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planing prices

Started by xlogger, September 19, 2016, 06:17:56 AM

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xlogger

I'm starting to get more asking about planing boards and slabs now. I got a 20" Jet awhile back with spiral head that I've only play with so far. How do others of you change? I'd rather have a linear foot charge than hourly. I was thinking about .25 per foot one side with maybe some min. charge of $20
Got a guy coming this morning and he wants some pine boards plane after he buys them.
Timberking 2000, Turbo slabber Mill, 584 Case, Bobcat 773, solar kiln, Nyle L-53 DH kiln

sawwood


XLogger we charge .45cents linear foot to planer, We also charge .25 cents to joint one face
before planning.

Sawwood
Norwood M4 manual mill, Solar Kiln, Woodmaster
18" planer/molder

Glenn1

I am charging 50 cents a bdft for planing both sides and  50 cents a bdft to joint one edge.  I do not charge a minimum charge.  If they also need the other edge ripped, that is 25 cents a bdft. 
Vacutherm IDry, Nyle 53 Kiln, New Holland Skid Steer, Kaufman Gooseneck Trailer, Whitney 32A Planer

petefrom bearswamp

I have been charging .20 per bd ft per face.
maybe I should raise may rate.
I very reluctantly agree to joint or rip.
Kubota 8540 tractor, FEL bucket and forks, Farmi winch
Kubota 900 RTV
Polaris 570 Sportsman ATV
3 Huskies 1 gas Echo 1 cordless Echo vintage Homelite super xl12
57 acres of woodland

WDH

I am a 50 cents per BF guy.  If you buy 100 BF, and I finish plane it for you because you don't have a planer, you are getting a good deal.  I am at 50 cents per BF to joint and 50 cents to rip parallel.  If that is too much for a customer, they can go build themselves a shop, and buy all the equipment to outfit it.  Or, they can just quit woodworking or go buy the hardwood at the Box Store that sells for 2.5 more than what I charge. 
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

Tom the Sawyer

I am curious about those charging by the board foot.  Does your price apply, no matter how many times it goes through the planer?  I have been charging $60 per hour ($1 per minute).
07 TK B-20, Custom log arch, 20' trailer w/log loading arch, F350 flatbed dually dump.  Piggy-back forklift.  LS tractor w/FEL, Bobcat S250 w/grapple, Stihl 025C 16", Husky 372XP 24/30" bars, Grizzly 20" planer, Nyle L200M DH kiln.
If you call and my wife says, "He's sawin logs", I ain't snoring.

YellowHammer

50 cents per Bdft to bring a board to 3/4" or 25 cents per 1/8" pass after that. My boards are skip planed to 15/16" (I outsource that) efore we put them in the rack, and that helps to significantly sell product.  It lets the customer see the wood, and it also sets up the wood with a constant, standardized thickness so I can dimensionally plane very easily, taking max width on the planer, since all the high spots have been removed.  With a 22 inch planer, and one designed with segmented cutter head to plane multiple boards in one pass, I can really rip through the boards, say planing 3 six inch boards at one pass, or just constantly feeding.  Even though the planer can take a big bite, I will take a digestble 1/8" pass on each side of the board to keep it balanced and have a nice finish on both sides.

Planing is a service, and the customers who have the little lunch box planers generally don't need me to plane one or two boards, but will look at a big stack of lumber they just purchased with sadness and tears in their eyes, telling me it would take them all day to run the stack on their planer, and are happy to have us plane it.  So they gladly pay to save their time.  Also, these larger planers do a great job and have almost no snipe, so the customer gets a better finish than if they used their planer. 

I also charge 50 cents per Bdft to straight line rip, if they want me to do it. 

So my justification in investing in a good planer is that at 50 cents per Bdft, I make as much as if I was sawing the wood with a lot less effort, and adding an SLR capability, I can gain another 50 cents per Bdft, and pay for the logs.

Of course, to make this work right, the tools need to be decently fast.  My mid sized planer will plane 800 Bdft per hour one side, or 400 Bdft for a double pass, which is typical.  That's $200 per hour, which isn't bad money, and starts to pay the machines off pretty fast. 





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

bobvan

I am very new to the forum.  I'm trying to decide if I can afford to process a ten acre wood lot into good furniture grade lumber. I've done a lot of foot work collecting pricing for all the work that needs to be done to accomplish this.  I have quotes for all the different services I will need. I have almost all the tools I think I will need to do the wood working I plan to do with the lumber. I have just one power tool yet to purchase. A planer.  Depending how far I go into the business of trees to furniture, I never considered a planer as the best bang for my buck.  I thought of buying a band mill, or building a kiln as the logical steps toward being self-sufficient in my small business.  When I see the fees you charge for planing I can only think that the planer is a great and maybe best piece of equipment to purchase. Am I missing something? Could a planing service stand on its own or does it only work if you have all the other services to combine it with? Based on the info I have now it appears to be the highest cost, value added,  service.  A planing business on the surface sounds very lucrative and a whole lot better than messing with logs in a forest, trucking, stacking, moving into a kiln etc. not that all that stuff isn't fun on some level.  Thanks in advance.

