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To sell or saw

Started by PawNature, August 30, 2005, 06:29:07 AM

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PawNature

Gentelmen, I am sure this question has already been ask. But I couldn't find the answer. I have approximately 75000 ft of standing timber (very rough extimate) on my property. Average size is aproximately 15 inches.  Lets say saw logs were bringing $400 thousand. How much more would I realize by sawing the timber up into cants or lumber vs selling whole logs. Hope I said this right. I have a relly hard time getting what I am thinking to transfer to my finger tips. ;D smiley_bouncing_pinky
GOVERMENT HAS WAY TO MUCH CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES!!!!

Jeff

PawNature, I think your trees are just getting to the size where they will be putting on some real volume by letting them grow a while.

Check out our Tree value calculator and put some "what if" numbers in it. I think you will be surprised how much volume an inch or two adds once your trees get up to the size they are now.

https://forestryforum.com/calcs/treevalue.htm
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PawNature

What I did was take about a acre and measure at head height about 6'. And after looking at my figures I should have rounded up to avg. of 16 inches. I have some pretty decent trees all in all.
GOVERMENT HAS WAY TO MUCH CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES!!!!

PawNature

Jeff, thanks for the link to the caculator.
GOVERMENT HAS WAY TO MUCH CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES!!!!

crtreedude

PawNature,

Perhaps you should look at the stand and see if you need to remove some to let the others get bigger. This will produce some income, and permit the remaining trees to grow. Instead of getting a big whack of cash now, you could get some every year.

Selling wood a little bit at a time may or maynot yield more, but often by doing value added, you can realize more in the long run. However, you do have a capital investment in a saw, etc. to have to deal with.

Cutting it yourself normally means you can use more wood - often a buyer only wants the best, but you will have more future value if you remove the poorer trees and leave the best to get bigger.
So, how did I end up here anyway?

Corley5

Let em grow a while longer.  Check out the log scales and see what a difference a couple inches of diameter makes 8)
Burnt Gunpowder is the Smell Of Freedom

Cedarman

Get some references, find a qualified consulting forester and see if you could pay them by the hour to cruise your woods. Ask them what it would take to set up a management plan for your woods.  But first tell them your goals.  Once you have a management plan in place you will know whether it is time to whack some trees, do some thinning or let them grow.
When you have this information you will be acting with confidence.

If it is time to cut some trees, then comes decision time. Do I cut and saw them or sell them on the stump.   Your consulting forester can help you mark the trees to be cut if you lack the confidence to make the decisions. If you pay him by the hour, it won't matter to him who cuts the trees.  He can also give you advice on timber stand improvement and when to do it.

By marking the timber to be cut, you will have a more accurate tally. But the tally standing is going to be different then the tally at the end of the saw. You should gain a good bit of footage, especially is you band saw.  If you decide to saw it yourself, you will have to become good at marketing all the different grades and species.  You might even want to sell some logs and saw others.
The skills you need to do this can be learned and will serve you well down the road.  Good luck.

I am in the pink when sawing cedar.

crtreedude

One thing that is important is to decide what you want as a result - do you plan on removing all the trees or do you want to encourage a better forest? If you want to encourage more future value, removing the worst trees instead of the best is something you should think about.

Often we practice "Genetic Errosion" by removing the best all the time. Pretty soon, the woodlot is only made up of the genetically inferior trees.

If we practiced that with cattle, we would be in a lot of trouble. Can you imagine how long a farmer would last if he kept sending the best cows to slaughter, leaving the worst to breed?! It is just as humans we tend to live longer than cows so we can see the results of this kind of short-sightedness.

But it is hard to understand the impact when the trees outlive us.

Okay, no more soapbox....

So, how did I end up here anyway?

rebocardo

I would say you probably have to figure out what kind of trees and what kind of growth you can expect. Here in the GA area, going by growth rings of trees I cut down, 1/4" growth ring a year for white oak and up to 3/8" a year for some softwoods. So, to add two inches to white oak would take 8 years vs. pine or sweetgum 5 years assuming they are already close to 15 inches.

