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Board Ft Avg per hour (whats yours)

Started by derhntr, May 14, 2016, 04:06:00 PM

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POSTON WIDEHEAD

I've said it before but I've never timed myself vs. board footage. It just really didn't seem that important.
Mostly whats on my mind is what the customer is gonna say when he leaves with the lumber I have sawed.

But on the other hand, if ya wanna get frisky and you will give me a choice, I believe I could take a brand new 4° blade and some nice Poplar logs and this Old Goat would smoke you in the half mile.  :D :D :D
The older I get I wish my body could Re-Gen.

Verticaltrx

LT15 19hp, power feed, 9* blades, setup at home with log deck and plenty of support equipment, working by myself

Around 200-225 bf/hr sawing white pine for framing and siding, 125-150bf/hr sawing nice hardwood lumber. That includes loading logs, edging, stacking and stickering lumber, changing blades, etc. I enjoy hard work  :D
Wood-Mizer LT15G19

killamplanes

I saw tie mainly side lumber is a bi-product and I edge on the mill. I can look at a pile of logs and guess my average tie numbers per hour. But couldnt guess bdft, its to dependant on log size. Because I chase the tie.  I do all myself and its a workout. But I usually come out to makin 30-60 $ an hour.  Not gettin rich but better than watchin television :D
jd440 skidder, western star w/grapple,tk B-20 hyd, electric, stihl660,and 2X661. and other support Equipment, pallet manufacturing line

OlJarhead

That right there is a good point!  Log size and shape makes all the difference.  Milling 300bf logs back to back back with no taper etc and you can smash the records...mill a bunch of bent 'pecker' poles and, well, forget about it! lol
2016 LT40HD26 and Mahindra 5010 W/FEL WM Hundred Thousand BF Club Member

longtime lurker

Quote from: Magicman on May 18, 2016, 08:01:51 AM
Yes NZJake he is making a bunch of sawdust and boards, but he is also splitting the pith area and making some very sweepy and marginally useful boards.   :-\

My preference is quality over quantity.

Respectfully Lynn, the logs appear to be Alpine Ash which is one of the "high collapse" eucalypts of southern Australia. In order to both reduce the incidence of collapse, and increase the ability of the timber to recover from collapse during steam reconditioning, it is commonly saw to give the maximum recovery of quarter to rift sawn boards. Whether by accident or design Jake's pattern would be pretty much "industry standard" within the constraints of his equipment.
Anddd... its a eucalypt, and the amount of spring in the boards seemed pretty tame to me, relatively speaking. With eucalypt species you mostly get to choose between 2 strategies: (a) break them in halves/thirds/quarters and let them spring then saw straight boards out of that or (b) oversaw and edge hard. It's why eucalypt mills have low recovery rates.

But I do agree with you... the job aint over until the boards are straight, stripped out, strapped down, and the mess is cleaned up ready for tomorrow.
The quickest way to make a million dollars with a sawmill is to start with two million.

longtime lurker

I came back to put up a picture of a truely springy Euc, photo is from New Zealand so its probably plantation Alpine Ash.

No reason... cept its a kinda cool picture as long as its in someone elses mill not mine! :D



 
The quickest way to make a million dollars with a sawmill is to start with two million.

NZJake

Well said Longtime. Recovery on average size Euc's is typically around the 30% mark. The core is rubbish and then you have to deal with sweep. Finger jointing is a good option when all else fails.

Flat sawing the boards may not be as structural but still a good option especially considering the strength of most Australian hardwoods.
Wife says I woke up one morning half asleep uttering thin kerf and high production, I think I need a hobby other than milling?

ozarkgem

Quote from: OlJarhead on May 18, 2016, 07:36:45 PM
Quote from: ozarkgem on May 18, 2016, 07:01:10 PM
I own my logs and don't do custom sawing(Amish do it for .17 BF) so I figure everything  including  my time on mill related items even if I am not sawing. I have been in manufacturing for 35 yrs so I understand all the little things that needs to be added  in when figuring profit and loss. And there are LOTS of little things.

We might be saying the same thing unless you mean to include setup, tear-down and drive time too.
I would include all of than in the time. I would count anything related to the sawing. Driving would be an expense added to your hourly rate not necessarily figured into the sawing time as related to bf per hr. Just my take. Mobile and stationary would have some different parameters to consider. I wouldn't have the tear down and setup time you would have but I would have the clean up time you can drive away from LOL.
Mighty Mite Band Mill, Case Backhoe, 763 Bobcat, Ford 3400 w/FEL , 1962 Ford 4000, Int dump truck, Clark forklift, lots of trailers. Stihl 046 Magnum, 029 Stihl. complete machine shop to keep everything going.

ozarkgem

I guess the bottom line is at the end of the year are you happy with the wages you make for the hrs you put in regardless of hourly bf production.
Mighty Mite Band Mill, Case Backhoe, 763 Bobcat, Ford 3400 w/FEL , 1962 Ford 4000, Int dump truck, Clark forklift, lots of trailers. Stihl 046 Magnum, 029 Stihl. complete machine shop to keep everything going.

ozarkgem

I should mention that the 1000 bf per day is all 1x's
Mighty Mite Band Mill, Case Backhoe, 763 Bobcat, Ford 3400 w/FEL , 1962 Ford 4000, Int dump truck, Clark forklift, lots of trailers. Stihl 046 Magnum, 029 Stihl. complete machine shop to keep everything going.

ozarkgem

Quote from: WoodenHead on May 18, 2016, 09:13:23 PM
This tends to be a touchy subject when it comes up from time to time.   :)

I saw white pine, quality is important to me and I sell the lumber I saw.  My average has been 150-250 bdft/hour sawing, but I usually produce about 1000bdft per 6-8 hour day after sticker stacking and cleanup is taken into account.  I have an LT40 (28HP) with hydraulics added. 

