Does it pay to mill your own timbers?

[andybuildz]

For a timber frame house that is...

I tend to do 'everything'... yet the older I get the more I realize that, that's not a good idea. You'd think by age 58 I'd have learned already.
I think a lot of you people are the same as me...we love our work and can't wait to get our teeth (saw teeth??lol) into the next project....'specially when it comes to a reason to buy a new tool...especially a mill 8)

Even if you get your own logs for free...or close to it I know all the effort it takes just getting  the logs to your mills or even if you mill'n cut the logs where you fell em'...you still have to get em' back to the house site. I know it's a tremendous amt of work unless you're totally equipped with some heavy machinery.

So lets say you have enough machinery to 'get by' such as a cpl of good arches'n winches and an atv or small tractor or maybe even a cpl a donkeys...nothing heavy duty...but like I said...enough to get by.

In todays market...putting aside the romantic part of 'doing it all'...does it pay to buy a mid priced mill...
maybe something like the Norwood 2000...to do your own milling of timbers?

I'm not sure what logs milled go for now-a-daze so I can make an educated  decision...not that I'm in the  position quite yet to start anything up....but when I do it'll be in the Asheville NC area.

I do know Franklin has quite a few timber frame companies there that'd sell  you just about anything you want from the milled logs to kits to entire houses....but for me it'd either be buy the logs already milled and I'll do the cuttin'...or buy a mill and I'll do it all.

I'm tending to think buying a mill is the way to go when allz said and done between the timbers and siding and flooring and maybe even the roofing..that it'd cost less owning a mill....just a whole lot more work.

How much do y'all think I could save on say a 2000+sq ft TF house. Assume there won't be anything seriously fancy going on with it just for figuring sake.

I'm not looking for any exact figure..just sorta a percentage or what ever way you want to answer this.
Thanks
andy

[ely]

the only thing i know about TF houses is i like em. not enough to build one but i like em.

that statement qualifies me to say this.
after paying a man to mill my pine logs into cants for my log house. i spent near 4k dollars.

i thought to my self, you could own a mill yourself for just a bit more. so i went out and bought a norwood, then dad bought a woodmizer, i got a bobcat and some sharpening equip..... you see where this is headed right.

bottom line is if you want a TF house to live in, pay the man to mill your stuff and build your house. otherwise we will end up with yet another starving sawmiller on here telling stories. :  or at least thats my take on it.

ohh and my house, not hardly. i am still sawing lumber and building stuff. or sawing lumber and selling it. or sharpening bands, or cutting logs. i will get there i promise but it will be when i want to. ;D

[Tom]

I dont' know how much you would save, but I'll throw a number out there.  One Third!
It might be more if you have the trees.

How did I justify that?   I didn't.  :D

[andybuildz]

How did I justify that?   I didn't.  <<<<

You don't have to justify it Tom...not with all your experience. That counts for more'n justifyin' anything.

[andybuildz]

bottom line is if you want a TF house to live in, pay the man to mill your stuff and build your house. otherwise we will end up with yet another starving sawmiller on here telling stories. :  or at least thats my take on it.

ely...yeh..know whatcha sayin'...Thats one reason I told the wife we have to buy land that has 'some kinda house" on it to live in while the new ones getting worked on.
In the old daze....I'd have set up my tipi and lived in that while I built but them thar daze are gone (I think...lol).
I know buying land that already has water'n electric'n phone...etc etc is half the battle...and I ain't getting any younger. Although...keeping your dreams alive and projects in motion that for sure keeps you going and going...specially when you're learning new things...and gettin' new tools...heh heh.

If I have the dough I spose'...knowing me...I'll go all the way again....and tell ya what..it's not so much having a finished house as much as the process in getting there.
I keep thinking..and saying to my wife...if we buy land with a house already finished...then what'll I do? It's pretty much the only thing I like doing. Building things. I just don't wanna be stoopid about it....soooooo...I figure plan a house thats not as big as I might want with room to expand it after phase one is over. In the old daze...like in my last two cribs (both are in my web site below) I went wayyyyy over board and lived in them while I renovated and added on...one night mare after the next but they were meant to get sold so I could get on to doing one that's a keeper this time.

Too bad I got stuck in this crappy market..ugh.

Thanks for your thoughts.

[moonhill]

I would say get a mill, it is a must from the start, it will take the edge off the worry of miss cut timber and a simple fix to milling a new stick, not mention the glitch of having to wait for someone else to get around to sawing a new odd stick of wood.  There is the endless material needs after this building.  You could always resell if it turned out to not be what you dreamed it would.  

