Making it through another year '21-'23

[Ljohnsaw]

That's a lot of logs!

[Old Greenhorn]

Yeah,, there is some. There is more that don't really jump out. For instance if you stop the video at exactly 2:36 you will see a second shelf cut in the rock where there are some big logs (30"+). This was a bluestone quarry about 125 years ago and that's why the big rock face and cliff where they took out stone that wound up in NYC sidewalks.

 There's more logs coming in all the time and we are a little packed up. That spot 'across the road' near the end should be fairly empty but is nearly full up now. A bunch of that junk will get burned, but there is a log truck just outside the video on the road that needs unloading yet. I hope we don't get too much weather tonight so I can make some sawdust tomorrow.

[YellowHammer]

Nice video and walk around.  Thanks for doing it.  

[Old Greenhorn]

Nice video and walk around.  Thanks for doing it.  

Kind of funny, as you were likely typing your reply here I was watching your driveway grading video which, as always was very nicely done. I wish I could edit some of this stuff. I tried adding subtitles on youtube and they show up there, but not when you watch it here embedded in the thread. I should have turned the camera 90° when I shot it, but once I realized that I was too far into it.
 The yard is a bit of a mess now, with logs coming in, not enough time to do firewood, trying to get the excavating & septic jobs done before the heavy weather closes in, etc. Things are tending to get dumped and off to the next emergency job. We need to find a spot by that steel building to move the edger to, but with the clutter we may be setting it 1/4 mile to the east (out the rear of that building) where it's flat and clear, then in the spring clean up and make a space for it. Also hoping to pour a floor in that building this winter. The list is long and the projects many and large. The shop still needs to be closed in up top.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

   You mention the edger but who runs it? I got the impression you were pretty much a one man show. My thoughts on edgers is you pretty much need a second operator to run them. While the mill operator runs the primary machine the edger operator trims the flitches and maybe even a cut off saw. 

   With those of us who do operate alone I have not seen the great value of an edger. I can either run the sawmill or the edger. I've seen the little portable edger WM makes and it looks like a handy little machine if you have the second operator to run it. IMHO edgers are much more useful to a stationary set up.

[samandothers]

Nice walk through!  Looks like you may have enough work there to keep ya outta trouble for a bit.

[Andries]

Thank you Tom.
My woodstove is perking along and I'm watching your vid because we're at -41 C this morning. 
Seeing where and how you're working is interesting, and always gives rise to new ideas.

[YellowHammer]

Filmora is a free decent editing program, and if you have a Mac, it has a good one built in also.  I use Final Cut Pro for Mac.  

Thanks for watching the videos.  I know some people make a killing on videos. I don't.  I think I'm making $0.09 dollars per hour but I'm kind of doing it to help other folks by providing tips and useful information and also as a type of home movie that my kids can watch.  It gives me something to do when it's cold outside, say near freezing such as 50F.   :D

-40 temps is completely out of my comfort zone.  Wow.  It's 70 here.   

[Old Greenhorn]

Tom,

  You mention the edger but who runs it? I got the impression you were pretty much a one man show. My thoughts on edgers is you pretty much need a second operator to run them. While the mill operator runs the primary machine the edger operator trims the flitches and maybe even a cut off saw.

  With those of us who do operate alone I have not seen the great value of an edger. I can either run the sawmill or the edger. I've seen the little portable edger WM makes and it looks like a handy little machine if you have the second operator to run it. IMHO edgers are much more useful to a stationary set up.

