3x5 Douglas Fir

[Believer]

I have a chance to buy 26 full dimension 3x5x15' DF.  It's painted on two sides.  I was thinking of resawing for T&G paneling.  Does that make sense?  I have access to band mill and planer.  I could use them in the future for structural elements.  Would $500 be a good price or too much? Newbie questions so have patience.  Thanks.

[ladylake]

 You would get around 390 bf for $500, way to much.  Steve

[beenthere]

Welcome to the forum
Sounds expensive, as you still need to pay for sawing and planing/moulding to the panelling pattern. Sawing and planing painted wood will be wearing on the bands and real tough on planer knives. As a rule, planing painted wood is a big NO
Have you figured those costs, and compared them to just buying ready-made panelling?

Without a specific use, seems a lot to invest in the plan to just "make it into something".

What else can you tell us about what you might want to use the wood for? Maybe I'm missing something obvious here. 

[red oaks lumber]

i just bought some d.fir beams(3500 b.f.) yeasterday paid $1.65/b.f. we will resaw and make flooring to resell .far as painted sides beenthere is right it's abrasive and dulls stuff fairly fast having said that, we saw and plane old dirty painted wood every day without to much trouble. to answer the question on price, you are buying 487b.f. for $500.00 thats $1.03 /b.f. if the beams look good , staight ,not cracked to much ,no rot, to me that seems like a very fair price. depends on where you live, if you don't buy them p.m. me with the info i would buy them.
 welcome "aboard" the forum

[SwampDonkey]

It was my understanding that large timbers cost more per board footage. Always seems that way when I go buy them anyplace. Certainly large eastern spruce logs for instance, are worth a lot more at the log home places and they are $250 a piece before they are worked on.

[ladylake]

i just bought some d.fir beams(3500 b.f.) yeasterday paid $1.65/b.f. we will resaw and make flooring to resell .far as painted sides beenthere is right it's abrasive and dulls stuff fairly fast having said that, we saw and plane old dirty painted wood every day without to much trouble. to answer the question on price, you are buying 487b.f. for $500.00 thats $1.03 /b.f. if the beams look good , staight ,not cracked to much ,no rot, to me that seems like a very fair price. depends on where you live, if you don't buy them p.m. me with the info i would buy them.
 welcome "aboard" the forum

  After sawing it will yield around 390 a bf..  If you have a market to sell it a high price fine, otherwise you can come over here and buy white oak sawed for 90 cents a bf and a white oak floor is hard to beat.  Steve

[SwampDonkey]

The thing about it is, it's sold as 3 x 5, the seller isn't going to take the loss because your sawing it into finer boards. Besides that, some species of wood are just worth more on the market and increases in value with distance from source. Up here oak is too scarce to be bothered with, it's been mostly cut for pulp and firewood or saved out for hobby wood workers. At one mill area they logged the oak all off the place, just suckered stuff left. It was just an isolated pocket of it mixed in the hardwoods. You'd wonder how it got there, no other oaks for miles. Go buy red oak here and it'll cost as much as good cherry, $2.80 a bf for select, kilned and rough. A white oak they got from PA for a water wheel on the saw mill at Kings Landing was so they could get 3" x 14" planks. I bet that cost a lot a green stuff.

[ladylake]

  It should be worth more in beams rather than sawing it into flooring, flooring lumberb is cheap around here.   Steve

[red oaks lumber]

we are talking about d.fir not other species, bigger beams will bring more money.
 ladylake, how do you figure the b.f. when sawed? i figure if sawing 1" boards you'll still end up with 487 b.f. you don't need to have a cleanup cut, the planer will clean that face up.
 do i think d.fir is worth $1-$2 b.f.? no but thats what it brings in the market place, just like i don't think gas is worth $2.79/ gal. but thats what it sells for.
 believer.. just make sure it dosen't have creasote in it, if it does go the other way!  it has no value

[Den Socling]

Are they old growth or new growth. The two are very different in density. I have had "thinnings" here that showed the increase in rings per inch as larger trees started to take over the canopy. Old growth Douglas fir would have to be worth more money.

[ladylake]

we are talking about d.fir not other species, bigger beams will bring more money.
 ladylake, how do you figure the b.f. when sawed? i figure if sawing 1" boards you'll still end up with 487 b.f. you don't need to have a cleanup cut, the planer will clean that face up.
 do i think d.fir is worth $1-$2 b.f.? no but thats what it brings in the market place, just like i don't think gas is worth $2.79/ gal. but thats what it sells for.
 believer.. just make sure it dosen't have creasote in it, if it does go the other way!  it has no value

 The way it sits with no sawing loss there exactly 487.5 bf . There will be quite a bit of loss as they won't be perfecty staight and might be twisted. I was figuring on getting 4  3" boards out of each cant after allowing for waste.   Steve

[logwalker]

Too many variables to say the value. Need to know the grade and how they were dried. Might only be worth $200/300. If clear and no large checks closer to a $1000.

Joe