Whatcha Sawin' 2020 ??

[WV Sawmiller]

Wow, nobody posted here all day. Looks like we have some slackers out there. Maye they are stuck in the mud somewhere? Then again, at the rate  I am moving I may be accused to that. I got a late start in the drizzing rain. I took 5 sheets of used roofing to cover the stack I have been building. I told the customer I would do so and let him have it at my cost and buy it back when/if he no longer needs it.  

I started with 10 logs and when I ran out of light I had 2 remaining. The last one was a big maple with a good bit of sweep and is way too big for me to turn more than half a turn. I had to grab my magic hook and dug out my tow chain and a cable I keep in the back of my truck all the time and that with the 11' of 1/4 chain I took for the magic hook I was able to reach the log nearly 30' away and was able to move it a couple of feet at the time. Of course with the sweep once the balance shifted it would roll on its own 3' or so then stop. I'll finish it on my next trip. So far I have only sawed about 1230 bf in 3 hard days sawing and stacking on this job.

8' WO on the mill and a 10'X 30" sweepy maple about 10' from the mill for the next time - probably Monday.


 about 1230 bf - 18' base and 10' at the top level. I will replace the 2 blue sheets on the R next time to prove longer coverage. The stack is tall enough now I need to move my little sawhorses over to use as scaffolding.

[Magicman]

Looks  like you are earning your $$ on that job.  Those are the kind that I love to finish so that I can move on.  

I will be sawing next week but I don't know what or where yet.  If it's dry it will be Oak or if wet it will be ERC.

[Bruno of NH]

Worked in the pouring rain yesterday. 
Sawing a garage package and bridge decking for the snowmobile club.
4" of heavy wet snow this morning. 

 

 

[WV Sawmiller]

Lynn,

   Yes, I agree. Last night the customer wrote to be sure the stacks could be moved with a tractor with forks. I wrote back "It can but is going to take a big tractor". If he'd told me that before I started I'd likely have made a couple of stacks. It would have been nice if he'd left me some pallets instead of me having to cut my own dunnage. The stack is straight and should dry good but it would have been better on cinderblocks or something higher off the ground. 

   I have another customer I met with the same day as this customer and he is half the distance and wants logs and timber framing for a cabin. That looks like a Wednesday job.

[caveman]

Howard, getting the dunnage oriented just right to dry lumber flat takes quite a bit of time.  That is why I would pour concrete slabs to stack on if it weren't cost prohibitive for us right now.  MM is right, you are earning your money.  This is probably not the ideal job you imagined when you were anticipating taking delivery of your sawmill.  You are doing a good job and the customer is getting a great deal.

[WV Sawmiller]

Cavey,

   Yeah it is time consuming and frustrating to take so long. Around here I build stacking skids/pallets. It amazes me how much time I end up spending with little things when working alone. Everything from stopping to cut stickers to walking around the mill to remove a board and stack it or trim off some wane on one end, etc. I'd guess a decent helper should at least triple a sawyers output. maybe more. Maybe I better start looking more for one. This is highly unusual for me to do everything for a customer but these folks are out of state. I won't say I won't do this again but I will modify customer prep or price accordingly. I told them I would not saw without a locked gate or cable because it is a remote, unoccupied site and they did that. Next time I will require pallets or crossties or other dunnage and discuss stack sizes more. 

[WDH]

All I can say, Howard, is you are a Saint . 

[caveman]

There are days like that.  Last Saturday, John and I were sawing a bunch of 19-20' 2x10's along with some 1x4's.  We should have been done by noon but we were still at it at 6 p.m.  Some days you are the hammer and some days you are the nail.

[donbj]

Salvaged some beautiful spruce. As far as saw log goes, hard to beat. Got 5.25m3 and 1600bd/ft out of it. That's just part of the finished lumber.