I'm still recovering from a car accident, so I haven't been sawing as much these days.  I actually brought another sawyer in to tackle the 25,000 bdft of logs remaining.  He has an LT50 with 55HP Yanmar (beautiful machine), but ran the same 10 degree, 1 1/4 blades that I do.  He really couldn't saw much faster than I can on my machine.  He was kind enough to let me try.  This took me by complete surprise.  The head up/down and return was much quicker though.  He also had Accuset which is nice.  But in the end we called it quits because I was hoping that he could saw more than I could.  His hourly charge is 50% more than mine, so I would be loosing money for every board I sold.  It was an interesting experience.  We both learned something.

I have noticed that there seems to be a speed threshold that band mills have. I am with you on the speed. I have watched some videos of some very expensive machines and they didn't saw a whole lot faster than mine. I think the exception being the Select double cut which seems to move pretty fast through a log. I guess if I paid 80 grand for a mill I would expect it to cut 4 times faster than my mill but that doesn't seem to be the case. The vertical mills move through the log pretty fast.
Mighty Mite Band Mill, Case Backhoe, 763 Bobcat, Ford 3400 w/FEL , 1962 Ford 4000, Int dump truck, Clark forklift, lots of trailers. Stihl 046 Magnum, 029 Stihl. complete machine shop to keep everything going.

longtime lurker

Quote from: ozarkgem on May 19, 2016, 06:34:49 PM
I have noticed that there seems to be a speed threshold that band mills have. I am with you on the speed. I have watched some videos of some very expensive machines and they didn't saw a whole lot faster than mine. I think the exception being the Select double cut which seems to move pretty fast through a log. I guess if I paid 80 grand for a mill I would expect it to cut 4 times faster than my mill but that doesn't seem to be the case. The vertical mills move through the log pretty fast.

There's n engineering principal that goes something like the strength of a colum is directly proportional to its depth, or something like that. Whatever. As it applies to bands, it means that the maximum workable feed speed is set by the width and thickness of the band, but more so by width, that being the axis of strain.
You can throw all the horse power at it you like, but there is a limit to how fast a given size will cut before the band distorts under the strain of feeding into wood and starts to deviate from where it's supposed to go.
Aside from the double cut feature, selects mills are no faster then any other 4" machine... Which is to say they cut considerably faster then an 1¼", and are pretty slow compared with an 8" band resaw.
There are also issues around gullet size to get sawdust away. Obviously the wider the band the deeper the gullets can be. I'm not a bandmill guy, but seems to me that the bigger thin band machines are at the limit of capacity that way. Probably why woodmizer has woken up and now offers 4" rigs in the stationary mills.

The quickest way to make a million dollars with a sawmill is to start with two million.

killamplanes

Longtime looker I no its probly not ur log but I would throw it of the mill that thing is unpredictable :D
jd440 skidder, western star w/grapple,tk B-20 hyd, electric, stihl660,and 2X661. and other support Equipment, pallet manufacturing line

ozarkgem

Quote from: longtime lurker on May 19, 2016, 09:40:01 PM
Quote from: ozarkgem on May 19, 2016, 06:34:49 PM
I have noticed that there seems to be a speed threshold that band mills have. I am with you on the speed. I have watched some videos of some very expensive machines and they didn't saw a whole lot faster than mine. I think the exception being the Select double cut which seems to move pretty fast through a log. I guess if I paid 80 grand for a mill I would expect it to cut 4 times faster than my mill but that doesn't seem to be the case. The vertical mills move through the log pretty fast.

There's n engineering principal that goes something like the strength of a colum is directly proportional to its depth, or something like that. Whatever. As it applies to bands, it means that the maximum workable feed speed is set by the width and thickness of the band, but more so by width, that being the axis of strain.
You can throw all the horse power at it you like, but there is a limit to how fast a given size will cut before the band distorts under the strain of feeding into wood and starts to deviate from where it's supposed to go.
Aside from the double cut feature, selects mills are no faster then any other 4" machine... Which is to say they cut considerably faster then an 1¼", and are pretty slow compared with an 8" band resaw.
There are also issues around gullet size to get sawdust away. Obviously the wider the band the deeper the gullets can be. I'm not a bandmill guy, but seems to me that the bigger thin band machines are at the limit of capacity that way. Probably why woodmizer has woken up and now offers 4" rigs in the stationary mills.
[/quote
I wonder how wide a band and how much HP it would take to double the cutting speed of a 1 1/4 band?
Mighty Mite Band Mill, Case Backhoe, 763 Bobcat, Ford 3400 w/FEL , 1962 Ford 4000, Int dump truck, Clark forklift, lots of trailers. Stihl 046 Magnum, 029 Stihl. complete machine shop to keep everything going.

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