Milling efficiently

[dhp3228]

I've been milling with my mill (2000+ hours)and my friends mill ( 173 hours) both are LT 40 hydraulic

I've found that milling by myself from loading the logs and unloading the mill allows my to produce on average of 93 BF/ft and hour.

I don't own any other support machinery other that a tractor.

My question is how can I be more productive?

I'm milling pine trees

[hacknchop]

What are you sawing out of the logs timbers,lumber, 1" or 2" ? That makes a difference in the amount of bdft you can expect per hour.

[Brucer]

So first of all, forget about "efficiency". Ban the word from your vocabulary. It can only get you into trouble.

Your goal is to make the maximum amount of money in an allotted amount of time, now and in the future.

Can you make more money per BF selling sizes different from what you make now?

When you work alone, your time on the job is the constraint -- the thing that limits how much you can make. So figure out where you are using your time.

Make a list of all the things you do: running the tractor, pulling wood off the mill, disposing of sawdust, running the saw, maintaining the mill, etc. For a period of time, say 5 working days, keep track of how much time you spend on each of those activities. Also measure how many BF of saleable material you made.

Now do the math. For each of the activities you listed, divide the total number of BF you made by the hours you spend doing that activity. Now you know your production rate for each activity.

The slowest activity is the one to concentrate on. You might need to break the activity down into smaller pieces and keep track of the hours for each of them. For example, I use my loader for fishing logs out of the piles, moving logs to the mill, carrying cut lumber and timbers to the storage piles, and loading customers.

Now figure out what you can do to speed up that activity.

Here's some ideas:
Are you getting on and off the tractor a lot?
Are you setting material down somewhere, only to pick it up to move again?
Are you putting things where something else should go, only to have to shift it later?
Do you often find a piece of equipment or a stack of something is in your way?

That's just a hint of the sort of things you can discover.

[dhp3228]

Thanks for the brainstorming ideas. More info on my part. For the last 8 days I've been milling beams 4" to 8" by 8" to 14" and up to 24' long. As well as some 2"x8" by 24' long material. I am working by myself and I'm keeping my work area clean as I go. I'm average about 95 Bd Ft an hour which considering the other task I'm doing I feel like is decent. I feel like I'm pushing the motor thru the wood at close to max feed rate. I'm not moving things unnecessarily around the yard and try to spend as much time making dust as possible. I just can't seem to break that threshold off 100+ Bd ft. I see some numbers on the WOod Mizer sight and I know those are under ideal conditions and with different wood and additional manpower and what not. in reality I'm comparing my production rate with theirs and am coming up short and am wondering what some of y'all are getting. I know everyone's setup is different but I'd still like benchmarks to shoot for.

[ellmoe]

  If you are adding your time doing support work for the sawing into your sawing hours to figure your production rate, 95bf/hr is not too bad. I will spend more time handling logs, maintenance, buying parts, customer service, etc. than sawing. I do have another full time sawyer, so that helps. Brucer has some good ideas, you will think of more as you gain experience.
Mark

[bkaimwood]

Woodmizers number come from utilizing a highly trained, seasoned sawyer, and typically one or two well trained, seasoned offbearers. In other words, all the sawyer does is saw, and pretty much doesn't touch any wood, anywhere, at anytime... He does what he is supposed to do... SAW. This is the way it works at a production sawmill. A few of us are lucky enough to have such an environment, the right support equipment, and good help. Most of us do not. If you are handling ALL the waste, you can take 1/3 off these production numbers. If you are cleaning, stacking, and stickering all the lumber, take another 1/3...these are just general numbers of course, but they are not far off in my operation. Most of the time, I fly solo... Now, the only thing raised a flag to me, was that you are cutting big stuff, which typically adds up to much more bf than sawing lumber...BUT, you are also sawing very long stuff, which does take longer...mistake, miscalculations, rushing, and so on cost big when going long...I especially take my time with long logs cuz of this...I walk to the opposite end of the mill and measure bed to pith several times to make sure its perfectly level...1/4" off is not OK to me...every log gets this on two faces, opening cut, and third cut usually. This alone can add minutes to every log easily. Don't beat yourself up. Concentrate on making the highest quality product, start to finish. I've had 400 bf days of sawing inadequate logs and boxes of nails, and 2k bf days sawing nice sawlogs. Sawing 8' grade lumber goes quick...20 foot lumber..no so much...