Bob Van

longtime lurker

Quote from: bobvan on October 10, 2016, 11:34:55 AM
I am very new to the forum.  I'm trying to decide if I can afford to process a ten acre wood lot into good furniture grade lumber. I've done a lot of foot work collecting pricing for all the work that needs to be done to accomplish this.  I have quotes for all the different services I will need. I have almost all the tools I think I will need to do the wood working I plan to do with the lumber. I have just one power tool yet to purchase. A planer.  Depending how far I go into the business of trees to furniture, I never considered a planer as the best bang for my buck.  I thought of buying a band mill, or building a kiln as the logical steps toward being self-sufficient in my small business.  When I see the fees you charge for planing I can only think that the planer is a great and maybe best piece of equipment to purchase. Am I missing something? Could a planing service stand on its own or does it only work if you have all the other services to combine it with? Based on the info I have now it appears to be the highest cost, value added,  service.  A planing business on the surface sounds very lucrative and a whole lot better than messing with logs in a forest, trucking, stacking, moving into a kiln etc. not that all that stuff isn't fun on some level.  Thanks in advance.

Bob Van

It's probably very location specific, but my gut tells me that overall the answer would be no. There is money to be made in wood machining, but to get enough work to be viable you'd need a straight line rip or better yet a panel saw, a jointer, a wide bed thicknesser and a moulder. Plus dust extraction sufficient unto the task. Plus a knife grinder because ultimately it's the custom moulding that gets feet in the door, particularly matching existing mouldings for restoration work. You also need good workspace and good power. Lots and lots of power because every capacity increase means bigger motors and more of them.

It's all about throughput: we run a big old foursider for DAR which means my machine makes the same amount of money as the above per side for straight dressing but at least twice or four times as fast, and often more because the old girl can feed faster as well. Or the way I look at it is I spend ½ or ¼ of the time doing the same task, make the same money and get back to my dog box in the greenmill sooner.

I guess the thing all boils down to how much do you want to spend on equipment? It's a nice little sideline if you've got a mill and kiln. It can be a highly profitable businesses if you've got the right equipment in a place where there's market demand for it.But as with any other type of business you aren't going to drop a couple of grand on a machine and expect it to feed the wife and kids and meet a house payment.

The quickest way to make a million dollars with a sawmill is to start with two million.

bobvan

Thank you Longtime,
   I guessed that it would have to be a sideline to an existing enterprise which I have yet to establish. For now I will probably outsource all my lumber processing services. I am exploring all aspects of the business and trying to determine if I want to invest in equipment for any of the tasks required.    Primarily I struggle with which, if any, machines I want to buy.  Before I found this post about planning I was toying with purchasing either a band mill or a kiln.  Trying to decide what was my best return on investment.   I do find it interesting, based on the rates for services, in my area, that the numbers for planning seemed proportionally out of place.  I'm not sure how it works where you are but my price for service is as follows.  All are cents per bd. Ft.   
Trucking to mill 5 to 7,       sawing offsite 14 to 35,         Portable sawing at site 25 to 45, Kiln drying 35 to 45 and planning 45 to 50.   This is what drew my interest.  Equipment cost vs service charge it generates.   I know that I will not be purchasing a truck at $200,000. That's a wild guess based on what a gentleman told me they cost. I have never personally priced one. Just know I can't.     The mill I am interested in would be around $25,000. The Kiln would be around $13,000 in rough numbers.       A planer would be between $4,000 and $6,000.
           I know it wouldn't hold a candle to your equipment.   My equipment selections are based on my idea of what my one man enterprise may need or more importantly afford. So just based on the numbers I have been able to gather, the planer looks like a very good investment all around.  Probably not for a primary service but not a bad paper ROI.  My analysis will probably be silly to most and full of holes but it became a subject I want to explore a little further.  That's not easy when you are a complete outsider to the subject and trying to break into the fast paced, action packed world of wood. I really appreciate this forum for all the info I have gotten so far.
Thanks again.

longtime lurker

My equipment is old. Pretty much all of it.
But it's old, in good condition, maintained well, and seriously heavy duty. Not always user friendly though. To use a truck analogy most of these guys run F150's, I run a 40 year old road train rated Mack with a recent engine rebuild. If you do go into it, don't discount second hand equipment, you got to look for good ones but they're out there often at reasonable prices - " too big" to be warranted for the average shop so there's not a lot of demand - mechanical experience is an advantage though as you'll spend a lot of time at the start ironing out the wrinkles. You'll also need to find someone to inspect machines that knows what they're looking at because some of it should only go for scrap and no amount of money can bring them back.