Howard, the formal setup for this edger is a work in progress, we really don't know just yet. We have had it up by the shop to resize old lumber that has been dried and sitting for a 'while' to use on the shop build. Also I send up a load of unedged material from time to time they can size into board widths they need. The was a lot of 4/4 material used for the roof decking and we will need a lot more for B&B siding. Likely a lot of the 10" stuff will be cut into 2 4" battens (and a sticker). I am mostly alone when milling, but no way can anyone run that edger alone without a green chain off loading it.
 Yes, the machine needs at least two people. We pull the flitches off where the machine sits now and pile them right in front of the OWB. So the machine is by the shop to make widths 'on demand' during the build process. But when the shop is done, that will change and we are 'discussing' the location and setup all the time. I do know that, ideally if I could be taking 4/4 jacket boards off the mill with 2 lives edges and staging them on their own stack, then edging to size as a 'bunch' would be a LOT faster than setting them back up on the mill and edging each side. SO that is how I'd like to do it. Throw those boards in a pile and then maybe once a week get a helper and edge them up to size. Also, if we get an order for a width we don't have we can quickly make up a mess of it from wider boards, faster than on the mill by far.
 Ironically, today we pulled the edger in the shop and went over it. Changed oil and filters, pulled a belt to size it for a replacement and I got underneath and removed the bronze slip shoe that controls the floating blade location. It is badly worn and the board widths have been drifting a bit. I made a working drawing of it for a machine shop to make us up a few next week. After lunch we leveled up the machine and went through and reset all the roller heights. Something we have wanted to fix for a while. Today was the day. So when we get all the parts in we should have a much better running machine.
 Robert I do have to write off a bad weather day and try to find something to edit videos with then learn how to use it. I run a PC and should be able to find something free to work on it, just to have a record. I use your videos to show others things I am trying to explain because they are clear and move pretty quickly. (I am still struggling to get my feed rates up near yours, I did better today.) Today it never reached 35° here with a snotty drizzle all day, but we did mill in the afternoon for an hour or so just to clear the one log I had left on the deck and finish off the work day. We needed some slabs to fill the OWB anyway. At least I wasn't cold all day, but I didn't sweat much either. -40C and -40F are the same temperatures and both are too cold to do anything in. Below 20°F I start to get uncomfortable in my feet and would rather avoid that. above 20 isn't so bad at all and even close to perfect if there is sunshine. But we get what we get.

[trimguy]

I enjoyed it, thanks.

[Old Greenhorn]

I neglected to mention in the previous post that I am glad some watched it and enjoyed it. I like watching how other folks work, set things up, and the various situations they have to deal with as well as how they solve issues or work with them. I have learned a lot from watching those type videos. Nothing special, just a tour to see how things lay out. I'd like to see some from other folks, but I couldn't very well ask if I didn't post something myself. Obviously our setup needs a bunch of 'process flow management' and we will work on that as an ongoing project. Right now we have the shop to finish and orders to complete so I just keep plugging with what we've got.

[WDH]

Tom,

  You mention the edger but who runs it? I got the impression you were pretty much a one man show. My thoughts on edgers is you pretty much need a second operator to run them. While the mill operator runs the primary machine the edger operator trims the flitches and maybe even a cut off saw.

  With those of us who do operate alone I have not seen the great value of an edger. I can either run the sawmill or the edger. I've seen the little portable edger WM makes and it looks like a handy little machine if you have the second operator to run it. IMHO edgers are much more useful to a stationary set up.

I operate alone 99% of the time and my edger is a huge time saver.  I can edge much faster, more efficiently, and with a fraction of the physical effort versus handling those flitches on the mill having to handle and turn them ad finitum.  However, I am set up permanent, am never mobile, and never custom saw the junk that people want me to saw for them.  We all have a different business plan and strategy.  I sell fully kiln dried and planed furniture grade hardwood and pine lumber.  I have climate controlled kiln dried wood storage. 

[chet]

That sure is a fancy way to say you don't like to flip boards. :D

[WDH]

Exactly, I am too old for that anymore.  Flippin' edger boards on the sawmill is a younger man's game .

As of yesterday, I now consider myself old.

[Old Greenhorn]

Exactly, I am too old for that anymore.  Flippin' edger boards on the sawmill is a younger man's game .

As of yesterday, I now consider myself old.

