Cost or making lumber out of trees

Was thinking about taking them down and then having someone with one of those lumber mills come in and cut them up for me.

Question I have is what will this cost me? If I cut down the trees and cut into 6 or 8 ft lengths what can I figure to be charged to have someone cut them into 1" slabs for drying and using as lumber??

Would they want to cut while it is fresh cut; stored for a while; or does not matter??

Thanks in advance

If you're really prepared you can prebuild your bases for air drying lumber. I'd buck the logs to 8'6" and greater lengths not shorter. Some people stack on wood pallets flat ground. I use cinder blocks or similar to get my piles off the ground higher (snow is an issue). 5/8" or greater plywood ripped to 1" strips 4' long can be used as stickers in a pinch.

If stickered properly your 5/4 oak will be down below 15% moisture content in 6 months if not down around 10%. From that you can send it off to a kiln for a week or two to get it down to 8% or whatever you think you need -- you could also bring it in doors at that time for the finally drying -- if your humidity level in the area is down. Expect the kiln to charge you .33 per bdft or more. Some will offer other surfaces like (planing) surfacing 2 sides or making flooring etc..

Good luck. I run woodmizer bandmill whenever I can get the time and wood. Definitely worth while in my eyes.

While I call these yard trees my yard is about 5 ac. These trees are about 400 feet from my house and have never had any fence or anything else nailed to them. I bought this land 25 years ago from a guy that owns over a thousand acres and it is not near the edge of where his property was. More like the middle.

I do have a plan for the wood. Will use it for face frames and doors for kitchen cabinets and dresser/desk. That is why I need it in 1" pieces. I do have a means of ripping to width after it is dried. Looking to end up with 1x6 and 1x3. I also have a plainer to dress the 1" rough stock down to 3/4" finished grade lumber.

I do know that the price you guys gave me is only a guess and I really need a price from a local; but was just trying to get a rough idea of what I am getting into.

I made a desk/bookshelf unit for my son a number of years ago from red oak which had been piled for over a year. That stuff shrank an amazing amount. It's the only time in twenty years of joinery I have had bevel panels come free from the frames on the sides. I had fastened the 31" by 84" top loosely, anticipating some shrinkage. Within six months it had shrunk a full inch to 30" wide! Another section was fastened rigidly to a horizontal member. It split and pulled out of the dowels holding the centre joints together and and I had to tap it back together and re-screw -- three separate times.

My point? Unless you give red oak three years per inch to dry, anticipate a lot of shrinkage. That said, it's a great wood to work, and later projects with dryer wood have been very successful.

Uh, one other thing, possibly my most embarassing moment in woodworking. If you decide to use a drum floor sander to finish a whole lot of shelves and it turns out the street in front of the house provides the best available surface and the extension cord has one of those little circuit breakers on it, DON'T hit the reset on the extension cord before you shut off the sander. You wouldn't believe how fast one of those machines can accelerate down a street in traffic.

This is precisely why I suggested to John that he get his wood quartersawn. If you had, you would NOT have had the expansion/contraction problem. The other choice, for plainsawn, is to know the moisture content (mc) and look at the tables to predict the amount of wood movement and plan your joinery accordingly. There's no reason for any surprises, particularly bad ones. Beyond that, large panels are usually a poor choice. Good time for veneer.

I have been looking into ways of drying this wood a little faster. The war department would never go 3 years for this.

I have been doing the bed rooms in #2 pine. You would never imagine how well construction 2x4's come out when you take the time to work with it.

I will be in the kit. and living room soon so I wanted to plan ahead because of the drying time. I really can not see buying this much oak so it came down to pine or using my own trees. The trees will need to come down in the future any way so I was looking into just using them.

I have read about a set up where you corner off a spot in the shed and use a dehumidifier to speed up the drying. Not sure how well this will work or how much time it will cut off.

Still on the fence about all of this but knew I would get a lot of ideas and complications that I have over looked from you guys. Just want to make sure I know what I am getting into before I start on this.

It turns out a below-ground-level horsestable is a bad place to dry lumber. By Christmas several layers of studs were stuck together with interesting greenish blue and white fungi.

I quarrantined the worst of the moss on an unused hayrack in the middle of a windy field. The rest I moved into the semi-heated stone house where they were needed. Stickered in the sudden heat, they lost moisture quite admirably, helped by a large household fan.

