Pricing a resaw job for oak beams

[Finn1903]

I had a call from a guy who wants an estimate to have 40 oak beams resawn from 12x12x12' to 1x12X12' boards.  These oak beams are from an old barn.  I imagine these are old dry wood with a few nails in them.

How would you price a job like this?  What is your experience pricing a job like this and how close did you come to your estimated time and cost?

This will be my second resaw job, my first was resawing green tie logs into tomato stakes.  I billed that on by the hour plus log handling and was a piece of cake.  I hit one nail buried in one of the logs.  This job sounds completely different.

Thanks, Tom

[scsmith42]

Tom, I would bill him based upon an hourly rate and with him paying for any metal strikes. 

Dry oak mills slower than green oak.

Scott

[terrifictimbersllc]

Same here, hourly plus ruined blades.

[Nomad]

     Yup.  Hourly all the way, plus blades for metal strikes.

[red oaks lumber]

sadly we resaw alot of old reclamied beams. scanning and denailing is billed by the man hour.  resawing is billed by the b.f. with the right blade and speed and lack of blade lube in the cut it dosent saw that much slower than new wood. from my view point any way

[Jim_Rogers]

Finn1903 said his customer asked for an estimate. I find it very hard to estimate these things. The only way I've ever been able to estimate one is to actually cut one and see how long it took. Then multiply it up.

I would also do it by the hour but tell the customer that it is very hard to estimate an unknown.

Question I would ask him are "are all the nails pulled out yet?" If not is he going to pay you to pull all the nails?
I would not even consider sawing any without knowing that they have been scanned for nails and had them all pulled out.

I have tried to do what a customer wanted with resawing old beam before. He told me to just cut them and he'd pay for the blade damage.
I sawed three feet into a beam and hit a nail, replaced the blade sawed another three feet and hit another nail.
I stopped sawing that beam and did not saw any more.
I had sawn a bunch for him before this last one, and his bill with blade damage was up to $900. It took me 90 to collect.
I never sawed for him again.

Jim Rogers

[drobertson]

Jim you  have one of three options here, hourly or bd/ft, or for the total job, which is near 6k bd/ft,  I did some beams a while back by the bd/ft,  The chance of hardware in these were very slim.  I cut the price due to no slabs to deal with, but really slabs are not a big deal to me.  Handling a square is a bigger pain on the deck for me, not having a live deck.   They do go quick,  and dry as mentioned has little effect on sawing speed for me, but mills vary for sure.  I'd say find your margin and give him your best offer.

[backwoods sawyer]

By the boad foot+saws
12x12x12=144bft each x 40 = 5,760bft x your bft rate (mine is $.30)=$1,728 + 11 saws = $275 total $2,000
by the hour I would have to take 23 hours at $75 hr to get $1,728 and I can't see 40 beams taking that long even with multiple saw changes.
bft or flat rate bid seems like the better option for you.


They are already squared up saving four cuts each.
This is a job for resharped saws not new saws for sure ;D

[Brad_bb]

Finn1903, it would seem if the customer is asking for an estimate to cut, he probably hasn't taken de-nailing into account.  De-nailing will usually take more time and labor than the milling.  You've got to have a conversation with him about De-nailing, blade cost, and labor involved. 

I've been De-nailing beams this week for my own use(not going to saw them up other than re-sizing some beams, but may do some planing).  Some timbers will take more than an hour to de-nail.  A variety of tools are also needed, especially if you want to minimize damage to the wood.  I'm working on a de-nailing video that I'm planning to release probably in about a month, showing the different techniques and tools I've used.

If there's more than a few nails per beam, it may not be worth it to him cost-wise.  De-nailing cannot be a halfway job either.  If a nail breaks off, you can't just ignore it and move on, because your saw blade won't ignore it.  You have to go after it and get it out.  Some guys will hack the wood up good to get it.  With smart and careful techniques though, you can minize the damage going after it.

My guess is the customer does not really understand the nail issue or what's involved in proper de-nailing. The job is going to cost 2-4 times what he's expecting - given that he's shopping around just the sawing part, which is only a small part.  12 in can't will take some real effort to lay out and roll to work on also.

Are you set up to de-nail?  Have you done it?  I have a bunch of different tools and techniques to choose from depending on the nail type, condition etc.