I have a good customer that wants me to cut
1x2x12 Pine batten strips
How do you all charge for this?
Thanks Bruno
I charge by the hour, especially for fiddly work like batten strips.
FYI IMHO 2 inch batten strips are pretty narrow. id make em 3" wide
I try my best not to saw 1x2 . This is a clay soil area and not much pine and what I do get has large knots so the battens break. So they have to come out of a better grade of pine plus all the extra labor or set up a gang saw. Being such a small operator I have to charge at least 25 per cent [bd. ft.] more for these 1x2 strips.
I find cutting 1x2 is they fall apart If your customers want all 8' or 16'. They will get small pieces too.
You can tell the customer to get more lumber, keep the best ones for 1x2 then he can cut them on a table saw later.
If you keep the best grade and save for batton, maybe.
Is he buying the boards from you too? If so how many battens does he want? I would also recommend the 3" battens but I'd would cut what the customer wanted. Is he a new or repeat customer? If he were a repeat customer and caught me in a good mood, which I often am, I might not charge him at all or a token amount. Let's be real - you can stand a lot of 1X6s on edge and cut a bunch of 2-3 inch battens real quick. Also if he really wanted 1X2's it would be a chance to use up any 1X4s I had laying around.
If he bought the wood elsewhere I'd just charge my normal hourly rate. Worse case if a new customer and he bought from me I might charge half my hourly rate to split them for him.
The customer has been restoring his barn for a few years
He brought me logs and I milled the boards for the project.
He's also my neighbor and a good guy.
He's a linemen and recovering from a Bad fall at work.
.25 a LF
As always; you guys just answered another question I had. I'm about to start milling board and batten. Seem to have a lot of interest in it or the past while. ;D
Happy b'day Tin Horse.
Quote from: Bruno of NH on April 01, 2018, 02:09:38 PM
The customer has been restoring his barn for a few years
He brought me logs and I milled the boards for the project.
He's also my neighbor and a good guy.
He's a linemen and recovering from a Bad fall at work.
I'm assuming these battens will come from the boards you already milled or will be milling from his logs. If so and with info above I would not be charging extra.
Keep in mind I mill for supplemental retirement income and to occupy my time It is not my main source of income so my attitude is affected accordingly. If income from my milling was my primary livelihood I'd have a different attitude.
When I sell or mill I always throw something extra in. If I were already milling this guys logs the batten sawing might be the extra I included for him.
I charge $2/bf + $0.12 extra for milling time ($CAN ). I use some 8/4'' completly clear stuff, air or kiln dry (not green...warpage), that I put 5 or 6 pieces at vertical and cut to the thickness according to the order. It make a top product. The thickness may vary from 1/2'' to 1''. I think 1'' has a look little too much chunky to my taste . Most of the case it is 1/2'' to 3/4''. Since customers are always looking for a cheaper way to do the job, I propose a batten of 6'' with a 4'' space between the back boards (same amount of wood ) so a grade with small knots could be used. If they go to 6'', the price is the same as the rest : $0.70 /sq.ft. for white pine with solid knots. I have a couple of sheds that are built with 6'' and 4'' batten to give examples so the customer could choose. The customer like to choose and if they want to bargin I always have the exit door of a cheaper materiel that will do a very good job :). The thickness of the board is 2mm which equals to around 3/4''net. I have a metric + inch double scale on my WM so I could easily switch from one scale to the other according to the grade that the log is giving. If the customer want thicker stuff the price is ajusted accordingly. ( 2mm=3/4'' for board and batten , 2.5mm= 1'' construction grade, 3mm= 1 1/8''net + a tiny bit more for furniture grade in other words a good 4/4).
Curvy,
Shouldn't that be 2cm instead of 2 mm? Lots of us aren't real metric savvy yet and I don't know what is on your mill settings.