So, I would think a good local forester could cull trees and leave others for a max. yield well beyond a clear cut over a 10-20 year period. Some trees do not seed until they are 50+ years old, so to cut down a tree that is almost ready to seed would be a shame vs. taking a cull tree that is still 10+ years away from that.

johnjbc

1/4" growth ring makes the tree ½" bigger every year. You would pick up 2" in 4 years. I don't think White Oak in Pa does that well.
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GlennCz

I am a landowner in the middle of timbering 60 acres of 80 year old untimbered forest.   How many acres of land do you have?  Probably a good idea to get state forester on the land to take a look.  Whatever you do, don't let anyone go in there and cut everything >16" down, their interests would be "satisfied" in that they will cut down everything of value and get the most they possible can out of timbering this year, but you have to consider your interests -in that these 16" trees are finally putting on wood where the timber "investment" is actually doing something.  And investment aside, I think us private landowners have a responsibility to the resources we own, to take care of them properly, and make sure ecology and proper stewardship of the resource is done, and not done so that $$$ is only consideration.  that is terrible, unless absolutely necessary.

I am cutting a mixture of soft maple and black cherry and have received $540/$1,000 from lumbar mill but loggers get 40% (getting paid $200/$1,000).  So if you took that 75K and cut out 30K of it, and gave the logger about $200/$1,000 (no matter which way you did it, there are 3 main ways).  MAybe you would get 10K.  That $540 could for sure be bigger, we haven't taken many veneer cherry yet, and we are cutting out the crappy cherry now.  Whatever you do, don't let anyone take all those 18" straight beauties, those are the ones that are growing and are a good investment to round out other investments you might have. 

Even with a small joblike your, it might be worth your while, ifyou have time and interest, to research 3 types of sales, and get an independent forester and mill forester, and maybe a logger.  i went with logger, but I think giving logger run of forest is terrible way, I mark every single tree with my logger, tremendously gratifying for me, learning alot, and i think we are dong a good job of it. 

Another important matter - more than anything, maybe your property needs thinng, down with beech trees or other value less wood that are taking space.  look into hack and squirt. 

A review of my numbers: on average every tree makes 3 logs.  Each truck have averaged 58 logs.  Each truck is bringin on average of $1900(before split with logger). Trucking is significant at $200/truckload. 

Gunny

Looks like some pretty good advice you're getting so far.  And, since I'm an old  certified tree farmer (saw-logs-type) and owner-operator of a bandsaw mill and dry kiln, (and woodwright shoppe) and since the family still has a nice little woodlot we manage, maybe I can provide some food for thought, too.

Among the many things I've learned in the 35-ish years I've worked in the woods is that just about the last thing I'd ever do would be to sell my timber "off the stump".  A well-maintained/managed woodlot on the back or edge of the family farm can easily provide a better income/acre than even the fattest yield of corn, but woodlot management is often always left to "others" and that income potential is negated when the timber-owner finds him/herself at the bottom of the food chain.

The key to your ultimate success or failure with the venture is going to be fueled by your patience (or lack of it)--as most of the replies to this topic have already indicated.  I do hope that you allow yourself the time to consider most of the possibilities.  The FF here is replete with the wisdom of thousands of people who are actively involved with the process of timber management.  

As mentioned, what exactly do you wish to do with your resource?  I would advocate a Timber Stand/Wildlife Habitat  Improvement program if you are determined to commit to a harvest.  Information is available at the touch of your fingertips and within, probably, every library in the country.  I don't know that you need a degree to conduct yourself in a responsible manner.

There can be no arguing that the "value-added" approach will provide you with many, many times the return on your efforts than allowing your timber to be hauled away to some distant facility for processing.  One quick way to comprehend the value-added cycle would be to have a few loggers come in to bid on your harvestable timber (each species and grade should be clearly indentified).  Then, see what you can get if you do the felling/bucking/skidding and have someone pick up your logs from your landing(s).  Then, go to a local lumber company and check the prices on the boards that might be made from your logs.  Then see what all the things that can be tooled from those boards bring these days (moldings, construction-grade materials, rustic-primitives, cabinetry, etc.).

And then, sit back a day or two, take another walk through your woodlot, and begin to really focus on what it is that you wish to realize from your decisions.  

Depending on your personal skills and/or willingness to learn and your ability to investigate the network of valuable human resources throughout your immediate area (portable sawmill owners, dry kiln operators, etc.), you'll be far better equipped to make your decisions.  

One thing's pretty much for certain:  If you take the first offer you get, you're gonna be on the losing end of the deal.  It didn't take me long to realize that the fellows who were rushing to my kiln for nice, dry Red Oak were getting 20 times the $$ I was, once they converted my boards into their cabinets.  

Welcome to the great adventure!

