Wanting to sell lumber

[Curlycherry1]

As a woodworker a bulk sawn log is useless to me. I want specific wood for specific projects and I rarely if ever buy #1 grade lumber or lower. So when I see a pile of mixed wood I skip it. I will sort through an entire lift of R2F FAS cherry just to get the boards I need.

The best way to make money is to find a niche and fill it. I met a guy in IL that logs with horses, mills the wood on a swing mill (Peterson) dries it himself and then mills the wood into flooring. And then he installs the floor and finishes it. His value added to his lumber is astronomical and he is booked years in advance. He specializes in quarter sawing with his mill. He said there is zero value in flat sawn lumber because everybody with a bandsaw mill or swing mill is cranking it out by the gazillion board feet per year.

[aojgnar]

at the risk of sounding stupid on this forum; what other types of lumber are there? is it not all graded? #1 being best. what is better? im confused on how im being told to saw. plain and quarter. thats what i know. how does "grade sawing" fit into these? at what point on a face of a log do you decide that it isnt the best side to be sawing on? for one: whats done is done. you cant unsaw what has been sawed. two: you cant change the grain pattern. what you see is what you get.

what is most desirable? and how should i cut to get that?

Originally Posted by Curlycherry1

So when I see a pile of mixed wood I skip it. I will sort through an entire lift of R2F FAS cherry just to get the boards I need.

by "mixed wood" you mean what?

[Curlycherry1]

Originally Posted by aojgnar

at the risk of sounding stupid on this forum; what other types of lumber are there? is it not all graded? #1 being best. what is better? im confused on how im being told to saw. plain and quarter. thats what i know. how does "grade sawing" fit into these? at what point on a face of a log do you decide that it isnt the best side to be sawing on? for one: whats done is done. you cant unsaw what has been sawed. two: you cant change the grain pattern. what you see is what you get.

what is most desirable? and how should i cut to get that?

by "mixed wood" you mean what?

You should start by getting a copy of the NHLA (National Hardwood Lumber Assosiciation) lumber grading guide and also possibly signing up for one of their classes. #1 Grade lumber is not the best and is actually one of the middle grades. #1 Has knots and can have certain parts of a board clear of knots and nothing more. FAS is "first and seconds" and if often clear. R2F refers to black cherry where Red 2 Face and then a number ratio of something like 90/20 means that one side will be 90% red/10 percent sapwood and the opposite wide will be 80% red/20% sapwood. Maple and walnut all have different heartwood/sapwood grades and even length requirements. Example would be that walnut FAS boards can be much shorter (6' I think) than maple or cherry or oak.

As for sawing the logs lots of mill operators "read" the log before they start sawing. They will often get the saw on the sled and turn it several times getting a good look at every face before they start to do any cutting. One mill I buy from in PA will spend over a minute rotating a log over and over to make sure they know exactly where to start cutting. They never just hack into a log. Once they start cutting they constantly review what they find and adjust where they make their boards.

And then once you get the log sawn up now you will want to be watchful for how it is dried. Stick wood out in the sun and if it dries too fast it will warp, cup, twist and bend and worst of all case harden. That is where the outside gets very dry and the inside is still wet. When a cabinet maker cuts into a board that is case hardened is warps and none of his cuts come out straight. And if that is not enough to worry about too fast drying will cause the surface of the wood to crack all to heck and the board is useless. Oh, and if the wrong stickers are used to separate the boards you can get "sticker bleed" where mold gets into the boards leaving a shadow in them that never planes away.

I don't mean to scare you but there are a ton, and I do mean a ton of people out there that get a mill and they start sawing and they expect cabinet makers like me to buy their lumber. When we get snooty and turn them down they get cranky for us being so demanding. It is not that we are demanding but there is a lot that can go wrong and a lot of time (money) can be wasted by buying inferior lumber.

A great place to find a ton of information is www.woodweb.com.

And if you want to see what the best of the best can do with lumber, and get the absolute most money per log, check out Horizon Lumber (http://www.horizonevolutions.com/). Horizon sells millions of board feet of lumber to the US and especially to Europe and the far east. They get the absolute most out of every stick they cut. Take a look at their online store for an idea of what really, really nice lumber looks like.