You are wright, I should have written cm instead of mm.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/48698/20180402_14531828029.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1522700797) I dont used the metric system for selling wood or in construction. I use it only on the mill because I found it is easier to remember the mesurement instead of carrying 1/8'' .When I flip the block I have a tendency to forget where I was. Has you could see I dont have a 4/4 scale (or 6/4, 8/4, etc ). My customers gave the comment that the 4/4 scale is not thick enough for furniture so I go metric. The ruler is sold by Wood Mizer
I like 2 3/4 x 3/4 for batten depending on how wide the base boards are. My 100 plus year old house came with that and a 30 degree bevel on the batten .It takes time to put that bevel on it with the table saw but it sure looks neat.
Those do look good.
If you have hemlock available you might get better batten material than pine.
I made a horse run in,4 inch batten,10 inch boards. I drove by a blacksmith shop that had that on. Took me a year of driving by on the way to work before I saw someone outside,I stopped in and saw it up close and liked it.
I charge .15 for 1x2 and .20 for 1x3 per LF 4/4 all sawed from side lumber of which I have more than I want.
I always include several extra to make up for those that may break.
When I do board and batten siding, I cut the cants to 9"x what ever max the log will give me, then flip the cant and set the simple set to 15/16 for the boards and cut till I have a 12/4 piece left on the bed.
flip that piece out and do 3 more logs so I have 4 x 12/4 cants to bring in for the battens. Bring those in on edge and set the simple to 5/8 or 11/16 and saw out the battens. I find i have avery little waste this way and the product looks good installed.
I know this will sound weird but according to the little lady one "must" use odd measurements for siding. Even measurement "look chintzy"! SO I cut 9 inch boards and 3 inch battens and people seem to like it that way.
The crazy part is coverage seems to actually work out the best with those measurements.
I cut battens at 1/2 inch thick and 2 to 3 inches wide. Also I use very nice smaller logs to reduce the breakage. Therefore I charge 3x what the order was bid and awarded at for the siding. For example a modified post and beam I did last fall was 50 cents per bd ft for post and beam and any other dimensional, siding was 75 cents and the battens were at a buck and a half with the 1/2 inch thickness counted at 1 inch. To me the battens end up the most visible so I charge more and use nicer logs. Do remember that I always give extra pieces of every thing included for free.
Woodmills I do the same on over run. I shoot for siding jobs to get about 20% to 25% over run for no additional charge.
Why is it said that 3" battens are better than 2" ?
Stronger and more coverage.
A wider batten permit larger knots, so lower grade, easier to produce so cheaper
Two good answers, thanks. Years ago a few customers wanted 4" battens . To me that's board on board style but they said anything less than 3" would fall off and that 4" was even better. This was before 'sheet rock' screws and they where nailing both sides so there is less movement towards the center of the board so they had better luck with wide battens. On my house, boards wider than 12", I have 1x2 battens to show the wide boards. They are attached with 1 screw in the middle [ between the boards] and this makes it an expansion joint. No problems yet.
When I install batten over 2'', I put a block at the bottom to stop the entry of vermin. Ex: for a 6'' batten with an overlap of one inch on each side, that gives me a 4'' block. I precut a serie of the same thicness as the back board and nail it tight against the last back board and the next back board is fixt tight against that block. It's got to be tight to avoid vermin and rodents. One at the bottom and one at the top. It act as a spacer so the vertical level of the back board is check only after 3 or 4 boards. Also once in a while a staple a metal sreen for ventilation
I really like the look of 4 inch batten and 10 inch boards. I have seen the 2 inch and the 3 inch,random widths on the boards,but the 4 inch and 10 inch just caught my eye. Might of been the full one inch too that adds to it.
Then why not use 1x8 and reverse board and batten?
I cant think that another inch would lend too much strength.
After all they are only covering the small gap that might be between the bigger boards,
On my pole bldg i used 1x12 and 1x10 and 1-3/4 battens with no problems after 12 yrs.
With B&B you are certainly not keeping the vermin out.
But then again to each his (or her) own
I think on another forum, but I saw where a guy used a 1 x4 or 6, whatever on the bottom and the boards stood on the top side of it, then the batten ran down to the bottom. It looked like it would work very well, and was hardly noticeable.
When I was in my teens I helped put up redwood board and batten. We used 1x12 with a ½" space between covered with a 2½" center nailed between the boards. And yes, I know that my reply in no way answers the question of the OP.