[Cedarman]

What Brucer says!!!
Along with what Brucer says I believe you should be doing the most important thing possible at every available moment.  Prioritize the things you do in a day.  If sawdust is getting in the way, then moving sawdust becomes the most important thing etc.
Also, you get to decide what every available moment is.  6 hours a day, 8, 10.  It does not mean you work as many possible hours as you can.
One thing I learned when I first started in 83 was that it was not how big your pile of lumber is at the end of the day, but how much money you take to the bank the next morning. Find out what are the most profitable things to make.  This will help to decide what to saw each log and which logs are the most profitable to saw.

[footer]

...I walk to the opposite end of the mill and measure bed to pith several times to make sure its perfectly level...1/4" off is not OK to me...every log gets this on two faces, opening cut, and third cut usually.

bkaimwood, can you elaborate a bit? Are you cutting beams, or grade lumber when doing this, or both? I know it greatly depends on each individual log, but I have always tried to level the opening cuts with the bark as much as possible when cutting grade lumber, since the best wood is usually closer to the surface. But if cutting beams, try to keep the pith centered as much as possible. I have never tried to be super exact on the pith at each end, because the pith can wander a bit, or a lot depending on the log. My observations over the years have been, you could have it centered exactly at the each end, but if you trim 6 inches off the end when you go to use it, it might be 1/4 inch off of center 6 inches up from the original end.

[Cedarman]

Many years ago I was constructing a hiking trail in the UP with a group of people.  As we were building the trail, some were perfectionists and others were just doing a good job. During a break, a surgeon and I were talking about how good the trail should be. He said and I will never forget his wisdom. "Better is the enemy of good".  He explained that trying to make a good surgery better could result in catastrophe. Something to keep in mind when trying for perfection.

[footer]

that is a very good point cedarman.
Perfectionism can get to a point of fault, especially when talking efficiency at the same time. The key is knowing the boundaries, and what is good enough for the situation at hand. The same thing applies to all kinds of things in life.
There is also the law of diminishing returns, where at some point, trying to make increases in productivity become economically unfeasible due to cost vs return.

[OlJarhead]

Thanks for the brainstorming ideas. More info on my part. For the last 8 days I've been milling beams 4" to 8" by 8" to 14" and up to 24' long. As well as some 2"x8" by 24' long material. I am working by myself and I'm keeping my work area clean as I go. I'm average about 95 Bd Ft an hour which considering the other task I'm doing I feel like is decent. I feel like I'm pushing the motor thru the wood at close to max feed rate. I'm not moving things unnecessarily around the yard and try to spend as much time making dust as possible. I just can't seem to break that threshold off 100+ Bd ft. I see some numbers on the WOod Mizer sight and I know those are under ideal conditions and with different wood and additional manpower and what not. in reality I'm comparing my production rate with theirs and am coming up short and am wondering what some of y'all are getting. I know everyone's setup is different but I'd still like benchmarks to shoot for.

Maybe you math is off?  a 4x8x24' beam is about 64bf -- are you really making less than two of those in an hour?