Replacement cost of a 4 sided planer of similar quality and capacity to ours would be around the $100k mark. I was up and running for about 9... but I looked at a lot of the things to find a good one and got a hell of a bargain.

Reality of most enterprises wood related is that regardless of where we are in the world it's a pretty tough business. Long hours, lot of sweat, not much job security, and you either like it or you don't. You really need to spend time working with millers and working with wood machinists before you drop a dime, and there's a learning curve with all of it. It's bit more then just feed the logs to saw or feed the boards to machine.
The quickest way to make a million dollars with a sawmill is to start with two million.

customsawyer

Keep in mind that you can buy a planer for 6-9 grand. Then you have to get 3 phase power, and a dust collection system all of which isn't cheap. My 4 sided planer cost more than 25 grand and we don't even want to get in to the cost of tooling and all the other things that go with it.
Two LT70s, Nyle L200 kiln, 4 head Pinheiro planer, 30" double surface Cantek planer, Lucas dedicated slabber, Slabmizer, and enough rolling stock and chainsaws to keep it all running.
www.thecustomsawyer.com

GeneWengert-WoodDoc

The answer also depends on what quality you need.  An inexpensive planer will not achieve uniform thicknesses, will have cheaper components, like the end plate that will wear and create machining defects.  Resharpening is often very difficult and then the blade replacement to get a smooth surface again is extremely difficult.  Motor power is lower with cheaper units, so removal rates, especially with dense woods like oak, are very small...so multiple passes are needed.  More passes mean quicker dulling.  Knife quality is poorer with cheaper machines.

There are many reconditioned units available...expensive, quality, used machines at a reasonable price.
Gene - Author of articles in Sawmill & Woodlot and books: Drying Hardwood Lumber; VA Tech Solar Kiln; Sawing Edging & Trimming Hardwood Lumber. And more

jim blodgett

Bobvan - Harvesting your own trees and processing them into fine furniture is a romantic idea, for sure.  Just understand that log harvesting is a profession. So is processing those logs into lumber. So is furniture making. Each of those professions require expertise, specific tools and equipment (investment and maintenance).

There are only so many hours in the day, days in a year.  Are you trying to earn a living selling this furniture? Or is it something you do for fun?  If you need to generate income, will the profits from the furniture you sell pay for your overhead and repay your initial investment(s)?

What you are thinking about is (I think) called a "vertical trust" wherein you own/control every step in the process of producing that furniture.  They CAN work, but there are drawbacks too. There is a certain efficiency to focussing on one aspect in a chain and optimising that single part, instead of keeping the entire process in house - it's why we have such a division of labor in today's marketplace.

Keep dreaming, though. I applaud it. Someone once told me "when you decide you can't do something, you are right".

Darrel

I have a complete system for getting a tree from the forest all the way to a finished piece of furniture. Well, at least I can get by with what I have. Bought it all used except for the planer, a 12" Dewalt. But I don't have a shop to put it in so most of it just sits in storage. When I bought it I had access to a shop that wasn't mine but now access has been denied.

Bottom line, think it through and make sure all ducks are lined up. (Old saying)  right now most of what I do is sawing logs for people and saving for a place to put the rest of my machinery.

Hindsight being20/20, if I had it to do all over again, I'd stop with the purchase of my mill.
1992 LT40HD

If I don't pick myself up by my own bootstraps, nobody else will.

longtime lurker

The thing about vertically integrating so you can put your hand on a finished item and say you cut the tree down and took it right through to here is that you need to get a significant premium for your work to make it pay.

It takes a whole wack of gear to do all the things involved - harvest tree, saw, dry, finish, assembly, apply coating, market and finally sell - efficiently. It doesn't take so much gear to do it inefficiently, time mostly, but time IS money.

One of the realities of this business is that a board isn't worth more because it took you longer to cut it. You could say that about every step in the process I guess.

Thing being there are people who do what you wish to do: start with tree and the sale item is a table. And some of them make a decent living at it. I think you've got to be good at the marketing side though, you need to be able to engage people with the story to get them to pay the premium it deserves. Good luck with it.. I kinda envy those who can do that thing.
The quickest way to make a million dollars with a sawmill is to start with two million.