GlennCz

Gunny what do you mean by it is a bad idea to sell "off the stump", because that is how timber mill buys it, or forester sale on bid is also "stump".  Whereas a % deal with logger, what I"m doing, is % of mill price, but certainly the "most dangerous" to private landowner if not done properly because forester, even mill forester, is not involved.  I think I'm doing okay with my logger, but I"m 100% involved. 

Arthur

wholesalers are always after good timber.

With the woodlot you have it would be good advise to buy your own mill, do some education on the milling and forest management and even if you only mill weekends you should see a return on investment in the first year.

thereafter you should get the same income from a few trees per year as you would from selling most in one go.

if you then produce some good quality furniture you will need even fewer trees for the same income. 

Better to have you forest investment growing than in someone else pockets.

You will get a far higher interest return with a growing forest than you will by putting the monies from a harvest in the bank.

arthur

Gunny

glenncz:

What I mean by not wishing to "sell off the stump" is pretty much covered in the rest of my post and again in the one from "Arthur" which follows mine.  I'm not questioning your decision to manage your personal woodlot as you wish; rather, I was sharing my decades of experiences--in an incredibly brief post--which have convinced me that, whenever possible/feasible, it is a wiser choice to seek a "value-added" approach to the harvest/production of one's timber resources. 

Certainly, in some cases, such an approach is not advisable, but in many instances, conversion of a log into many pieces of lumber (value-added) is.  And when that lumber is dried (air or kiln), it is even more valuable.  And when those boards are converted into marketable products (which they always seem to become), there is the even greater value. 

My question is this:  Why accept 40 cents/BF (or 50 or 60, etc.) for that resource when, with a little further effort, it might become worth $20.00/BF or more? The entire line of sponsors within this Forum advocate maximizing the value of the raw resource as do most of the people who visit and post their insights here.  And there's really little reason to sink tens of thousands of dollars into equipment when owner/operators of it are within a phone call away.

Here at our little homestead, two mature trees harvested easily convert into an annual income sufficient to cover our expenses.   But selling them to someone else "off the stump" would cover, maybe, a couple of weeks (at least we'd still have the firewood from the limbs and tops).

Give it some thought.  Thanks for the questions and thanks again for the obvious efforts to make your woodlot a better place to be for all who enjoy and/or inhabit it.

GlennCz

Gunny what you are suggesting is that I purchase and operate my own sawmill?  How much does that cost?  Wouldn't I need to construct a separate building for that? 

Also - I am curious , for the soft maple that the sawmill is paying .50 for, how much do THEY get per 1,000BF for the green boards that they sell?

IndyIan

GlennCz,
I think what Gunny was saying is that you can hire people to process your wood and keep the all the mark up for yourself. 
ie, your logger basically cuts your trees for $.20 a bdft, a guy to mill your Cherry costs you $.30-.40 a bdft.  How much can you sell air dry, rough sawn Cherry for?  $2-3 a bdft? 

If I'm reading your numbers right you are getting about $.50 a bdft for your cherry now.  The question now is getting 3 to 5 times as much for your Cherry worth the doing the work to get it?  Maybe you have it kiln dried and planed costing you $1.00 a bdft, how much is your Cherry worth then?  $5-7 a bdft? 

Now your Cherry has cost you $1.60 a bdft and your getting $5 for it, for a profit of $3.40 a bdft.
Is the work of handling it many times and finding a market for your wood worth the extra $2.90 a bdft?  I guess if it was easy everyone would do it eh?  :)

Looking at the damage done to my property and how little the previous owner got for a small high grade harvest I don't think I would sell any of my trees on the stump. 

You have your act together though and are working with your logger so your situation is much different than the previous owner of my forest. 

Ian










   

GlennCz

The mill is paying about .55 overall so far on the 15 loads that we have taken out.  I think that will go up some as we move into some areas that have more cherry. That includes a few pieces of veneer, ~5.  We are marking veneer and holding it.  Maybe get a small pile and a few different guys to look and bid on it.

There really isn't too much of veneer.  I am trying to keep all straight cherries less than 22", keeping a few bigger ones.  I counted 500 cherries when i first did an inventory, but now I am looking at these "cherries" differently and I can see all the imperfections and problems, now that I know how to generally grade them.  Many of the 500 are small, 14" at DBH. 

Never heard about farming out the logs to get sawed someplace, on a per piece basis, then selling them myself.  My loggers cousin has his own portable sawmill, I'll talk to him about it.

