Square inch pricing

[WV Sawmiller]

   I have several hundred bf of walnut that has been well picked over and not moving so I think I am going to try some thing new. I've been taking my boards one by one over to the RAS then back to the table saw and trimming out all the knots and splits and trimming off the sapwood. I am getting lots of small but really pretty pieces of wood. Lots of it is 15-20 inches long and 3-5 inches wide. I figure I will make some bins or boxes and store similar lengths together and see if there is a market for it. I figure I will just sell it by the square inch. Looks like a nickel per square inch would be about $7.20/bf. It won't take much storage space and may be a way to move wood that would not otherwise sell. 

   I figure my first call will be to my customer who make crematorium boxes and let him pick through and see what he can use. I'm hoping there will be people buying it to make cutting boards and chess boards and such.

   Anybody every tried such a marketing scheme? Its time consuming but I don't see this stuff moving otherwise. Some pieces with excess sapwood I see will become some pretty fancy raised planter boxes.

   I guess the next step would be to run them through a planner and jack the price up to 10 cents a square inch.

[terrifictimbersllc]

I’ve seen woodworking shops sell walnut offcuts by weight.

[Patrick NC]

Why not? You might be on to something there. Half the people that buy from me don't know the difference between a board foot and a square inch anyway!😂

[WV Sawmiller]

Patrick,

  And if you are selling them 1" thick boards to doesn't matter if you tell them a bf or a sf does it.

   I think if you go in a craft place you are getting square inch pricing anyway.

[Don P]

You're probably getting keystone pricing 
I imagine a pass thru the planer will move more, most people can't "see" it well enough to get excited till its slicked up.

I turn some nice small stuff into ~1/2" thick small cutting boards by planing, easing the edges, sand and beeswax. They work good for cheese boards and sammich making.

[WV Sawmiller]

Don,

  Us ignerant hillbillies don't use them kind of terms so I had to look up Keystone Pricing.  

   Yes, if I plane my rough pieces and double the price I'll be Keystone pricing according to the definition I read. I may try some of both. The first step is to cut it to grade then see if it sells. I might should do 1-2 just to show what they can expect.

[WDH]

Hmmmm.  Pricing by the board foot confuses a lot of people.  Now by the square inch?  144 square inches 1" thick is a board foot.  Hmmmm......

Pricing by the square inch might just obfuscate things even more . 

[samandothers]

Pricing by the square inch might just obfuscate things even more .

Could muddy the waters too!

[Larry]

Price it by the box lot.  Find standard size boxes and fill them full of boards than price the box.  Fix the price at say $40 for a full box than you don't have to measure anything and you get rid of boards by the box.

[Southside]

Offer it at a dime per square inch, customers choice of which face to measure (no edge measuring allowed) on sale 1/2 off, limited time offer if they buy two or more.     Just like the stores do it. 

[WV Sawmiller]

Larry,

   I first thought about the bundling and selling my small lots and I may still try that. I normally sell my walnut for $5/bf but the stack has been well picked over and I do not feel it is worth that right now but if I trim them I may still get the same value out of them. 

SS,

   I'm not big into the gimic pricing. I will make a quantity discount in most cases. I will usually throw in an extra board or two just to make sure the customer gets full value promised. If I'm selling tomato stakes I'll throw in an extra or two in case there is a knot or something I missed and one breaks or such. I am usually open to a counter offer. When I sell at flea markets I have a sign out that says "All prices are negotiable. I am always will to accept more."

[donbj]

A couple guys in this area sell the smaller pieces from making their live edge tables and other projects out of various hardwoods. I’ve seen them online sell something equivalent to a couple laundry baskets full of odds and ends, buyer take all at a price he figgers would be fair. Crafters and woodworkers take it.

[YellowHammer]

We sell pieces of everything, especially walnut, down to less than a foot long by 2 inches square.  Hundreds of dollars a week.  

Price them by the bdft, but sell them by the calculated price and round to the nearest convenient dollar.  So just mark them $5, $7, $10, $13, $20, etc so people know what they cost when they look at them. It wouldn’t matter how you initially set the price, be it weight, bdft, inchft, or whatever.  Just Sharpie the actual price on the board.  

We have three dedicated six foot wide, multi shelf units just for this. Two hold all the 4/4 shorts, the other is for the 8/4 shorts.  

[WV Sawmiller]

Robert,

   Thanks for the input. Its good to know this is working well for you. Do you plane them or sell them as rough lumber? Right now all I have are 4/4 thickness pieces.