I can mill 100bf an hour on my LT10

[bkaimwood]

Hey footer...great question, with many answers and like you said, variables. Like you said, leveling the bark is advantageous when sawing grade lumber, because, typically, your highest grade boards come from the outside. I have been disappointed at the results from this method on more than one occasion, as I'm sure you have too... You steal your first nice board and the next few instantly go down hill, with knots, voids, or whatever... But steal another border two, and it cleans up, and grade improves. Not the most common situation, but it happens. Not to get too far off topic and to answer your question... there are two situations that I saw most of my logs off of that involve positioning of the pith... the first one is, I am sewing dimensional lumber or beans, and the pic is always level, no exceptions... It is also centered... the second situation, is when I saw grade lumber, or boards... the pith in this case, does not need to be level, but it does need to be centered... Centering the pith minimizes the risk of crook in the boards... which is typically caused by tension in the cant, usually caused from being off center from the pith in the first place, internal stresses, and so on. For the most part, when I put a log on the mill, I know what I'm sawing for... I'm very seldom these days sawing anything for inventory... For the most part, I am sawing pine boards and dimensional lumber, so I will automatically level and center the pith... I'm searching for straight, quality sawn lumber, and grade isn't an issue. A recent stint I had of sawing red oak lumber was mainly for wide boards and accomplishing a specific dimension, and grade was secondary... I started with taper sawing to make the nicest boards, and got burned by that like in the rare or lesser instances that I had mentioned above... It was just the quality of the logs. They looked great on the outside, but had some surprises on the inside... So for the remainder of that order, I concentrated on my dimensions, and making straight lumber, and not sawing for grade... In that case, it just worked out. When I saw slabs, its yet another story. Thick and wide slabs are, relatively speaking, high risk in drying. Slabs don't need any encouragement bowing, trusting, and so on, so I saw those with the method that typically minimizes the risks of this, and alleviates log tension...centered AND leveled pith...the other benefit to this when slabbing is you can isolate the pith to one slab, which is the slab most likely to be a defect slab. I hate giving up center bookmatched, but have seen too many go south and have 2 defect slabs. These are the methods that are currently working for me. Hope it helps, or helped to clarify anyhow. Feel free to comment, criticize, or suggest upon my statements, it only has the ability to help everyone, including myself.

[footer]

Great information bkaimwood! Like you said, I have tried all kinds of different things, and a lot of times its all just a crap shoot, because, like you said, after one or 2 cuts, you come across something you didn't expect.
I have had, what looked like a perfectly straight log, and centered the pith, to try and get the pith all contained in the center board, just to find it wandering all over the place through the length of the log. Im sure different kinds of trees have different results, as well as possibly growing conditions.
One of the things I have found with the taper sawing method, besides the ones you  have mentioned, is, at some point, you need to make a waste cut to square up the cant. If you end up with good wood all the way through, you still end up cutting some good wood off to scrap.

[bkaimwood]

Thanks footer...and you said it, the firewood wedge cut....in the order I mentioned, I was also looking for 4x4's where the log provided for them, or I could choke them out of it...so that was another reason to abort taper sawing early...there was already paid for board footage sitting locked away in there...but there always is, in some form...

[Verticaltrx]

How do you have everything laid out?

This is my layout and it works pretty well for my LT15, I would think it should be the same for any woodmizer:



 

My only change is that now I have my sawhorses for the flitches to be edged right next to the sawdust pile.

In pine cutting a variety of 1" siding and 2" framing lumber I can average 200-250bf/hr over a day, that's a LT15 with 19hp and power feed. That includes edging on the mill and stacking/stickering the lumber.

Here's my process:
First I load all the logs I think I'll need for a days worth of milling on my log deck, it can hold upwards of 2000bf worth of logs. Once the log deck is loaded I don't have to get on any equipment, just use my cant hook to roll the next log onto the mill. As I'm milling everything is within a few footsteps of the mill, two different cant hooks, chainsaw for trimming, ax, pallet full of stickers, empty pallets to stack lumber on, saw horses for flitches, etc.

Once I start milling a log, the slabs literally get thrown into a pile, I don't have take but one step away from the mill. Flitches I pick off the mill and set them right on the sawhorses, organizing them by one-sided vs two-sided and by size for quicker reloading and edging. As a board is cut I shove it off the end of the mill, bring the saw head back and start the mill cutting the next board. While it is sawing it usually gives me just enough time to pick up said board, sticker and stack it and return to get the next board as the mill finishes the cut. My goal is to constantly have the mill head moving and me doing other tasks while it is sawing (which has been the huge benefit of power feed).