I have a regular career and lots of other activites and I think that job(milling) will probably go in the category of "logging", if I had to, I could figure it out and do it myself, but at this point in my life I think it is fine to farm it out, I can't take learning any more jobs, and I'm sure like lots of other things, there is a right and wrong way and a learning curve.  Equip to buy etc. 

I marked another 80 trees at lunch today.  Very enjoyable that I am doing this myself with my logger.  Trying to keep straight nice trees, even big ones, except we take one of a pair, and cutting out crooked sloppy ones. 

The beech that I hacked and squirted 3 wks ago are starting to die hard now.  I sure have a great respect for loggers and the danger they face everyday and all the other pressures.  My logger was telling me about all the backbiting and stuff that goes on, it's competetive and there is a regular grapevine that goes on between the mill, the saw shop etc. 

Gunny

Glenncz:

Like Ian said...

But I take it even further to utilize almost every single stick we produce into an "end-product" of one kind or another.  From garden benches to harvest tables to side tables to street luges and butt-boards to bat boxes to just about anything imaginable (did I mention pet coffins?).  Why look for lumber price when finished-price is often 10 or more times that!  No need to slaughter the family woodlot, either.  

And, please, re-read what I wrote in the previous posts--there are no expectations of you "buying" any sawmills or dry kilns or skidsteers or any other equipment.  I assure you, someone not too far from you already owns all that stuff and will be happy to contract with you to do exactly what you wish.  As for your workshop, until recently mine was little more than my mallet, chisels, drawknives, ax, and hatchets.  Oh, and my old Estwing hammer from many decades gone-by.

The central issue remains the "vision" you bring into and/or develop as time goes by.  One mature White Pine may bring you $300.00 off the stump but could easily bring you many thousands of dollars when utilized as value-added products.  I don't say that because I "think" it will; rather, I share it because I've DONE it many, many times over.  Just find that thread the fellows have here about what they're getting for their slabs! (I've been building bookmatched items for years from them.)  We even have old, established buyers for the shelf fungus that grows off the sides of lots of our trees--we get up to 5 bucks each for them.  Lots of avenues towards bridging that gap between out-go and income.

You own a private woodlot and it offers more in terms of lifelong revenues than you can ever begin to imagine--if you proceed with patience, intelligence, and diligence.

Maybe you should hook-up with the Amercian Forest Foundation and get certified as a Tree Farmer.  Their bimonthly magazine will fill your mind with wonders...

Best that way.

GlennCz

and here i thought i had this business all figured out, guess not...

Arthur

If your cousin has a mill talk with him about a share deal.  You supply the wood, he supplies he milling and you split the profit.  Should at least double your money.  I would expect a 10 fold increase myself.

We are starting a collection center for those who only mill small numbers.  Here we will grade and restack to sell to the highest bidder and then split the profit with the owners.  If the owner is prepared to wait the 6 to 18 months for their return then we can up their profit form a few hundred per cubiv meter to 6 or 7 hundreds.

Dont know about your local but here it seems to be stuff the small guy whenever possible and still have the customer pay though the nose because the hardwoods are getting harder to get.  Some traditional mills are quoting times of 6 months to get a select species specific hardwood.

And if you do descide to buy a swinger the normally pay for themseleves within 3 to 4 months, 12 months if your just doing weekends.

all the best with your descision.

arthur

PawNature

I want to thank everyone for their imput. I grew up around sawmills and timber. At 52 I still remember me trying to roll a log with the cant hook and Dad  reaching over with one hand and almost slinging me over the mill. I also remember in at age 11 following an old muel out of the woods and the log digging up a yellow jackets nest and me with no shirt on. OUCH!  The old muel would have logged himself if he could have driven the grabb hooks in.. But anyway I have been out of the woods so long I thought this would be a good place to get some sound advice. I bought a chainsaw mill form one of the members here. Love that but it wasn;t doing what i wanted. I sold it sunday. My plans are to buy a swing blade and do as pretty much as Arthur suggested, as i plan on being a weekend sawer anyway. Thanks agin everyone very much
GOVERMENT HAS WAY TO MUCH CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES!!!!

PawNature

WOW! I just read my post I reall do know how to spell.  smiley_hillbilly_tub_base
GOVERMENT HAS WAY TO MUCH CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES!!!!

Tom

You know what is really neat about this forum?  You can click on that "modify" tag on the top right of the post and fix that stuff, if you want.  :)

PawNature

Thanks Tom, still learning
GOVERMENT HAS WAY TO MUCH CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES!!!!

Tom

I've about worn the Modify tab off of my screen. :D

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