How do you divide up free wood?

[Kurt Helgerson]

I have a chance to use my Alaskan mill to produce some slabs from a large black oak tree in my neighborhood. The chunks of the trunk are about 5 feet long. The tree was huge, and I think I may have to go down one side and then back up the other, just to cut a slab. Should I be able to successfully do this, how do you divide up the wood between the homeowner who wants some and myself? Is there a usual 60/40 division or 50/50 division? I don’t have any close-up photo but these logs have been on the ground for 2-3 years as they show up on Google Earth.

 

[J D]

Personally, in this situation I would ask for some money up front to cover actual costs (travel, fuel, equipment wear & tare, & a bit to cover time). Doing so covers you in the event you get to milling it & find half the wood is junk.
Communication is key... establish what the client wants out of it & what (if anything) the remaining wood might be worth to you. Consider how things might need to be varied if not all the wood is usable, or in the event of unexpected additional expense (hitting embedded metal, wood full of dirt or requirement to remove bark, etc)

 

[abbott295]

I'm sorry, it sounds like the first line of a joke.

How do you divide up free wood?

You split it!

 

[Coralillo Lo Pro]

Unless it's an incredibly valuable wood guaranteed not to have metal in it, I treat all yard wood essentially as having zero value to the homeowner, which means I don't treat it as having value. If they can't do anything with it on their own, and no one will pay them for it raw, I won't spend hundreds of dollars of my labor on providing them some value. Tree services charge them to haul it away. I'm providing the same disposal service by milling it. I will offer a slab or two maybe as a matter of courtesy, but I never will offer 50-50 splits of any yard tree work I do. Most homeowners have no clue how to dry slabs properly in any event, so any slabs you do give them will as likely as not end up warped and wasted. Better to keep a whole log stack intact and strapped and stickered together. I've had a number of homeowners talk about getting back to me to buy a slab when I've dried them, but they almost never do.

 

[sean donato]

Jd and low pro pretty much hit it right on. It's useless wood unless someone does something with it. It sitting for a coupple years doesn't bode well for it being rot free either. It should be a pay job, and see how things go once it's milled. Then go from there.