Here's a pic of my little operation:


 

Hope some of this helps, I learned a lot about increasing efficiency from this forum. 

[dhp3228]

Thanks very much for all the information. I believe my biggest time consumption is that I'm working all aspects of the operation as well as dealing with larger lumber/beams. I shall continue to practice better accounting for my time. I'm cutting pines with 30" butts and 20' so even thin slabs are heavy. I do appreciate the post about leveling piths,etc.

Again I appreciate yalls wisdom it's not getting wasted on me.

[Brucer]

You don't need to keep a detailed record of your time forever. If you take the trouble to do it for a week or so, you will get a decent accounting for all the aspects of your operation.

Long lumber and timbers are time consuming. You should be charging extra for anything over 20'. The customers will pay because these sizes are hard to get. You will earn the money because you will be doing extra work to saw them.

I established my pricing for long timbers as follows. Surcharge of $0.06 per BF for every foot over 20'. In addition to that, $0.50 per BF if the boards/timbers were over 26', and a further $0.50 per BF if they were over 32' long. These surcharges were applied to the entire log. For example, for a 35' long 8x12 ...

My basic charge for 8x12 Douglas Fir, #1 structural, is $1.80 per BF.

Oversize surcharge = (35' - 20') x $0.06 = $0.90.
Additional charge for over 26' = $0.50.
Additional charge for over 32' = $0.50.

Total surcharge - $1.90 per BF x 280 BF = $532.
Basic charge - $1.80 per BF x 280 BF = $504.

Total price for the beam = $1036. And, yes, people were paying this amount.

Several years after I set up this price structure, someone handed me a cut-list that a competitor had quoted. Their over-length pricing structure was virtually the same as mine.

[AnthonyW]

I'm surprised the rate is that low on an LT40 hydraulic. You mentioned you are milling beams. The upside is less cuts for higher bdft, but slower to offload when working alone.

I have an LT25 all manual, I can run about 200bdft per hour working alone. Only the smallest of help gets me close to 250bdft. I lose the most time with the parbuckle loading.

Verticaltrx posted a picture which I started with but tweaked. I switched the flitch and slab areas. When the slab is cut, the head is toward the flitch stack in the picture. This required taking the slab off, walking to the other end of the mill and back. Placing them at the "north" end skipped the extra walking.

The saw horses for the flitches is a great idea and huge time saver. But instead of placing the fliteches near the sawdust and lumber stack areas (*where the slabs used to be), I found placing them between the lumber stack and live deck was faster. Faster both to unload and the flitch and then faster to reload  for edging. I also try to edge after every other log. It takes time to crank the mill head up and down. I have been playing with sorting the flitch stack by width versus double/single edgng.

[bkaimwood]

Nice, organized setup. If I may, only one major thing I would change. Get rid of the sawhorses. That probably means you lifted slabs onto them...more time and labor, and space consumption. In place of that, leave one extra "log slot" on your log load side, and as you saw off flitches to be edges, shove them off the top of the log to this new location. When you are done sawing the cant, slide them back onto the bed for edging. You just made more room, saved your back some, and a gained a bit of time...

[AnthonyW]

Nice, organized setup. If I may, only one major thing I would change. Get rid of the sawhorses. That probably means you lifted slabs onto them...more time and labor, and space consumption. In place of that, leave one extra "log slot" on your log load side, and as you saw off flitches to be edges, shove them off the top of the log to this new location. When you are done sawing the cant, slide them back onto the bed for edging. You just made more room, saved your back some, and a gained a bit of time...

So you are saying to use the load deck in place of the saw horses. It doesn't work well if you have a manual (opposed to a hydraulic) log clamp. The loading ramps, load deck, and saw horses impede access to the log clamp; slowing progress.

The OP stated he is running a LT40 hydraulic, so the log lift could provide the same function.