Out of all the machinery I have the mill is the only piece I would be lost without.  I have often thought of getting out from all the stuff, but the mill stays.  It is close to insanely addictive.  It is hard to even think of parting with it.

Tim

[shinnlinger]

Hi,

I am did essentially what you are proposing.  I was going to re-use a timberframe on my property, but the more I looked at it, the sillier that seemed, then there was a massive windstorm and it knocked some beauty's  over on my neighbors place, and then a great deal popped up on a manual Turner with a 13 horse Honda, very similar to the Norwood I think, and I cut myself a new frame.  

Even with a 34 horse 4x4 tractor and an excavator, milling with a manual mill is HARD work.  You should know that up front.  The reason I got such a good buy on my mill was that the 60 year old PO didn't realize that up front.  The first 2 weeks I had it, I thought I too had made a mistake.  Stick with it though, pace yourself, and read the tips on this site, and you can make it manageable.  You are wise to realize that even if your mill was fully automated, someone has bring the wood to the mill and stack all the timbers/lumber.

What is your patience level?  It takes a while to collect the trees ( significant safety risks at that) and mill and work up your cutlist.  The spring and summer I was doing that, my wife was telling me to sell the stupid mill, as I wasn't getting anything done.  She went away labor day weekend and I brought a crane in and raised my frame, and that helped, but it was an issue.

Was it worth it?  If I add up pennies I am WAY ahead by milling my own timbers and cutting my frame, BUT it did take significantly longer.  In fact, I am three years into this project and I have at least another to go before I can move in.  I also had the benefit of free, high quality trees already laying on the ground and a 40,000 lb excavator to pull them out of the twisted pile they were in.  I used my tractor with a trailer as a forwarder to bring the logs to the mill and the same tractor with forks to load the deck and move the slabs and timbers.

[andybuildz]

 shinnlinger...good stuff in there...mucho thanxo..one thing I love about this forum is how brutally honest everyone is. I've been reading through these pages probably a good two years and I've learned a lot...well..at least as much as you can from reading. I actually did have a little hands on experience doing some TF'ing but not much. Enough to know what they mean by, 'it's a young man's sport'. One nice thing about moving to the Asheville area is that Franklin is nearby and there's 2-3 TF companies there that give classes which would be a must.

I've been doing remodelling the past three decades so I know what it's like to have to figure things out..especially after I finished this house we're living in that's up for sale again...circa:1680. No levels needed..hahaha.

I also figure planing a frame that's half the size I want to end up with, and completing that will give us a finished product to live in while I get cranked up for phase two...which has to go much faster after you have it all figured by then...and all the tools as they should be.

I like the Wood Mizer's but....and tell me if I'm wrong...I think a mill like the Norwood 2000 you can set up by the log rather than having to do 'as much' of the... moving logs around. Peterson Mill'd be nice but way to expensive for me..a nice Mobile Dimension mill'd be nice too but thats some real big bucks. Seems like the Norwood gives you more bang for the buck??

See how realistic I'm becoming? lol

[witterbound]

I bought the timbers for my timber frame from Arky.  One thing you get from having a sawyer mill your timbers, is the sawyer's experience.  Many of us think "hey, i could do that."  You probably can, but it will take you longer and you won't do it as good.  The cost of the timbers in my 1200 square foot timber frame will likely amount to less than 4% of the cost of the house. 

[andybuildz]

witterbound...one of the reasons I mentioned where I'm moving to is b/c I know the cost for milled timber has to vary quite a bit from area to area. I recently bought a small amt of milled timbers to do an outdoor garden room we attached to an existing house.
//picasaweb.google.com/andybuildz/TimberFrameGardenRoom#slideshow/5378328755270882466 (off site pictures are not allowed) [please post them in your gallery here]

The timbers were insanely expensive but this is Long Island so...just sayin' cuz it has to vary in price for the different locations. I 'think' asheville won't be one of the lesser expensive areas to get milling done in comparison. I'm thinking that b/c houses in that area are way more expensive than other areas in NC and vicinity.

Far as thinking 'I can do that'? I NEVER think that about anything and I've been in remodelling for three decades...maybe thats why I know that there's a whole lot I don't know but what I do know is that I'm really persistent and patient. It's also why I say I need a piece of land with some kinda house we can be comfortable in while this one's being built.

The other thing too is...I know a mill'd come in real handy for so much from the flooring to...well..just about everything else so why not at least try doing  the timbers?