   For these little pieces looks like square inch pricing will be easier to calculate than bf. A 3-1/4" X 17" piece at 5 cents per square inch would just be 55.25 sq inch X $.05 = $2.76. That would be $7.20/bf if I use 5 cents/inch.

   I like the idea of rounding to the nearest $1 or $.5 or $.25. I will play with that. I need to find me a light colored sharpie for this dark wood.

    

  

[DocGP]

I have purchased a good bit of Koa from a shop that sells it by the flat rate box.  They just drop it in the mail from the island.

A bit of work, but if it makes enough to be worth it, might be an option.  

Doc

[WV Sawmiller]

Doc,

   So far I have not shipped any wood for commercial purposes but that is not to say I would not do so under certain circumstances. If I did so I would certainly be sure to recoup my shipping and handling costs.

[mike_belben]

I would positively switch to pound pricing and let 3 seconds on the scale save me 5 minutes of jotting down numbers to math up and then they change their mind and i start over.  


Dont forget "fish boards" and plaques.  A cheap CNC lazer can make those scraps of wood into all sort of art, signage, religious verses, family crests funny/punny stuff.. etc etc etc.  Etsy is the place to sell it for stupid markup but beware the taxes and fees and postage are about 30% of proceeds.  There are fanatical craft groups all over the internet.  And brilliant people who have these fools paying $45 a month subscriptions to partake on patreon and so forth.  A new world really.


Fyi- planed routed and sanded blank signboards and plaque boards will sell no problem on etsy.  Or to hobby lobby if youre bigtime.  Thats where these craft people go.  Etsy and hobby lobby.  Money is no object.. Atleast until their husbands find the receipt.  It is a bonafide obsessive-compulsive addiction for a sliver of the population.  They see they want they swipe the card and remorse comes later. You want to stay on the card reader end of the transaction!

[WV Sawmiller]

Mike,

  I have a tape measure (Several in fact). I do not have a pair of scales (except the ones I weigh fish and deer on). I know how to compute square inch into bf pricing. I do not know conversion rates for ounces/pounds. Sure I could figure that out but as I have said before "My mental hard drive is full. If I learn something new it means I have to dump some memory and it might be my wife's birthday or something that is going to get me into trouble."

  I know there are people out there who pay crazy money for different things - me included for the right item at the right time. As to the fish boards, plaques, etc. - I don't care what they use it for once they buy it. I realize if I had the time, equipment, shop space, time and skill and wanted to pay for the advertising on the right spaces, I could turn this wood into items worth mega bucks.

  Right now I have a RAS and a table saw and a stack of low grade wood that will not sell any time soon but with existing equipment and a little time and effort I can convert into some high grade blanks and I need the extra storage space.

  Maybe a struggling but talented woodworking artist will come see me and we will form an alliance and both will become filthy rich. I have fronted people wood before and can do so again. Its kind of like buying an old time prospector a shovel and gold pan. Its low cost, low risk and might yield big returns but probably will not in which case it is like wetting your pants with dark trousers on - it leaves you with a warm feeling but nobody notices.

[Sauna freak]

There is definitely a market for craft boards.  I've never had walnut to saw, but have gotten it in a mix of sawmill slabs I purchased for firewood.  By far, the highest price per square inch I got was for pistol grips and knife scales.  These were 1/4 sawn with sapwood to sizing specified by my end user.  $20 a pair, and they were roughly 3x6x1" of useable wood, so don't overlook the thick pieces in your slab pile!  I threw in the highly figured pieces at no additional charge, and the pistol grip buyer sent me a bonus check to ease his conscience he said.

I cut mostly pine and other softwoods here, and the market for "interesting" pieces is quite good.  Talk to some local remodelers...accent walls made of random wood, especially with mineral stain, tight knots and figure are hot right now, as is anything with a live edge. I can't saw live edge pine full of knots and wormholes fast enough right now. Look outside of the "clean wood" box, some pretty ugly pieces will bring top dollar sold individually for taxidermy plaques, trophy shelves, etc., but you have to get creative to search out the markets, then word of mouth takes it to interesting places from there once people start seeing your product.  A couple of my one-offs were recently on an HGTV remodel show, and it warmed my heart to see a set of my feather/burl/lightning char 1911 scales in the gun library at Cabelas with a mid 4 figure price on the firearm.  The maker had incorporated miniature lightning bolts into the checkering.  One of a kind art, and a sight to behold!

[mike_belben]

No conversions or mental hard drive needed.  Your the only one selling walnut stubs by the pound.. Just pick a number out of thin air and write it on the masking tape you put on the box.  

If it sells too fast go up.  Too slow go down and not at all put it in the stove. 

