Which logs to saw

Horselog · April 28, 2016, 09:50:21 PM

For those of you who have seen some of my recent posts, I now have a good location with truck access where I am bringing all my logs to. I hired a portable mill to do some grade sawing and just sold my first truckload of grade lumber a few days ago.

One of my big questions now is deciding which logs to saw and which ones to sell. There's a lot of logs that are easy to decide, it's the non-veneer 4 sided WO butt logs that get me confused sometime. I know what I can get if they're sawn into lumber, the unknown is exactly what I can get selling to a quartersaw mill, or stave log buyer. I guess I need to sell a load and see, but it's expensive to truck logs there not knowing what I'll get. I'm a little fuzzy too on the difference between a 4 sided veneer and a 4 sided quartersaw log. The terms "grain" and "texture" get thrown around, but that doesn't tell you a whole lot. Sounds pretty subjective to me. I'd hate to send a log to veneer markets that gets rejected and I could have done better sawing it.

I'm also trying to find where I need to look to get into exporting logs. I have a loading dock on my yard that would let me load containers. I know that right now there's good markets for 2 sided oak, hickory and ash logs, even down to 13". It's hard to know where's the best place to put the logs.

Any thoughts on this?

sandsawmill14 · April 28, 2016, 10:05:56 PM

have the veneer buyer come to your yard

at least thats what they do here they will even go to the landing in the woods to grade logs but if you call a time or 2 and didnt have any veneer logs it would be hard to get them to come back. the ones around here will only take the veneer and stave logs so they had rather come grade and mark them than to have a bunch of lower grade logs to try to do something with delivered to their yard

Horselog · April 28, 2016, 10:10:21 PM

What about quartersaw logs?

sandsawmill14 · April 28, 2016, 10:30:18 PM

i dont know ??? all we have ever sold was just veneer and stave logs they rest are normally flat sawn and sent to the flooring mill where its graded

the only mill i know of that quarter saws any lumber sells it kiln dried.

Horselog · April 29, 2016, 06:28:11 AM

A quarter saw log is a nice WO log that doesn't make veneer spec, but the large quarter saw mills will still pay pretty good money for, up to $2-$2.50/BF for sawlog. It's hard to justify sawing it yourself at that price.