I 'always' expect the worst..lol

[Ernie]

Ideally, you buy a mill, find someone with some logs, mill them at his place with him as the off bearer and take half the timber as payment.  You both win, he gets cheap milling and some exercise, you get timber for the cost of fuel, transport and your time and you develop an addiction to sawdust.  An extra bonus is, he gets left with the mess ;D

[andybuildz]

Ideally, you buy a mill, find someone with some logs, mill them at his place with him as the off bearer and take half the timber as payment.  You both win, he gets cheap milling and some exercise, you get timber for the cost of fuel, transport and your time and you develop an addiction to sawdust.  An extra bonus is, he gets left with the mess ;D

Ya know..that's a real good idea..assuming there's not an abundance of timbers on the land I buy...which IS something I'm looking for...but any which way you look at it your idea could work with different scenarios....hmmmm.
Good flash! thanks.
PS...we looked into moving to New Zealand a buncha years ago but apparently if you're over 50 it's almost impossible w/o a big hassle..

[Ernie]

PS...we looked into moving to New Zealand a buncha years ago but apparently if you're over 50 it's almost impossible w/o a big hassle..

With your age given as 158, I can understand why ;D

[witterbound]

Andy, I did a 2 month timber frame apprenticeship in Franklin NC  a couple of years ago.  It's just down the road from Asheville.  Beautiful part of the country.  Anyway, my sense is that the Eastern White Pine over there is similarly priced to the Southern Yellow Pine in Arkansas.   Maybe not right in Asheville, but in other more rural area of the state. 

[Raphael]

One thing you'll want to check on before diving into buying a mill is the local building codes and how they are enforced.
My building inspector won't allow ungraded timber I produce myself (for a dwelling) but will accept them from a 'known sawmill'.
Fortunately he hasn't looked to closely at the saw marks on a few of my timbers. ;)

[ljmathias]

Valid question about owning your own versus buying or going halves with someone- surfaces again and again on this forum so it must be a key question that we need to address.  Here's a couple of points I've noticed (but then they may be specific to me, a cranky old man, semi-retired, with lot's of grandkids and too many projects).

First, having your own sawmill is expensive in the short run, much less so in the long run.  Like any investment, your initial outlay of capital only makes return over time, and the more you use it, the faster the return.  Is it worth it for just one project?  Probably not- too short a time-frame to pay off unless you just turn around and sell it off again after the project's over.  From my own experience and what I read on the forum, this isn't likely to happen: sawdust addiction is a real but untreatable illness that once acquired, causes irrational behavior of all types...

Second, a sawmill gives you an enormous advantage in flexibility if you're building something big or maybe constructing a series of buildings for your own and your families use.  I'm in the process of building a small house for my son's family and am in the midst of siding and exterior trim-out.  Just yesterday I changed the corner trim and needed to have some true-2" by 7" pine.  I pulled out a Katrina log that was just the right length, been air-dried for four years, and carved it up to get another piece of live-edge siding and the two 8' 2X7" s I needed- took about 15 minutes and was certainly shorter than going to Lowes, buying lumber that was too thin and too wide and trying to make do.

Third, as you develop skill in the use of the mill and more knowledge of how to use rough cut and planed wood, your options open up.  Sure, you can make timbers for a frame, but you can do so much more it's amazing.  As I gain confidence in my ability to choose the right log and cut it into the right size lumber, I use my own wood more and more.  For example, I needed stringers for the stairs in the new house but decided to overbuild (a bad habit I have when buying lumber but not so expensive when cutting my own).  I sliced off three 20' 2X12" s (full size, not big box sizes) and used those- wow what a difference.  I climb up and down the roughed-in stairs over and over again during a given day of work on the house and am amazed at how solid they are.

Next, you get to be creative in new and satisfying ways.  After reading extensively on the FF about siding of various types, I decided to try live-edge pine planks on the new house.  Luckily, I'd cut a bunch of 4/4 lumber, most in the range of about 7-9" width with one or two live edges.  Unfortunately, I'd also had some of it planed fairly smooth (son was out of work for a couple of weeks and I hired him to do it).  Most of the siding is rough sawn, which (as Pineywoods- I think it was him- pointed out) takes up a whole lot more stain and sealer than planed wood.  As I started to use up what I had cut, I foolishly mixed the planed wood in with the rough cut- totally different appearance, but we'll have to live with it as I'm not about to unscrew all those boards and cut new ones to fill in...  Point is, when I need more of a given length or width plank, I just go and cut up a partial whack of logs and I'm ready to go back to building.  Breaks up the day, satisfies the sawdust addiction and provides enormous satisfaction.