The moss remnants gave up immediately, but the 2X4's which were inclined to warp certainly did so. This was no big deal to me because for studding in a stone house all I needed was one true surface so I'd trim them to length, then straighten the studs on the jointer.

The pine has dried quite a bit, and the trued studs have held their positions. For anything important, though, I'll stick with wood air-dried outside for a year or two, then inside for the rest of the three years per inch. The other rule is to move the wood into the room where it will be used for for three weeks prior to cutting.

I've had reasonable luck in late fall with pine dried in the wind for a summer, but I certainly wouldn't try it with oak.

I need flooring, so in next week I'll start looking for piles of boards left over from cuttings a few years ago. This is where persuasion and even guile enter the craftsman's toolbox.

Good luck with your renovations.

Rod

Good luck.

If you have the time, www.forestryforum.com has some saw related information. If I remember correctly, so does www.woodweb.com
Some helpful links there as well.

MAC

If you plan to build something nice you need to stack it up with spacers and let it dry maybe a year. If you want to build some sun shades for your cows that might not be necessary.

I wonder if you could scan logs with a metal detector?

I've had several thousand board feet sawn with visiting band mills of various sizes. Around here nobody is interested in anything but being paid hourly. Works out to .25-.35/ft.

I'm responsible for a sawyer helper and bringing the logs to the mill. Once the boards are sawn, my job to sticker them for drying.

Yard trees are a major danger for nails. Any blade damage is your cost. Generally a band mill can saw through a nail without damage. Sawing is easier if the logs are fresher, therefore will cost you a little less, but not a lot. Painting the log ends with a sealer, even latex paint, will reduce end checking. I don't generally bother, instead, cutting the logs with extra length.

What often happens with folks in your situation is that they don't plan what they want to do with the lumber and either end up with the wrong thickness or leave it sitting around so long it rots.

I'm on my second building with wood sawn from my trees. This one's a post&beam 2 story, designed to house a solar lumber kiln and lumber storage. I sell a little lumber and would like to sell more.

Downed a dead 36" d. red oak yesterday as I need another 17' 6x10 beam for another project. The top of the tree yielded a full cord of firewood.

If you have any use for the lumber I'd strongly encourage you to give it a try. Just have a plan for the lumber beforehand.

You have experience with both band and circular? Reason I ask is that lately I've had difficulty getting the band guys to come out for only 1-2 days sawing. Never particularly wanted to own a mill as I only want to cut once or twice a yr and there's no way I want to cut for anybody else.

So recently I've been looking around a little at mills. Bumped into a circular, apparently in good condition. Made a lowball offer and the owner's currently sitting on it.

Anyhow, the question I have is to compare cutting speed between the two. Portability is of no interest to me. That is, comparing a decent Woodmizer sized band mill to a Cat powered circular. Kerf I understand and am unconcerned with, it's the speed I have no idea about. You say band is significantly slower, which of course depends on the mills, but in general?

Either way, if the owner gets interested in my offer I'll be looking at learning to use a circular. Fortunately I'm good friends with the old farmer who set it up in its present location. He was horrified that I'd offered less than $4500. Guy he set it up for died and the son has zero interest, other than financial.

If you look on Google for circular saw mills or 3pt hitch saw mills, you should find a continental listing of portable mills for sale. This should give you a good idea about prices. The machine you're looking at sounds pretty attractive to me.

I'd spring for that in a flash for a good band mill, but no 2 weeks lost. That's why I was asking about sawing time. Unlikely I'd run more than a few thousand bd ft/yr. The seller also tells me that it's an insurance problem, but I don't understand that.

That's part of the situation. The rest is the land. The owner wants to sell for subdivision and the mill's gotta go. Far as I can see there's little interest in circular mills here. Even the old farmer who set it up has a circular mill, but wants a band mill.

The guy who told me about the mill, friend of the owner, offered me an HD 11G. $400! It might have made it up my driveway before its final drive quit. Engine/hydraulics were great and would have made a nice power plant or even vehicle lift once you got it into position.

Here's a site devoted to selling used saw mills of all types:>Link

By the way - ever heard of Asian longhorn beetle ? It"s east of us, and has a strong appetite for maple.