OH, is that where the 'official old marker' is? 68? Sorry forgot to wish you the best on your birthday, I hope you had a super one. I will catch up with you in a year and a half, but by then you will probably be ahead of me again. :D
Yes, flipping boards gets old fast, especially alone and especially 8/4 x 16'. I think milling for yourself gives you one set of priorities, portable milling a client's logs gives you another set, and milling to order (stationary) gives you a third set of priorities. They are all similar, but very different.
 For me, it's mill to order, and all but one order so far has been a single specific size (for each order). So anything outside the 'target size' is of little value to me at that time and becomes 'overhead'. In other words, if I am milling up 2x8x14' as my target and I take some 4/4 jacket boards off getting down to my cant size, those 4/4 boards have to be handled and they either have 1 or 2 live edges. I usually throw these on the side for later (end of the day or end of the week or end of the order) but then they have to be loaded back up and flipped and pulled off as I hit various 2" increments (12,10,8,6,4) and then stacked for use on 'something' later. The time to re-load and stack adds up quick and can be abusive on the body. If on the other hand, these boards go into a slightly more remote pile queued up at the edger, then when somebody comes by, two of us can edge a large stack in just a few minutes. The edger allows me to take off some 8/4 jacket boards that can become 2x4's later on. Right now, those go in the slab pile for BTU's. We are not yet milling for stock, not until we build some covered drying facilities. Running a 12' board through the edger takes about 20 seconds and they go one after the other (check out Yellowhammers edger video, makes me drool every time and that is our model to work toward). This 'stack and edge it later' may seem like a compromise solution, but in our case it actually fits in perfect because we are always looking for well organized, clearly defined, productive, short jobs for the hourly guys to do at the end of a work day to fill in an hour or so to work a full day. Lately it's been firewood, You saw in the video everything remains setup and two guys or even one can go down and be filling a truck in a few minutes. They'll do a cord in about 30-40 minutes. This edging 'task' would serve as another one of those productive quick jobs.
 The portable game has a different set of goals and usually some sort of help which is a significant difference. 2 people throwing boards back up for edging and flipping is about 5x faster than one person and you can get through them much quicker for sure. The client mostly wants to get the most wood out that they can and usually will happily take those 4/4 boards that hadn't been planned on as 'extras'.
 As an example of this, when I first started running this mill around August and was still feeling my way while also trying to madly keep up with feeding 4 guys building on the shop above my head, I took the jacket boards and made a pile and kept adding to it, not wasting any time but to make the target sizes. Within a week I had a huge pile (2 trips with the fork lift as least). But when they got a little time on a Sunday afternoon they ran these up the hill to the edger and 2 guys ran all that lumber through in less than 15 minutes and wound up with a very nice pack of lumber, which promptly went into siding and roof decking. The scrap went directly into the OWB. Yes, we could set it up for a single guy operation and it will be a little slower as WDH does, but still, the overall productive efficiency is huge even though it is spread out over a longer time period. Also consider that we sometimes split boards and get two boards on a single pass because you have two blades working at the same time. SO we can get an 10" board and a 4" batten to go with it on a board that is wide enough and already has one finished edge.
 This whole thing is very similar to the original "I'm gonna get me a sawmill and make lots of money with it" issue. You get the mill then realize you have a material handling issue, not a sawmill issue. Well the edger is kind of the same, you get it for the obvious benefits then realize you are back to a material handling issue, but of a different sort. Now you need more space in the right place, roller tables, transfer systems, storage, etc. Once you figure that out productivity can really soar. I do like the way Southside has his edger right downstream from the mill and I think this is what I would like to do. Yellowhammer has his in a separate area, but he edges just before sale, not right after milling and he has the space for that. We need to find what works best for us, then create the space and facility to do that.
 Sorry, that was a long answer, but I was thinking it through for myself as I was writing. The edger is a game changer for stationary work, but I can't see the value for portable work unless you are setting up at a long running site such as when Lynn was working in that sand pit. Then maybe hauling in another machine would be worth it.
 If you go back through that video to the section where I am near the head of the mill and you look toward the lumber that is stacked and stickered behind it, you can see a very large log pile. I'd like to get that out of there and put the edger there, a little father down and have roller tables to move the product on down, handling it a lot like Yellowhammer does. It's a never ending process.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

   Good analogy and I can see in your case throwing the off size/non-target flitches to the side and letting the helpers come edge them later makes good sense for time management and economics. For mobile sawyers or for people like me with no edger it is generally faster and easier to edge them at the time I cut them to reduce the amount of handling.

