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Sawmill Signs

Started by FarmingSawyer, December 19, 2014, 06:23:29 AM

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FarmingSawyer

I'm thinking it would be a fun project this winter to come up with a sign for my mill. Something to let the 100s of people who drive by every day know that I am actually selling lumber and doing custom milling...... But, do I do the usual thing and paint up an old cutoff wheel or something more inventive?

With that in mind what have others done to promote their mill from the road? Can we see some photos?
Thomas 8020, Stihl 039, Stihl 036, Homelite Super EZ, Case 385, Team of Drafts

beenthere

As long as you don't have to have your place zoned Commercial to do that, but around here it would raise some of the local zoning regs' eyebrows.  (as well as some neighbors keeping an eye out for them)
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

york

beenthere,good point.....
Albert

mesquite buckeye

Get a curved log and cut off a full live edge oval from it. Rout, carve, engrave, whatever your name into it and paint the engraved letters, the background in contrasting colors. You can chain hang it from an upside down L type deal so you can add services you offer on lower signs or just put it up on a post or set it against a big rock pile/fence whatever. Be creative with what your local materials give you and you will stand out from the rest. ;D

Good luck. ;D 8) 8) 8) :snowball:
Manage 80 acre tree farm in central Missouri and Mesquite timber and about a gozillion saguaros in Arizona.

Lumber Grader

I think signs might invite a ever-more intrusive government official to pay you a visit and do an inspection or whatever.  Why not put a big rock by the road and tell all your customers to "look for the rock". LOL Merry Christmas!

Joe Hillmann

Quote from: beenthere on December 19, 2014, 10:40:54 AM
As long as you don't have to have your place zoned Commercial to do that, but around here it would raise some of the local zoning regs' eyebrows.  (as well as some neighbors keeping an eye out for them)

I agree with been there.  My place is zoned commercial but sawmills are specifically banned in town.  I have had the building inspector here three times asking me what I was doing the sawing for hire.  I told him so far it is all for personal use and he doesn't have a problem with it.


redprospector

Wow! This is pretty sad.
I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said something like; When the government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people fear the government, you have tyranny. 
When a group of people are afraid to hang a shingle advertising their "pursuit of happiness" it sounds a lot like tyranny to me.  :'(
1996 Timber King B-20 with 14' extension, Morgan Mini Scragg Mill, Fastline Band Scragg Mill (project), 1973 JD 440-b skidder, 2008 Bobcat T-320 with buckets, grapple, auger, Tushogg mulching head, etc., 2006 Fecon FTX-90L with Bull Hog 74SS head, 1994 Vermeer 1250 BC Chipper. A bunch of chainsaws.

Tree Dan

I like the Idea of the Live edge sign.
I can remember going through this with mobile welding.
In my part of the woods moble welding or mobile sawmill
is a tad different than Sawmill, or Salys welding shop.
If your working mobile  your not working in the zone where the sign Is.
Your just saying you do mobile sawing. :)
I did have a welding shop where my sign was but It was for my own work...and the welding got done with that rig with the 4 tires on It.
In the states It may be different.
Merry Christmas
Wood Mizer LT40HD, Kubota KX71, New Holland LS150, Case TR270
6400 John Deere/with loader,General 20" planer, Stihl 880, Stihl 361, Dolmar 460, Husqvarna 50  and a few shovels,
60" and 30" Log Rite cant hooks, 2 home built Tree Spades, Homemade log splitter

FarmingSawyer

All good points....but ye forget I live in Maine. Zoning? What zoning? every town has law here and I'm pretty sure there taint no law in the area preventing me from hanging a sign on the barn promoting my mill. Down the road, on the gold coast, I'm sure there is....but not here inland 10 miles.....
Thomas 8020, Stihl 039, Stihl 036, Homelite Super EZ, Case 385, Team of Drafts

whitepine2

 It would cost you $200 to put up a sign in this town and building inspector must approve and only cretin size. If you can just put it up
and see what happens all this is is another TAX imo.

Peter Drouin

I have one going up in the spring and the town doesn't care ;D
A&P saw Mill LLC.
45' of Wood Mizer, cutting since 1987.
License NH softwood grader.

Brucer

I have two signs on the side of the old travel trailer that I use for an office/toolroom. One is the name of the business. The other says "Custom sawing" plus my cell phone number.

It doesn't have my business logo, no sawmill blades or cut boards. Just weatherproof plastic signs -- black on white.

That, plus a pile of logs, plus some side lumber, plus some slab bundles. It gets the people in. That's all I care about.

Bruce    LT40HDG28 bandsaw
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."

backwoods sawyer

I used 12x12 post with a 6x18 header for the driveway.
Routered in Hardwoods on one post and Softwoods on the other.
The header has the company name. With a rustic bus stop build into the fence line with the phone # over the door.