 

 

 

 

[WV Sawmiller]

Danny,

  I need you to call my wife and tell her that. I tell her all the time but she does not believe me. :D

   This job as nearly all been14' and longer and with the small crooked logs it has been a real challenge to keep it from rising in the middle or the ends. I usually edge my flitches against my cant when it gets down to under 4" (So I can edge down to a 1X4 if needed) but I have learned on this job once I turn that cant the last time and clamp it tight, I don't release it till I saw to the bed because that thin cant does not like to lie flat and making a couple of trim cuts loses at least one more board and adds more time to the sawing.

  I wish WM would make multiple moveable clamps with a tooth just for cases like these so we could pull down the middle or individual ends as needed to control a wonky cant/log. Maybe they will read this suggestion and invent it and send me some of the money it makes for them. With my luck it will cost them more than they make off it and they will send me a bill. ;D

[DPatton]

WV,

I hope for your sake you are doing this job by the hour and not BF pricing.

[OlJarhead]

 

 

woot I am still here ;)  just slower than before   milling D logs and 1xs for cabin stuff and soon some 2xs for my new shop

[WV Sawmiller]

WV,

I hope for your sake you are doing this job by the hour and not BF pricing.

I wish! That may be one of my changes if I ever do another all in one job like this as I mentioned earlier. Either I need to saw hourly on them or I need to go up on my bf rate. I did use a higher rate for this but probably not enough. Its not the customer's fault my helper cancelled out on me. I'd rather do it by the bf then I don't feel guilty if I feel like I am dragging one day.

[Jim_Rogers]

WV:
Saw by the bdft, stack by the hour.
Jim Rogers

[DPatton]

WV:
Saw by the bdft, stack by the hour.
Jim Rogers

I like that idea Jim, however I'm not sure how I would separate the time spent sawing and the time spent removing and stacking boards. When sawing portable I typically depend on the client to provide the labor to remove boards and stack as desired. If the client can't provide this I will provide someone to perform this task at an additional agreed hourly rate. This keeps me at the controls of the saw producing product instead of spending time walking around the saw carrying and stacking boards. 
Long story short, if I'm walking and stacking then the saw is not producing. That's why I normally saw by the hour. I'm not in this to let the clients lack of preparedness determine whether I make money or not. 
This arrangement places responsibility back on the client to have a plan that includes logs properly trimmed and staged, a prepared location for stacking, and stickers ready ahead of time. If the client has all this in order and ready to go then they are going to end up getting a really good bf rate based on my per hour rate. If they are not properly prepared, or require me to help with these items I will of course help anywhere needed, but it won't be at my expense. 

[WV Sawmiller]

Jim,

   You must be a genius because that was one of the things about for future jobs. I've got to do something different with my pricing.

@DPatton ,

   I agree but that would mean I'd have to have a pool of help which is my current problem. The young man I was trying to use I have used 2 times before where the customer hired him. I'd pick him up and take him home and they paid him. He left me hanging this time. Since these customers live out of of state I was more tolerant. They gave me a $500 deposit months ago and suggested wait till it was cooler so there was trust and respect on their part.

   I took a leisurely stroll over today and sawed the last 2 logs including the big ugly, sweepy maple. I was about to get the customers 10 each, 12" X 5/4 X 10' boards for future stair treads out of it but just barely. I sawed the sacrificial ground log the others were stacked on into 6X6 dunnage and made a second stack and re-did the stacks. 13-18 ft boards on one stack, 8-12 ft boards on the second. That makes them lighter, more stable and they were getting too high for this old man to stack on.


 End view - both stacks. About 1450 bf or so.

 Downhill view of the longer stack.

   I packed up, cleaned up the site and got home about 7:00 pm. That is one job I am glad to finish. Nice customers so nothing negative to them. Any issues were self induced.

[Jim_Rogers]

Last big log in pile made these bar tops:



 
I got two 2x26x12' and one 8' piece for my customers.

Rest of log will make 1x16 round edge siding for another.

Jim Rogers

[WV Sawmiller]

@Jim_Rogers 

   What is round edge siding? Do you run it through a molder or such?

[Jim_Rogers]

I should have said natural edge.
sorry about that.

Jim Rogers

[Bruno of NH]

2x6x16 bridge planking for one of the local Snow go clubs today. Rained most of the day.