   I was thinking for those of us who own the logs that a log is kind of like a side of beef for a butcher. He can cut the beef into a mix of steaks, stew, roast and burger with assorted prices to maximize the monetary return or he can just grind it all up into burger for simplicity but which sells for less. If we have the storage capacity we can saw a log into multiple cuts that sell for more or just cut them into framing and 4/4 sheeting. The problem I have is storage restricts the number of cuts I can make and keep available so I have to cut the common items that will sell.

   The same could be true with the butcher. Steaks and roasts might sell for more but if he can't sell them he may have to grind them into burger to accommodate his local market.

   If I have an order I try to maximize the return of that size and anything that won't match the order I try to cut into stock sizes I can use or sell. That sounds like what you are doing too.

[Old Greenhorn]

Yeah, that's just about exactly it. Glad you brought the food issue in, makes it official. ;D


 About 18 years ago Bill got his first mill, an LT40 (which I thought was a beast at the time) and he milled up tons of lumber, mostly 8/4 dimensional full size, but also some beams and a fir amount of 4/4. By that time he had big piles of logs to 'reduce'. Well over the years he sold some here and there but it was not undercover and you know what the weather did to it. My goal now is to not go down that road again and slow him down and put all the pieces in place for anything we produce now so it will last a long time if needed before sale for use. I am trying to create an infrastructure for him that can continue after I can no longer operate it and not suffer when not attended. The new LT50 is a whizz-banger, adding the edger is super. Now we just need to put it all together. I am hoping for 4 drying sheds total to handle different basic sizes or species. Now that he owns the 60 acres across the road from the mill, we have a little working room. We are still "discussing" the locations of these sheds and have yet to agree. I want to build them on skid rails so they can be dragged around as things may change..


 Add into this that I am old and feeble and won't be around forever. Right now I am limited by ability as to how many hours I can work in a row alone. SO my goal is to get this so that somebody else can walk in and take over and just follow the process after I am gone. For instance, yesterday was an 'easy day' with poor weather, we did needed repairs and maintenance and parts ordering in the morning, a relaxing lunch out, then some milling in the afternoon and yes, I got home after dark. Today I am slow starting once again. It does wear me out trying to keep up with guys that are 1/2 to 1/3 of my age, even doing simple work.


 So, as with everyone else, there are other things at play that are critical to how we set this up. We all have our little proclivities now don't we?

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

 The other issue is are you trying to be a sawmill or a lumberyard?

 My definition is a sawmill pretty much custom saws lumber for people from the mill owner's or the customer's logs. You can pretty much get anything you want from a sawmill but you will normally have to place the order then wait for the logs to be obtained and/or sawed to match your order.

 I think of a lumberyard as something like Lowes, 84 lumber or HD where they have a large stock of assorted, mostly common use, lumber and related wood products.

 Then there are specialty lumberyards like Yellowhammer owns and runs where you can find hard to find specialty items for master woodworkers that the normal lumberyards cannot obtain or do not have enough of a market to stock. I assume in some cases a lumberyard will special order from the specialty lumberyards for those hard to find items. In this case the customer will have wait a while just like he would from a sawmill operation.

 The problem with a sawmill, as defined above, is during the normal course of custom sawing you also generate some "Side lumber" that you either ignore and it just goes in the scrap pile or is salvaged and must be processed and marketed somehow. If you are custom sawing a customer's log like sawyers like me do we just ask the customer what he wants made from it and saw it accordingly. As a sawyer it is hard to see potential useable lumber go in the scrap pile but the customer's directions, time and market conditions sometimes force us to do just that.

  Under ideal conditions we sawyers have a place to store the side lumber and a market for it. This side lumber can make a big difference in our profit and loss for the year and this sounds like what you are advising Bill about setting up. I hope he listens and it works out well for all of you.