[Coalsmoke]

Very well said Curly.

[Coalsmoke]

Originally Posted by aojgnar

at the risk of sounding stupid on this forum; what other types of lumber are there? is it not all graded? #1 being best. what is better? im confused on how im being told to saw. plain and quarter. thats what i know. how does "grade sawing" fit into these? at what point on a face of a log do you decide that it isnt the best side to be sawing on? for one: whats done is done. you cant unsaw what has been sawed. two: you cant change the grain pattern. what you see is what you get.

what is most desirable? and how should i cut to get that?



by "mixed wood" you mean what?

Don't worry about stupid questions. Anyone who gets upset because a member is asking basic questions needs to find a different forum. There's a lot of good knowledge here.

May I make a suggestion? Start with smaller dimensional building products. They are more forgiving to cut, will work better with your mill, and cost less when you mess up, which will happen. In time, the technical knowledge will come. I generally spend roughly 10 hours a week reading everything I can find in this industry, and have been doing so for 8 or more years. What I'm trying to say is the technical knowledge, history, terminology, etc etc will take a while. For the mean time, do some asking around to local builders, farmers, etc and see what type of product they'd want to see. That will at least give you a place to start, and you can build your part time venture from there.

[discounthunter]

im also a woodworker, so i by specific pieces. ill pick through every stick at a box store to find one that has the charactoristics i need for a project. i have ordered from people all across the country to get specific species i cant get locally most are also woodworkers that have extra.

that being said ,youve gotten some good info to ponder on so far ,let me add this check out your local hardware stores ,cabinet shops ,ect. ask about local woodworkers,get names make phone calls, you may be able to fill the nitch for specific cuts of lumber or species not available in box stores.

good luck.

[Curlycherry1]

There is a local guy near me here in the Twin Cities (logs to lumber) that gets urban trees and trees from land clearing for free or just a few pennies. He VERY carfeully cuts them up and even more carefully dries the lumber to perfection. Because of this he has huge wide boards that are nearly clear and or perfectly clear. His lumber is really nice and so he gets a nice price for all of it too. He also has a lot of bookmatched sets which add very good value to the boards with just a little bit of work.

The time he puts into it he gets out of it in the form of higher prices.

http://www.logs-to-lumber.com/clickcarts/

[aojgnar]

this is all excellent info. thanx to all for the links. after talking to the owner he and i agree that we are on the right track for what we want.

i appreciate the understanding toward me, the noob.

thanx

[Curlycherry1]

Originally Posted by aojgnar

this is all excellent info. thanx to all for the links. after talking to the owner he and i agree that we are on the right track for what we want.
i appreciate the understanding toward me, the noob.
thanx

You have not seen our rates yet so don't be so glad to thank us. All us woodworkers will be looking for discounts on what you produce. I can also help you ship by truck all over the US as long as you can load it or drop it off at a trucking terminal. That really opens up your markets for specialty woods.

[Brmorgan]

Back in the spring I scanned my lumber grading training materials into PDF and posted them here on AS. The thread is HERE and the direct link to the PDF is HERE. It's more geared towards softwood structural lumber, but there is still a ton of information concerning grading technique, defects & lumber characteristics, species identification, etc. I can't scan the actual NLGA rule book since it's copyrighted, but they can be had for a nominal fee straight from NLGA. As previously stated though, if you're dealing with hardwoods mostly, you'll likely want to get NHLA materials since hardwood grading is a fair bit different, because shop/cabinet grades are based mostly on appearance rather than structural integrity.

Curlycherry had some good points a few posts back too. Most notably that it's important to "read" a log before you even touch steel to it. This is a skill that must be acquired through a lot of experience and trial-and-error. Training will go a long way, but every log is unique and potentially full of surprises. Once you learn what to expect from the wood grain by looking at the outside characteristics of the log, it's much easier to get the highest yield at higher grades. Back in August I posted THIS THREAD with many pictures of a log I milled various different dimensions out of, with descriptions of how/why I made the cuts I did. I should note that I'm by no means an expert sawyer compared to many others here; rather I'm a trained lumber graderman with some sawing experience on the side. I like to take a lot of pictures of the logs I do even if I don't share them here - it helps me remember what did and didn't work well, and why. I try to do it with every log - since I don't do that many it isn't a big inconvenience, but it wouldn't make much sense for someone trying to seriously produce to photograph everything. Photo and video are the next best thing to first-hand experience though and can teach a lot. Like a sports team studying replays of their last game I guess.