I just painted the inside of the letters and let the wood weather, then changed color so it contrasted with the grey ::)

Backwoods Custom Milling Inc.
100% portable. . Oregons largest portable sawmill service, serving all of Oregon, from our Backwoods to yours..sawing since 1991

FarmingSawyer

I do think a separate road sign is probably a no-no around here without a $20 permit. But a sign on the barn I don't think they can do anything about because it's on private property. No one has complained about my "eggs for sale" sign on the mailbox......
Thomas 8020, Stihl 039, Stihl 036, Homelite Super EZ, Case 385, Team of Drafts

thecfarm

 @FarmingSawyer  Putting signs up on your land is easy in Maine,as long as your town don't have rules too. Off your land is harder. We had a veggie business. It's a seasonal business so we would put signs up on the main road to let people know. But we expanded to bake goods and that was a no-no. We had to buy a certain size sign for the state to put up and take down,I forgot how much a year we paid to have the state maintain the signs,$50??? But we had to have the signs made a certain size. Anyone that lives in Maine has seen them,about 4 feet long and about a foot wide. The state put the signs up when we asked and took them down when we asked. We could not take them down or put them up. They would come get the signs and drop them off. There is only one sign guy for the whole state of Maine. We could of put up 100 veggies signs,but one baked goods sign we could not. I have no idea about a 4 foot square sign not on our land. Greenhouse and maple syrup is seasonal too. So we could put up a bunch of signs for that too with no problems.
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

Magicman

No sign, but when I am not sawing my sawmill is parked in my Son's back yard which faces one of the busier streets into town.  That generates several knocks on his door each year.


 
The slabs from the few jobs that I saw there are hauled to that street and a "Free Wood" sign is all that is necessary to get rid of them.


 
Gone the next day.  It would be against zoning restrictions to advertise my business there, plus I would not want to do it anyway.
Knothole Sawmill, LLC     '98 Wood-Mizer LT40SuperHydraulic   WM Million BF Club Member   WM Pro Sawyer Network

It's Weird being the Same Age as Old People

Never allow your "need" to make money to exceed your "desire" to provide quality service.....The Magicman

Robert Owens

Wow! I am glad I live in the south. The government is not as intrusive here with what you want to do, especially where I live in the county. It's almost like your local governments don't want you to prosper unless they get to approve it, tax it and regulate it.

thecfarm

Maine is diffeant with signs. No great big bill boards are in Maine. I can do anything I want with signs on my land. It's just off my land that is diffeant.
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

Magicman

The difference here would be inside of the city limits (where there are zoning restrictions) and outside the city where there are no restrictions.
Knothole Sawmill, LLC     '98 Wood-Mizer LT40SuperHydraulic   WM Million BF Club Member   WM Pro Sawyer Network

It's Weird being the Same Age as Old People

Never allow your "need" to make money to exceed your "desire" to provide quality service.....The Magicman

backwoods sawyer

When I checked into it here I could put up a sign covering up to 32 square ft with no permits. Larger signs require a permit.

The way the polititions get around the square ft issue is to set up a 4x8 sign and attach additional smaller signs to it ::)

Backwoods Custom Milling Inc.
100% portable. . Oregons largest portable sawmill service, serving all of Oregon, from our Backwoods to yours..sawing since 1991

4x4American

Quote from: redprospector on December 19, 2014, 07:50:25 PM
Wow! This is pretty sad.
I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said something like; When the government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people fear the government, you have tyranny. 
When a group of people are afraid to hang a shingle advertising their "pursuit of happiness" it sounds a lot like tyranny to me.  :'(

Couldn't agree more.  I too don't put a sign up because I'm afeard of zoning problems ensuing.  In my zoning, you can have a sawmill business, if you buy a permit, and have 5 acres of land.

So what I do is put some slabs up by the road and tell my customers to look for the slabs.
Boy, back in my day..

YellowHammer

Quote from: FarmingSawyer on December 19, 2014, 06:23:29 AM
I'm thinking it would be a fun project this winter to come up with a sign for my mill.
With that in mind what have others done to promote their mill from the road? Can we see some photos?


I used a little tangential strategy to get our business sign and also support my daughter's high school athletic department.  So I went to the high school where my daughter played ball, plunked down a little money for the school "Sponsor" package which included reserve seats at the gym, my own parking spot for the games, and a professionally made, weatherproof sign which hung on the gym wall for the season as advertisement.  The sign generated enough income during halftimes and eating popcorn to more than pay for itself and then some.
Once the season was over, I mounted it on our front gate.

Maybe it interesting to some that one of the main reasons I got the sign was because of my neighbors...not because they didn't want a sign or a sawmill next door, but because they were getting aggravated at customers coming down their driveways by mistake.   :D
YH

YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

thecfarm

I think a picture of your horses on the sign would help too. Farming Sawyer or Farmer Sawyer might help too.
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

FarmingSawyer

Ray, the horses are right in view most of the time....they're usually a talking point for anyone walking along the road or stopping to gawk.

So far I've got this started.....


 
I figure I'll get one of my daughters over to visit and paint Custom Sawmill & Lumber Sales on it.....
Thomas 8020, Stihl 039, Stihl 036, Homelite Super EZ, Case 385, Team of Drafts

Jeff

I'd like to know where my sign is. Tammy said someone called here a little while ago asking if this was the Forestry Forum. When she said yes, they proceeded to ask her what the price of plywood was.  say_what
Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

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