You just have to understand yourself pretty good before making any decision of the size of buying a sawmill- how you work, what your needs are for the present, and what you could and want to do in the future.  For me, it's been a gradual transition into more and more of cutting for my own projects, and vice versa, taking on projects that rely more and more on my own cut wood.  Also for me (not to be too self-centered here but that's the only person I'm really able to speak for), I don't have to have the mill pay for itself by selling lumber- it pays for itself by saving me money.  Like Dave Ramsey says- one of the best investments you can make is in the interest on your debts: pay them off and save the interest to use for other things.  With my sawmill, I save money on wood that I use for other purposes.

Hope this all makes sense and wasn't too long winded- raining this morning, too wet to work on siding and feeling philosophical...

Lj

[Peterbilt]

One thing that i would look into before purchasing a mill is the availability, and cost of logs in the area that you will be located. there are only so many loggers in any given area. In my area, most of the loggers who have the heavy equipment to cut and haul the logs out of the woods, also have sawmills. They sell the too skinny and too crooked stuff for firewood, and keep the good saw logs for there mill.   

[wkheathjr]

I guess it also depend on what you could get from your local sawyer, too.  I had considered buying my own sawmill too.  That was until the sawyer who live half a mile from me told me he would do 40 cents for a 'green and rough' posts and beams.  Couldn't beat that price (I actually have that in writing!) so I figured I would give him a chance to do business with!  And beside I can see that he is a logger so I imagine he is probably in need of some cash flow!

[andybuildz]

One thing you'll want to check on before diving into buying a mill is the local building codes and how they are enforced.
My building inspector won't allow ungraded timber I produce myself (for a dwelling) but will accept them from a 'known sawmill'.
Fortunately he hasn't looked to closely at the saw marks on a few of my timbers. ;)

I know...been thinking about that. That can really put a big damper on everything.

[andybuildz]

Hope this all makes sense and wasn't too long winded- raining this morning, too wet to work on siding and feeling philosophical...

Lj

Long winded? I was disappointed when there wasn't anymore to read. I re-read it 3x.
Thanks brother...Goes real appreciated!

[andybuildz]

I have to confess that I did have to laugh when no one commented on the part in my OP where I spoke about using a cpl of donkeys.

I almost didn't add that in because to most people that would have sounded a bit insane...but I was sorta serious. This has to be one of the only places/forums it might not sound so funny.  I came upon a web site accidently where someone's selling some incredible looking donkeys and I read all he had to say about  the animals and thought what a perfect animal to have if you live on some acreage and do lots of your own work. Besides the fact that they they work their 'ass's' off...I know I know...it was a little funny...c'mon...you can also ride em' through all kind of rough terrain and they're supposed to be great companions...maybe more so than horses and from what I hear and a lot less expensive to keep.

Anyone know anything about working with them?

[moonhill]

When I read the part on donkeys I thought you were serious and your are.  I can not attest to their workability but do know of a fellow of mid east decent who is very knowledgeable with the equine world and has good thing to say about them.  They probably are like people, you could get a bad one, so look around for one or two with good dispositions. 

Also you may want to check into ordinances on the keeping of animals in your neighborhood, they could be prohibited.  That is a bit of a joke to go along with the idiotic regulations on not being able to use material off your own mill because it doesn't have a "special" stamp.  It is too bad both are a real concern. 

Just get the mill.  I bet you won't be sorry.  The bigger issue is which one to get?  They are like chocolate, so many choices.

Tim

[ErikC]

  I have been around donkeys quite a bit. Not for work though, but packing and driving carts. But I'm sure they could do a good job at it. They are more like pets than horses or mules, and calmer in nature. They are not as fast either. Donkeys are the best thing for a man who walks and wants a pack animal. They are easy to feed, and need not be led all the time once you have used one a while and he wants to go with you. I think if your interested in them, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

[andybuildz]

  I have been around donkeys quite a bit. Not for work though, but packing and driving carts. But I'm sure they could do a good job at it. They are more like pets than horses or mules, and calmer in nature. They are not as fast either. Donkeys are the best thing for a man who walks and wants a pack animal. They are easy to feed, and need not be led all the time once you have used one a while and he wants to go with you. I think if your interested in them, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I hadn't actually ever thought about it until I stumbled onto that donkey web site...I never really even realized a mule and a donkey were that much different  but what you just mentioned was mentioned in that site which was what peaked my interest. I was just wondering how worth while it would be in using 1 or 2  in some sort of way in logging/building a timber frame. I'm pretty certain I couldn't put a tool belt on em and teach em' to swing a hammer...lol...but outside of that...

[ely]

whatever you do dont google donkey website. ;D