All "grade sawing" or "sawing to grade" means is that you are processing the log with the objective of achieving the highest grade possible in all pieces you cut, which may not necessarily allow the highest board footage yield. In a structural dimension sawmill, logs are just cut to get the highest yield at the fastest speed, since in the long run it doesn't matter that much whether a 2X4 stud is flatsawn, riftsawn, or quartersawn (other than differences in warping tendency). Finishing work requires much more attention to the wood grain, not just for aesthetic reasons but also (and possibly more importantly) for stability and integrity, so more time is taken to make sure that each board is cut in the best possible way.

One might assume that (in hardwoods at least) quartersawing would achieve the best grade result. This would likely be true with a good, straight, clear log. But say the log has a lot of small knots, such that it won't really produce clear lumber anywhere, but the knots aren't large enough to make the log a writeoff. If you were to quartersaw the log, you would end up with a lot of "spike knots" in the lumber since the boards are being cut radially from center to edge:



I've admittedly exaggerated things slightly in that drawing, but you can see that a spike knot can occupy the vast majority of the cross section of a quartersawn board, whereas a knot of the same size would occupy just a fraction of the cross section of a flatsawn board, and result in a "round knot" defect. This is why most structural lumber mills actually prefer to flatsaw the lumber if possible - it's just that it isn't worth it for them to slow down and continually rotate and scan logs. For example, in Stud grade a knot can occupy half the cross section of a board (slightly more if it's away from the edges). It takes a round knot of 1-3/4" diameter to occupy that much in a 2X4 (nominal 3-1/2" wide) - HOWEVER it only takes a 3/4" diameter spike knot to do the same damage since the boards are only 1-1/2" thick. But I digress, these concepts are discussed in the grading materials I linked to above.

[Brmorgan]

Coalsmoke: I was down in Langley Monday afternoon and yesterday morning, came home last night. I totally forgot that you lived down that way - I'd have tried to look you up. I was up to Maple Ridge to see Lawrence (member "petesoldsaw" since I got him to pick up an old antique McCulloch off Craigslist for me. This is everything that followed me home from that road trip:



Still not sure how I managed to get all that along with my 371 in the trunk of my car...

[Coalsmoke]

Aww shoot, it would have been great to meet you, and I could have given you a rundown on the bandmill if you wanted. I bet my parents would like to talk to you a bit too, they're planning on moving up to your area soon. You got all that in your car's trunk, maybe its time for a truck

[johncinco]

I'd just like to know....







When are you breaking up with your girlfriend?

That is a NICE swingmill. You can grade saw with it. You will have to come up with some stands/bunks to be able to turn the logs and hold them in place. The info you have been given is right on, learn what faces and cuts people want, and you will have much better chance of selling it. If your just making dimensional lumber, you are way ahead with that petersen. if you want to cut for grade and sales, well you have a nice way to do it anyway. You are going to have more waste, but for quality wood you will be hally to live with it.

[Kicker_92]

Nice score Brad!

There's probably enough of us in the lower mainland area to hold a get together at some point. Would be nice to make some connections and swap local contacts. There's enough demand around here to keep everyone busy.

[Backwoods]

Finding someone that will buy all of the wood that you produce no matter the quality is very rare, yet something we all would like to have.
I have an old dairy barn full of hardwoods that I have milled up. The customers that trickle in are looking for something specific, sometimes they find what they are looking for and other times they do not.
I also have a good assortment of hardwood logs in my log deck that I can mill to there specs, then they send out to be kiln dried. This is a much larger portion of my sales. However, what works the best for me is to never own the log or the lumber and strictly custom saw the customers logs to there specs at there place. This applies to both hardwoods and softwoods.
Each area of the country is different so what works for me may not work for you, that is why searching out the markets in you area will be the most productive way of moving you product. If all else fails and you need to move a stack of low grade lumber advertize on Craig’s list and keep the price low.