[mike_belben]

Pistol grip blanks is a great idea and i cant believe i didnt think of it since my entire life has involved the gun industry!


From memory any clear scrap of 4/4 that is about 3x5 will make a revolver grip.  1911 sides are even smaller. 

I can probably find out who manufactures them now for SW if you like.

[WV Sawmiller]

  If you do and want to market them I will be glad to sell and ship those little pieces to you. Maybe I need to hang up another feed sack and start collecting them too.

[Old Greenhorn]

Been reading these but was so tied up with my excitement about the Pig Roast plans that I didn't have time to respond. This is a great idea. Yet another from the group I will give a try to. I have been looking through my shop stock rack and grabbing pieces I keep passing over, planeing them out and making do-dads and things I would consider 'quick get it done and off my back' projects. Just to use this stuff up and make room for better material. I had thought of putting short slabs and such for sale in a raw state, but never the small pieces which one can only keep so much of. 
 I am going to start a box on the side to put those pieces in with just an 'out of thin air' (cheap) price on to see how they do. Either live edge drops or planed and joined stuff looks really pretty and I could easily see myself grabbing a piece for a buck or two in years past before the mill and the shop. Hardwood was always hard to come by. It also opens the door for a conversation about "Hey do you ever have any...?" which is a running goal for me.
 Thanks guys! How could I develop my business with out y'all?

[firefighter ontheside]

It's definitely worth making nice small pieces out of less than desirable larger pieces.  I had an 8/4 x 12 slab in the kiln that no one bought because it was twisted.  I brought it to the shop and ripped it in half and then in half lenght wise too.  These pieces I took to the jointer and they are amazing, clear pieces of walnut that will go into my 6 panel door I'm going to make.  I'm sure I could sell them too if I chose.  

Depending on how much of this type of material you're gonna have, you could just put a price on each piece.  Kind of like going to woodcraft or rockler and looking at exotics that are priced individually.  You could base this price off of sq inches or bd ft.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

   The problem quickly becomes where to store and how to access  stuff like this and where do you draw the line at what to keep and what to dispose of? I have half a dozen feed sacks full of sawdust stored for any hippy or NGD, or other customer, with a composting toilet set aside. I recently filled up my display school bus stop with bags of hickory shorts and hickory sawdust for smoker wood customers. I have Eastern Bluebird birdhouses and kits, a dozen or so of my simple crates - usually filled with something else like birdhouse kits or cookies, a couple dozen benches, stacks of assorted slabs, several raised bed planters, 40-50 dozen tomato stakes, fireplace mantels, a huge high end LE walnut I had slabbed and been air drying 3 years this week, etc. Every customer who comes by wants the piece on the bottom of the stack too.

   If I save the 3"X5" pistol grip stock, which is a legitimate market, somebody will come by and want short 1" X 1" walnut and cherry stickers to make chess boards or to make fancy piecework wood art pieces. I already had a customer come by and glom on to a couple of 1" X 1" X 2' cherry stickers I had salvaged. He needed them to repair/rebuild an old sewing thread spindle which was one of his hobbies and his eyes lit up like a kid in a candy store. 

    How many times have you had a wood worker or wood turner come to look at your stock then the next thing you know he is over looking through your mushroom bolts or firewood pile? If they haven't yet - they will. I promise!

    I may just set me up a simple crate (dozen qt fruit jar size) and start tossing pieces in there like Mike mentioned for pistol grips. Size to keep will be determined by what does not fall out between the slats.

    One of these days you guys will turn on the news and see where some hillbilly near Hinton WV was killed in a wooden land slide when his stacks of stored wood cut-offs collapsed and they could not get enough heavy equipment in there in time to dig him out before he smothered. I've already said for years I was worried about getting buried in such a shoe slide in the walk-in clothes closet I share with my wife. Now I have to worry about my own stockpiles.

[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.

[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  . You may want to go by cubic centimeters to make pricing  easier for customers to understand  .  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 

[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!  

[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.



<br.>

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.

[WV Sawmiller]

 

This is a raised planter I made from scrap/low grade walnut with a lot of sapwood and such that am using as a display for the cut up/trimmed out walnut boards. It is about 4' long X 2' wide with 1' high sides and 3' tall legs. I need to get something with taller sides for a dozen or so boards on the left side that are about 3' long or longer. 


This is a box/tray I built for the short stuff. I have more short stuff than it will hold but I see I can take some of the longer boards here and transfer them to the other box and hopefully they will all fit then, especially once I remove the longer boards. I will run a little bit of this through the planer, price accordingly and see which sell the best.

   I see I have enough scrap walnut left to make another planter box or two so I guess that is another project to add to the list.