[Andries]

. . .  SO my goal is to get this so that somebody else can walk-in and just take over . . . 

Your words reminded me of a Greek proverb; "A society grows great when old men plant oak trees whose shade they know they will never enjoy." 
You are a good man OGH, and part of the larger Forum population that is planting oak trees.

[YellowHammer]

The issue of low grade wood is a real problem for us, so we try to cope and adapt.  For example, I only buy veneer grade logs, generally, so I will have a large percentage of FAS and better, and very little common lumber from them.  Unfortunately, other than a few species, we don't sell common grade wood, so we cut the clear areas from each board, one board at a time, by the thousand, to sell.  We burn the knots.  We process Common at 67% usable into Premium at 100% usable, only shorter or narrower.  

Or I will mill up a log and target different cuts such as live edge slabs, 8/4, or 4/4 and even vertical grain from the same log, trying to target marketable cuts.  For example, a knotty face will end up as an 8/4 live edge slab with knots, whereas a clean face on the same log will be cut as a FAS and better, at 4/4.  

Live edge requires no edging, so that's a plus.  4/4 almost always requires a little edge tune up, but I wait until the board is dry before I work it, generally.  

I edge a lot by myself, and it's certainly a two person job.  However, I have the outfeed table dropped about 10 inches so I can feed a couple of layers 4/4 off a pallet and let them stack up on the outfeed table, so I don't have to stop for every board.  So I feed in  8 or 10 boards, then go to the outfeed and stack them.

Unfortunately, even some of the high grade kiln dried lumber I purchase needs edging because it's crooked or has sapwood, and I need to bring it up to our specs.  That's where a straight cutting double bladed edger kills it.  A 1,000 bdft pallet of kiln dried FAS come off the semi truck, all slightly crooked or bark on some edges, (because NHLA allows 10% wane), and after a quick pass through the edger or SLR, 850 bdft of 100% clear straight Hobby Hardwood boards are ready to sell.  Since I currently have about 38 species and cuts, I mill the specialty stuff myself (sassafras, quartersawn sycamore, ambrosia maple, butternut, elder, etc) and purchase large amounts of vanilla wood such red oak, white oak, poplar, etc.  The problem with purchased lumber is it isn't generally very wide, so I have to make that myself.  For example, on poplar, I buy lots of FAS but I still have to saw up and spike that with wide poplar, over 12 inches.  So even when I'm buying boards for a a species, I still have to saw some portion of it to augment the selection.  I think the only species I don't saw myself that we sell are the exotics and white pine.  

Even with me doing that, I still have two maybe three delivery trucks of various sizes of lumber come every week, plus logs.  So an edger that runs day after day is essential for us to keep our grade and quality as high as possible, and not waste time.      

[WDH]

Add into this that I am old and feeble and won't be around forever.

In a year and a half it will be official  :D.

[Old Greenhorn]

Wow, I wish could bookmark that single post! There is a LOT of valuable information there for sure. Thank You Robert for the 'overview' of of big picture. We are a LONG ways from this, but it gives me a goal (which we are never likely to meet). We are not a lumber yard BUT there is value added in that. I think of us as a 'saw to order' outfit that also saws to stock setup (with the sideboards). I'd like to take whatever is not on the 'target list; and put them on the side for an obvious sale in a few weeks, This means 'storage'  and that requires racks. We'd also like to cut some hardwood slabs and get them drying. There are Still some usages around here usages for slabs for picnic tables and such with ritelegs. There is also the higher end market which is not gone yet  and I didn't mention that we have a slab-mizer to go in that steel building. This is planned for winter work (to keep me "busy").


So Robert's method is similar to ours, but we will remain at a much lower quality level that he and Martha carry forth. Robert, do you just have the one edger, or is there another one near the mill you do flitches with? Dang but I wish I could spend a couple of days following you around. That is a picture book operation you have there.

[Old Greenhorn]

Add into this that I am old and feeble and won't be around forever.

In a year and a half it will be official  :D.