SawmillSylvia

Quote from: bobvan on October 10, 2016, 11:34:55 AM
I am very new to the forum.  I'm trying to decide if I can afford to process a ten acre wood lot into good furniture grade lumber. I've done a lot of foot work collecting pricing for all the work that needs to be done to accomplish this.  I have quotes for all the different services I will need. I have almost all the tools I think I will need to do the wood working I plan to do with the lumber. I have just one power tool yet to purchase. A planer.  Depending how far I go into the business of trees to furniture, I never considered a planer as the best bang for my buck.  I thought of buying a band mill, or building a kiln as the logical steps toward being self-sufficient in my small business.  When I see the fees you charge for planing I can only think that the planer is a great and maybe best piece of equipment to purchase. Am I missing something? Could a planing service stand on its own or does it only work if you have all the other services to combine it with? Based on the info I have now it appears to be the highest cost, value added,  service.  A planing business on the surface sounds very lucrative and a whole lot better than messing with logs in a forest, trucking, stacking, moving into a kiln etc. not that all that stuff isn't fun on some level.  Thanks in advance.

Bob Van


I guess the main down side I see to running a planing business is the transport of all that lumber for a very small added value. Someone would have to load all of the lumber onto a trailer, and then offload it to run it through the machine, and then load it on the trailer again. I'm glad that person wouldn't be me! If it was me, I would hope the shop had big garage doors and not tiny annoying ones! I certainly don't mind offloading lumber, but I would want to at least be running it through a joiner, table saw, and thickness sander if I was going to go through the initial transport effort.

Also, although a planer doesn't cost that much, you have to consider shop space, electricity, advertising, etc. If you are charging 50 cents to plane the board, how much profit are you actually making? My guess is it would take a lot of boards to pay off even a $4000 machine.

bobvan

Thanks for the insight.  Vertical Trust.  Interesting. The concept of starting with a tree and ending up with a finished product is daunting to say the least. I haven't given up yet but an unforeseen family problem has haulted production for this year.  As always you have given me much to think about. I am always impressed with the depth you all go to in giving ideas and help to guys like me.

It is very much appreciated.

5quarter

I saw primarily for inventory. A component of my business is cabinet/furniture work. 90% of the inventory gets used in shop and perhaps 10% is sold as lumber. custom furniture accounts for perhaps 20% of income; the remaining 80% is taken up with piano and furniture restoration. custom sawing and other endeavors account for walking around money. I almost never build on spec. clients come with drawings, sketches or magazine articles and their checkbook. Before hiring out as a cabinet/furniture maker, I took about three years to build a significant inventory. at any given time, I have 6-8 mbft  dry and ready for use and 2-3 mbft air drying in the stacks. I have yet to tell a client that I don't have the lumber to build their project.
I suggest starting small...very small. take down some trees and have them sawn. While the lumber is drying, buy a few tools so when the wood is ready, so are you. build some stuff for you and your wife. do a few small jobs if they come your way. see how it goes. If you like it and you want to pursue it a little further, buy a trailer and a small band saw mill.  Take down some more trees and saw them yourself. maybe there is a demand in your area for selling lumber, perhaps custom furniture or like you mention, maybe planing, molding or kiln drying. maybe the biggest demand is simply the sawing. The forest floor is littered with the bodies of would-be companies who spend 1/2 a million $$ on equipment and jump into a market that simply will not support their investment. look  forward to following your progress.
What is this leisure time of which you speak?
Blue Harbor Refinishing

Cedarman

Why think only in being a one man show?  Sure, it can be a pain to hire someone to help.  Planing and moulding works much better with an off bearer.  One thing to think about is if you cannot afford to hire someone to do some work, then is the work worth doing?
I am in the pink when sawing cedar.

Peter Drouin

Quote from: Cedarman on December 11, 2016, 12:20:24 PM
  One thing to think about is if you cannot afford to hire someone to do some work, then is the work worth doing?


smiley_thumbsup
A&P saw Mill LLC.
45' of Wood Mizer, cutting since 1987.
License NH softwood grader.

ScottCC

I live this dream and it is easy to say it is way harder than you could ever imagine.  The more you learn the dumber you feel.  The more you spend the more you need.  That being said, if you can stick it out to a point you feel successful you will realize the money is not the object.  But you will also have to figure out what is the point for you.  As for planing, I have a woodmizer mp100.  I think pricing in terms of square foot bc that is what wears the blade, I get at least 50 cents bc of what the machine can do, huge timbers, big dimensions, excellent surface, every pass joints the wood.  I have yet to find anyone around that can do this.  But before you do one thing write a business plan.  That will tell the tale.
Necessity is the mother of invention.  Poverty is its big brother.  WM mp100, WM eg100, WM sp4000 chip extractor,  WM 260 molder on order ,WM electric  lt15 wide with extra track, 71 Oliver allterrain forklift, 26' flat bed trailer, road legal log arch, homemade kiln, AutoCAD lt15

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