough to flame up fast.   Im not saying itll solve all your problems but i guarantee wood scraps all over will no longer make the list!  

:D

[YellowHammer]

 

 

We sell these to people as "trivets" for $2 to $10 each.  We don't sell a lot of these, but $10 bucks is $10 bucks.  One was made into the Southern Six Gun Shooting Championship Trophy.



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This is our short board rack, we sell about half of these a week, depending, and these are a signifiant income source.  We have another rack for 8/4, which is not shown in this picture.  We used to burn pallets of these shorts, now we sell them.  These are 50 cents per bdft off our base price, so saves the customer a little money, and are generally S4S with no knots so are very high grade.

[Walnut Beast]

What's the length of the ones on the short board rack

[Walnut Beast]

Looks great and stacked nice 👍 

[DocGP]

Knife handle blanks and pen blanks are other good "markets" for cutoff's.

Doc

[YellowHammer]

Our short board rack is anything from 3 feet and under length 

[WDH]

I sell all my short boards.  I have a couple of segmented bowl turner customers that buy them.  Plus the novice customers that are trying their skills on a small project. 

[Bigly]

I'm curious, when you guys are processing these shorts (or any of it really) for s4s, are you just sending it through a planer to skip plane, or are you passing through a jointer/multiple headed moulder or some such to get your perfectly in-plane face first?  I guess I'm wondering what your customers expect? a board that's ready to use vs a board which will require further processing on their end.

[YellowHammer]

Thats one reason we bought the "Big Gulp" double sided carpet planer.  We can take a pallet full of these little guys and flatten and S2S them to 3/4" in very short order.

These sell best when sold in "ready to use" form.  If they look like burn pit material, they will sell like burn pit material.  If they look like short, bu premium boards, they will like that, at least in out market.  

It also depends on the wood.  Pine? not so much.  Walnut? Every single short board we had sold this weekend at $12.50 per bdft.  Small 8/4 walnut pieces sold for $15 per bdft.  So it really limits waste.

[moodnacreek]

I always sold 12x12's by the inch, in my mind or something, every inch is a board foot.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Well, based on what Robert says above I guess I am going to have to go plane all my short pieces and I'll up my pricing accordingly. I may offer some of both and see what sells and also to show a before and after look about it will look like when finished. 

   I made a box/tray yesterday about 3' long and 8" wide and 8" deep using some air dry poplar and thin spruce hoping to keep the weight down. What I found was a tray that size filled with 10-14 inch pieces is still heavy. I should have made it 2' long. The stuff 18" and up I still have to figure out a carrier/display system for them. I may just stick them upright in a 5 gallon bucket. Also I still have as much remaining wood to trim and process. 

   I will call my crematorium box customer before I start planing anything and give him first dibs on what I have. I don't know what is the minimum length and width he can use.

[alan gage]

  Well, based on what Robert says above I guess I am going to have to go plane all my short pieces and I'll up my pricing accordingly. I may offer some of both and see what sells and also to show a before and after look about it will look like when finished.

 

When I had my little storefront this is what I sold the most of. People liked the short and interesting pieces (walnut and spalted maple). People really liked the short live edge pieces. I didn't bother calculating board feet, rather I just kind of looked at a piece and thought, "that should be worth $5, $10, or $15."
I tried selling rough sawn boards at a discount because I was busy and didn't like taking the time to joint and plane all the pieces. I didn't sell one single rough sawn piece. Rough sawn boards are ugly and it's hard to see through to the beauty below. The people who are buying these pieces to make a little shelf aren't woodworkers and don't have any woodworking equipment, especially a planer. Or at least that's how it seems to be around here.
These sold pretty briskly at first but it didn't take long to deplete my stock of interesting pieces. I could sell short live edge pieces of nearly any species but for square edge stock it needed to be walnut or spalted maple. Oak, regular maple, ash, elm, etc you could pretty much forget about if it wasn't live edge.
Sometimes I'd have an 8' long by 6" wide live edge board and I'd cut it down into 15" pieces and sell it that way for more money.
Alan

[YellowHammer]

It really depends on foot traffic and customer preferences.  We have people who walk to the short rack and spend all their time filling up their cart.  Some just walk by.  It does save them some money. 

We used to burn anything that wasn't 4 feet or longer, but when we had people showing up just to go through our waste piles, we knew we were throwing money away.  It has to be worth while for both the customer and us.  The higher the price of certain species, the more the market for shirts, as some people don't want to buy more wood than they need. 

  These short boards, like much of our wood, are knot and defect free, and have 100% usable wood.  We used to hand joint these, because we would make them from bowed or twisted, but otherwise high grade boards.  

We don't shorten every board, we also gave a low grade "project" wood rack where we toss any 8 footer that is too bowed or cracked or otherwise low value not to waste our time with.  We charge $2 per bdft gor any board in the rack whatever the species.  

These types of products can make money.  For example we sell probably $300 of Project boards a week, instead of just burning them.  Now that Box Store wood is so high, our project rack is sold out in no time. People use it for short pieces, dog houses, chicken horses, gardens, etc.

[moodnacreek]

Not having much help I really don't want anything shorter than 8 foot, not that I would burn a 7' walnut or cedar board. Any short material too good to burn I hide and give it to the customer that buys like material otherwise you have people coming around for stuff that is not worth the interruption.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Well, I finally finished sawing up my remaining walnut boards into short nice pieces. I won't call them graded because I did not compare them to any official standards. I just cut out the knots, splits and sapwood and made a couple of raised bed planter boxes out of the boards that just didn't pan out. Pretty fancy for planters. May be pretty heartwood on one side and pure or half sapwood on the other. I cut up a bunch of 2' and some 1' stickers to use with the next walnut I saw and sticker. Any of the cut offs 6"X10" will go to making bluebird houses and if not they were bagged for my wife to use for kindling/firestarter. 

   I stacked the boards by height in one of the low grade walnut planters called my customer who makes crematorium boxes for our local funeral home for the ashes and gave him first choice. The display worked fine and he quickly picked through and set several aside and asked the total for them. He never asked a square inch price or bf price just how much is that stack. I measured and tallied and he added another board or two and said let him know when he had $100 worth. He seemed happy with the boards and I got my price and will open the rest up to the public. 

  I sell my walnut for $5/bf and figure 5 cents/square inch is $7.20/bf and may plane some and offer them for a dime a square inch ($14.40/bf) to see which sells the best. I did not capture the actual time involved but if you decide to try you need to calculate that to see if it is worth the time and effort.

   I will likely do the same for some cherry boards I have in stock and may even try trimming out a basswood board or two. Its looking like a good way to salvage the most lumber out of a board. 

   It is probably too time consuming for a big commercial operation but I'd say there is a place for it if you have the time and inclination. It might be an inclement weather plan to use up some time or help who can't work due to bad weather or while major equipment is down for repair or service or such, not that there is not typically plenty of other projects most of us for such occasions.