Yeah, I am starting to realize that I am 'old'. I stopped in at a local watering hole because I saw my 'crew' was having lunch there on my way back for town today. I was just going to have 'a beer with them'. We did, they left and I got into  a conversation with another couple of uys talking about local shooting, then it turned to landowners, logging, old backwoods patties, hiking the hills and the next thing you know I am nearly late for dinner.
Apparently I am now one o the 'local geezers'. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[Nebraska]

"Local old geezer"....I think it's a privilege well earned. 
Your operation will be much better set up and running  a year from now. I will bet on that... (I realize it's not your own but I think you have a pretty big input)
Your personal ones will be there as well.


Robert started with an LT15 look what that morphed into.

Does the slab wood you generate with the big mill all get consumed by the boiler? I am burning a significant amount of my sawmill waste  through my wood furnace mostly evenings or weekends when I am home. I ended up with about 3 cord  in totes.
It's not as good as my split firewood but even ERC slabs have heat in them. I looked at those piles of pine logs in the video and wondered if  you made excess slab waste. Enjoyed what I watched btw.

[Old Greenhorn]

Yeah, all the slab wood gets consumed by the OWB as fast as we can make it nearly. That's a big OWB we top feed with the forks or a grapple which heats the shop and the house about 2-300' apart, plus the pool in the spring/summer. I would say it takes two overloaded fork full's or three grapple loads to fil it. Bill has aa air B&B or two trailer type camps for the city folks and occasionally we split up up slab wood and cut it short for them to have for campfires, but that takes just a few minutes for a short truck load. The rest is just dumped in the OWB as needed. Yesterday we dumped a 5' bucket load of chunks and garbage wood and bark in it, then an hour later filled it with fresh off the mill slab wood which is about a 10-12 hour load.  The furnace has a 5' by 4' top hatch with hydraulic cylinders to open the top. To answer your question, we never have 'excess' slab wood, it all gets burned. That boiler runs 365 days.


Yes, Robert has what I consider to be, a top notch, state of the art, first class setup. We won't ever match that, but he sets a fine example to shoot for. I'd love to visit some time and work there for a couple of days. That kind of learning has a value you can't put a dollar sign on.


 Bill and I have an interesting relationship, with him being half my age and me working for him. He has been trying to bring me into the fold for several years now. I thought he just wanted help from a guy that could take care of himself. Turns out I was wrong. We don't talk about it much, but I am pretty sure he thinks I am a smart guy (go figger) who can help him move ahead and make decisions he has had trouble making in the past. He seems to trust me. I don't know why. I like, respect, and trust him because he has gotten everything he has the hard way. WORK and nothing but work and learning the hard way. I have watched him for 20 years building everything he has from nothing and I am more than happy to help  him in anyway I can. He has earned that. He doesn't lie, finagle, or wiggle through things, he's a straight shooter. How can I not respect that? Mistakes? Sure, he has made a ton of them and will make a lot more and will keep driving. So yeah, I want to see this 'kid' succeed. He should, he's earned it. He (I believe) wants me around as an advisor and someone to figure things out with and argue things through to make a decision. I don't know all the answers to what he needs or where he should take things and I never suggest 'you NEED to do this', but he does make adjustments based on what I am seeing and sometimes those are very contrary to his original plan. I am just trying to help and as everyone here knows, any of us can be just as wrong as we might be right.


Finally as to the 'old geezer' thing. I guess that never occurred to me in specific terms. I realized when I was talking to those guys at the bar tonight I was speaking of things that happened the year they were born. History of places they too had spent their childhood in, but a decade before they walked those woods for the first time. Like it or not, I feel old now and 'old geezer' fits, but I can't think of myself like I did about those old folks I sat and drank coffee with when I was in my 20's and trying to learn. Those guys knew the woods and they may have been old, but they were smart and cold do anything even though a lot of them never graduated high school. For me, they were the top of the pile in the knowledge train in all things that mattered. I can't hit that mark, for sure. In my way of tinking, I never will, but it's a little nice to be thought of that way, even if it's misplaced.