[bkaimwood]

Nice, organized setup. If I may, only one major thing I would change. Get rid of the sawhorses. That probably means you lifted slabs onto them...more time and labor, and space consumption. In place of that, leave one extra "log slot" on your log load side, and as you saw off flitches to be edges, shove them off the top of the log to this new location. When you are done sawing the cant, slide them back onto the bed for edging. You just made more room, saved your back some, and a gained a bit of time...

So you are saying to use the load deck in place of the saw horses. It doesn't work well if you have a manual (opposed to a hydraulic) log clamp. The loading ramps, load deck, and saw horses impede access to the log clamp; slowing progress.

The OP stated he is running a LT40 hydraulic, so the log lift could provide the same function.

That is correct, Anthony... I use the loading arms, like I would recommend the OP poster uses when possible. In a situation like in the above diagram, where a log load deck is present, i imagine its possible the log deck can be used in place of such... In some instances, I picture the deck may need a lever operating as a cattle chute, to keep this space open for intended use, without logs interfering. As far as the mention of this interfering with the manual log clamp, I don't know, never ran an LT15...you apparently do know. It was a suggestion made based upon a diagram with a poster inquiring about how he could improve the efficiency of his operation through looking at a diagram of his layout... beyond that I can't say. What I can say, or to further my possible suggestion, is to present another idea. Modify the manual clamp so this is not an issue. I know if it was my mill, I certainly would be doing that...I don't know if its possible? Anything is possible, so I guess is it reasonably possible. Someone with that mill and someone with mechanical aptitude may be able to help answer that. I am an old fart, so lifting things two and three times is not only hard on me, but it has a negative impact on the situation that we are looking to address... We are handling material more than it needs to be handled... This of course reduces efficiency and production... And makes for premature back failure...

[AnthonyW]

As far as the mention of this interfering with the manual log clamp, I don't know, never ran an LT15...you apparently do know. It was a suggestion made based upon a diagram with a poster inquiring about how he could improve the efficiency of his operation through looking at a diagram of his layout... beyond that I can't say. What I can say, or to further my possible suggestion, is to present another idea. Modify the manual clamp so this is not an issue. I know if it was my mill, I certainly would be doing that...I don't know if its possible? Anything is possible, so I guess is it reasonably possible.

I'm pretty mechinically inclined. I do not see a way to modify the manual clamp so you do not have to walk or personally be at the center of the mill between the loading ramps. It isn't that the deck or ramps interferes with the clamp. The deck/ramps interferes with you walking to the clamp. It gets really tiring walk around the ramps or tripping over them to get to the clamp. I load the log, then remove the ramps. Makes the area "cleaner" to walk around. I take them off and lay them across the log pile so they are right there and takes less than 30 seconds to put back on.

[bkaimwood]

Gotcha, Anthony... While reading your post, it jarred my memory of something I saw once...it was and OLD Wood-mizer, couldn't even tell the model. It only had one mod on it, and a valuable one...someone had fabbed a hydraulic log clamp on it...it was simple, crude, and worked...it was supplied hydraulic power by a 12v motor/reservoir like on a dump trailer, and a deep cycle battery... Food for thought...the time spent doing so may pay for itself in shoe soles and chiropractic adjustments...

[Verticaltrx]

Nice, organized setup. If I may, only one major thing I would change. Get rid of the sawhorses. That probably means you lifted slabs onto them...more time and labor, and space consumption. In place of that, leave one extra "log slot" on your log load side, and as you saw off flitches to be edges, shove them off the top of the log to this new location. When you are done sawing the cant, slide them back onto the bed for edging. You just made more room, saved your back some, and a gained a bit of time...

Not sure if this was directed at me, but the diagram is my setup, not the OPs, sorry for any confusion. Currently my sawhorses are next to the sawdust pile, and they are at basically the same level as the bed. Therefore, I only have to pick the flitch up, swing it over and onto the sawhorses, no real lifting. My goal is to always stay on the operator side of the mill except to load logs. Walking around it back and forth takes up too much time.