 

[Southside]

Beginning of an accent wall for a client who built a huge new lake house.  1500 square feet worth of accent wall.  Will have at least 12 different types of wood and a couple different cut profiles on a couple - QS, flat sawn, etc.  Needs to go through the kiln and the moulder to get milled into our locking ship lap profile as the last step.  Actually quite a fun project.  Length is not an issue - within reason - and every log is something different. Of course I doubt I will be claiming it's fun when dealing with drying it all, but the sawing is fun.  

He wanted it to have character, I think it will rise to the challenge. 


 



 


 

[Walnut Beast]

Looks and sounds pretty nice 👍 

[Magicman]

 

 
I moved to a SYP and ERC job today.


 
It is a perfect setup with the slabs going to the side, the lumber being stickered off of the back and the Kubota bringing the logs to the sawmill loader.  We sawed the 11 SYP logs which produced 1902bf.  We will saw the ERC tomorrow.

[alan gage]

Beginning of an accent wall for a client who built a huge new lake house.  1500 square feet worth of accent wall.  Will have at least 12 different types of wood and a couple different cut profiles on a couple - QS, flat sawn, etc.  Needs to go through the kiln and the moulder to get milled into our locking ship lap profile as the last step.  Actually quite a fun project.  Length is not an issue - within reason - and every log is something different. Of course I doubt I will be claiming it's fun when dealing with drying it all, but the sawing is fun.  

He wanted it to have character, I think it will rise to the challenge.

That's cool. Pretty much what I did when I was lining the inside of my new shop last winter. Mostly hardwoods but I've got about 10 species on the walls in different lengths and widths. Really like the way it turned out. From plain old spruce and red oak up to spalted maple and walnut with about everything that grows around here in between.
I elected to butt my edges and got some gaps from shrinkage but it was expected and not objectionable. It sure was a lot of work planing and straight lining all that wood but worth it. I'd break it up into batches of maybe 500-700bf at a time (enough to do an entire wall) and kept the edging waste to a minimum by using 5-6 different widths, which was enough to keep the waste down but not enough to make too much extra work. The rows vary from 5-12" wide. Trying to keep a narrow row butted against a wide row helped keep the final drying gaps to a minimum.  Of course with dried and ship lapped material you won't have those issues.
Thankfully I remembered to take a couple pictures before I brought in all the equipment and turned it into a mess, as usual.






Alan

[WV Sawmiller]

   Started a new job today 26 miles from home. Already sawed more today than on the last 4 days combined and less than half the distance plus I never stacked a board or hauled away a flitch! I sawed, pushed board, flitches and slabs over on the mill bed or loading arms. Nothing smaller than a 2X6 either. I did not take "before" pictures but did take some at the end of the day.


Remainder of stack sawed. Looks to be about 17 logs in this stack. We sawed about 20 like this today. 8/4 framing, a couple of 4X4s, some 6X8 & 6X10 "beams" for cabin walls.

Locust and pine and oak for floor boards when the big stuff is done  

16' framing and "beams"  

Mostly 8' to 12' framing - fresh cut ones were today's sawing

Mostly 6X8 future cabin walls  

 Slab pile. No effort to save anything smaller than a 2X6. Usually I am trying to save every piece of wood down to a 1X4, sometimes 1X3 if he is using battens. This customer has 490 acres of mostly woods and says "Don't sweat it, there is plenty more." I did not run a tally today but i figure easily over 2000 bf and if I've ever had a 3000 bf day it was today. Oh BTW - it was all Tulip poplar!

This customer saw me at a workshop I put on for the local USDA office over 18 months ago (Was the day after Lyric, my last GD was born - I came home and left the mill attached to the truck, grabbed a shower and change of clothes and we headed for Charlotte NC within 30 minutes of returning home) so these things do pay off if you are patient and just hang in there.

The customer also has a large aspen to saw into boards for a floor in the cabin he plans to build.

 The only downside is - he is UGA fan and he and his wife moved here from Newnan GA. He evidently went to a demo or two at he WM office there and described the shop area to me.