I don’t think I’m too far from you and might be interested in purchasing the logs or the uncut few standing trees you have. PM me tomorrow and let’s see how far away we are from each other.
Black Walnut Logs
- Thread starter Rayman455
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Madmantrapper
ArboristSite Lurker
Try Crown Hardwood, I don't know if they service your area.
Madman, where are you located? I'm in Frederick. I was a 4th generation licensed MD tree expert, now retired. The problem we had with timber, being a residential tree service. The mills we dealt with wanted tractor trailer loads, or at least knuckle boom loads. This question comes up a lot. I stepped on a bunch of toes once saying BW is worth about the same as firewood. One of the guys was a commercial Sawyer, the OP posted pics and dimensions of his tree. The sawyer did all the math, came up with the board feet, and said if the tree was in his area, he'd give $300 for it. I get $300 a cord for firewood. We did have buyers/graders come to our yard and grade Oak for us. But, they still wanted big loads. Our yard was only 5 acres, and we just didn't have the room for big loads. Another thing working against the OP is he's not in the business. Buyers will take advantage. I talked my Dad into letting me take a beautiful load of White Oak to the mill in our area that was known to give the best prices. The grader looked at one 16' log and said it had a big cat face on it, he would only give us ditch planking for it. I let it go. By the time they came out with my check, a guy cut 4' off the 16' log, and put the 12' log in the veneer pile. They did give the best prices if you delivered. I've seen a lot of logging going on now, maybe the market is up. Maybe the OP will get lucky, but I've always found it hard to move one or two logs. Here's what I do with BW. This tree was going to a friend that's a custom stock maker. I'm sorry, but I don't have a viable source. Sorry again, I just deleted a ton of old pics. To the right of that pretty crotch piece is two cords of Walnut firewood. These are old pics, that old Ford tractor has been gone at least 10 years.
Stick them on FB with a half crazy price. A friend bought a new band mill. I told him not to buy any logs. I could get anything that grows in the Mid Atlantic area free. Next time I saw him he was bragging how he got two HVBW trees off FB for just $2000. Give it a go.
Is it a big deal to get them to the mill if not I don’t see a problem if they are close by?
manomet
ArboristSite Lurker
A little different perspective here, somewhat along the lines of the video. I was a GC for 40 years and we live in a 250 year old farm. Over the coarse of the 35 + years we have lived here I have bought 20k+ bd ft of various species, mostly pine and oak to rebuild and sheath the house and barn, all from. the same local mill. I have also bought large lots of lumber. from him to build structures for customers, we have a great working relationship.
He had three HVBW logs lying off to the side for quite some time that one of the local tree companies had left to be milled at a later date. Bottom log was about 26-28" at the but, the top was about 14+. Eventually they were offered to me @ $150 + milling @ $.50 bd ft. I went over on a Saturday to watch/provide input on how I wanted them cut up.
The sawyer was a rookie and to cocky. He started with the top log, my suggestion thinking we had the least chance of hitting any steel, I was wrong. He pulled the carriage back, shut off the blade and assessed the damage, touched up a tooth and even though I asked him to stop and find the steel, rolled it 90 and took another pass. He hit two pieces of steel ( lag bolts sized) and had to replace two teeth. At that point I said I wasn't interested in any more, I knew the owner Barry would be furious at this kid. On his own he rolled another 90 and hit steel again, bending a tooth carrier and putting the mill down for the day. Barry came over and went ballistic, he had been waiting on the company that tunes his blades to come and that was the last viable one until they came the following week.
I decided that day to never bring any logs to the mill. Barry could look at a log and see it's history and make a very good educated guess about what lay inside. Time and equipment are money, yard trees are never welcome at the mill and if you want to sell trees to him they better be good or your logs are unwelcome.
He had three HVBW logs lying off to the side for quite some time that one of the local tree companies had left to be milled at a later date. Bottom log was about 26-28" at the but, the top was about 14+. Eventually they were offered to me @ $150 + milling @ $.50 bd ft. I went over on a Saturday to watch/provide input on how I wanted them cut up.
The sawyer was a rookie and to cocky. He started with the top log, my suggestion thinking we had the least chance of hitting any steel, I was wrong. He pulled the carriage back, shut off the blade and assessed the damage, touched up a tooth and even though I asked him to stop and find the steel, rolled it 90 and took another pass. He hit two pieces of steel ( lag bolts sized) and had to replace two teeth. At that point I said I wasn't interested in any more, I knew the owner Barry would be furious at this kid. On his own he rolled another 90 and hit steel again, bending a tooth carrier and putting the mill down for the day. Barry came over and went ballistic, he had been waiting on the company that tunes his blades to come and that was the last viable one until they came the following week.
I decided that day to never bring any logs to the mill. Barry could look at a log and see it's history and make a very good educated guess about what lay inside. Time and equipment are money, yard trees are never welcome at the mill and if you want to sell trees to him they better be good or your logs are unwelcome.
Well I run a tree removal service which takes up the majority of my time and time is money so it’s not easy to waste time hauling logs to a mill and then turn them down or lowball me.
I found my biggest hood up was not having done business with them as a log seller, which is one of those things like how can you do new business if they only buy from old business people
Thank you for your input! So I found a solution, I had decided to set the BW to the side and continue cutting trees. I did get in contact with a local sawmill and figured out what he needed for his orders which was White oak. So I found a way to begin business with him, I cut some old growth WO trees and had a bunch of 12 1/2’ logs. About 5k board foot. Sold them and had a lot of logs that were nicer than firewood but too small to sell to the mill. So I ended up getting a mill for myself.
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