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Production?

Started by carykong, December 13, 2016, 02:30:30 PM

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carykong

Forum
Is a WM LT 40 hydraulic with a loader,a sawyer,2 helpers capable of averaging 3MBFT for 8 hours over a full month weekends off?

york

What are the logs like???
Albert

ozarkgem

MM or some of the LT 40 guys should be able to answer that. The kind and size of logs will play a big part. I'm a small mm. Mighty Mite saw man.
Mighty Mite Band Mill, Case Backhoe, 763 Bobcat, Ford 3400 w/FEL , 1962 Ford 4000, Int dump truck, Clark forklift, lots of trailers. Stihl 046 Magnum, 029 Stihl. complete machine shop to keep everything going.

Gearbox

A lot depends on what your sawing [ example ]  you cant get much footage sawing 1 X 4 X 8 out of 6 inch logs . I think it should be doable with good logs and a willing crew with support equipment . You will all go home tired .
A bunch of chainsaws a BT6870 processer , TC 5 International track skidder and not near enough time

Bandmill Bandit

Quote from: carykong on December 13, 2016, 02:30:30 PM
Forum
Is a WM LT 40 hydraulic with a loader,a sawyer,2 helpers capable of averaging 3MBFT for 8 hours over a full month weekends off?

Capable? yes for a few hours with prefect, consistant logs and NO errors or break donws.

Sustainable? highly unlikely!

My LT40 almost super (with the upgrades I've done) can sustain 275 to 300 BF/hour (2000BF+/day average) in good timber and a well laided out mill yard WITH a good loader and operator AND a very good helper.

Good logs defined as 1) bucked to 10's 12's, +6",  2) minimum 12" small end AND straight, 3)decked on an orderly pile at 90* to the end of the mill, 2"X6" and larger dimensions( the larger, the higher your output will be). there are other things that help but this is the major stuff.

These numbers are from 9 years of experience and are my average understated by about 10%. the upgrades upped my output by about 50% or about 100BF per hour.       

A LT40 Super OR an LT50 is where you numbers are pointing. AND you will still need GOOD logs,  GOOD help and equipment in a GOOD lay out to do it.

If you're only sawing on weekends it may take you a year to develop the skill and expertise to do it consistently.
Skilled Master Sawyer. "Skilled labour don't come cheap. Cheap labour dont come skilled!
2018 F150 FX4, Husqvarna 340, 2 Logright 36 inch cant hooks and a bunch of stuff I built myself

JustinW_NZ

What type of wood?
And is that just sawn flat stacked wood or filleted wood and strapped ready for air drying?
All these things dont take long if well set up BUT doing it lots and lots it takes time up...

I have found having a good loader around the mill helps a lot for either quickly moving logs or moving the stacked bundles.

Cheers
Justin
Gear I run;
Woodmizer LT40 Super, Treefarmer C4D, 10ton wheel loader.

Magicman

What is the cut list?  The productivity difference between sawing 1" and 2" is huge.  Not double, but significant.

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

WDH

It does not sound doable from my experience.
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

ncsawyer

Sounds like a pretty tall order to me, but anything is possible.  If you are cutting all 2x stuff with good logs and good help you could no doubt hit 3,000 in a day.  Doing that every day, day in and day out, for an entire month is another story.

With that kind of production, you are going to accumulate a large pile of slabs near the mill, a large pile of sawdust near the mill, and a large pile of lumber near the mill that will all have to be moved or cleaned up at some point. 

Using one of your 8 hour sawing days to do these things will eat in to your production. 
2015 Wood-Mizer LT40DD35
Woodmaster 718 planer
Ford 445 Skip Loader

terrifictimbersllc

It could be done but I wouldn't tell anyone who hasn't done it to plan on it. Everything would have to be very right including sawyer, help, mill, and cut list which would be best with a lot of 2x boards that one person can handle. Most of log staging, cleanup, stacking, maintenance, repairs, fueling, filling lube bottles, interacting with customers etc would need to fall outside the 8hrs or be helped by others.  A spare mill wouldn't hurt either.

2000 bf/8hr with the situation optimized would be a more realistic plan.
DJ Hoover, Terrific Timbers LLC,  Mystic CT Woodmizer Million Board Foot Club member. 2019 LT70 Super Wide 55 Yanmar,  LogRite fetching arch, WM BMS250 sharpener/BMT250 setter.  2001 F350 7.3L PSD 6 spd manual ZF 4x4 Crew Cab Long Bed

Magicman

In my Reply #6 I almost said that I would not take it on, but you guys would have accused me of being old and slow.  ;D 
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

Bandmill Bandit

With all the experience that has weighed in here so far the general consensus is NO it is not a feasible goal for any of us that have a few thousand hours of experience under our belt. My mill has just few hours shy of 2000 mill hours and my total hours of experience around that mill doing the things that keep it productive are probably closer to 5000(including the 2000ish mill hours). Granted a good portion of those hours are the hours I took to make the mods to turn it into an "almost super" that would not have been spent had I bought a 40 super or a 50 in the first place.

My production numbers are based on the hours on the mill's hour meter and that number in 9 years is just over 2200 BF averaged out over 8 hours days. Even with my mill I would be hard pushed to sustain the kind of average production you are targeting day in and day out.

Also taking 5 days off will likely reduce your productivity the first day back on the mill by about 20% for that day.

My advice? Dont try it! It will bite you in the butt real hard!

An LT50 with a full load of options, 24 foot live infeed deck, slab/sawdust transfer belt and a semi auto scramble out feed table with a dedicated loader man and a very good off bearer would get you close to that average. 

Oh! Forgot to mention at least a twin blade edger in the production line, which would make sure you could sustain the production.     
Skilled Master Sawyer. "Skilled labour don't come cheap. Cheap labour dont come skilled!
2018 F150 FX4, Husqvarna 340, 2 Logright 36 inch cant hooks and a bunch of stuff I built myself

carykong

Thank you forum for the insight

Brucer

It depends ...

Material handling will be your biggest bottleneck. Since you want to do it long term, you will need to have a plan for dealing with everything you make right up until it is disposed of: lumber, edgings, slabs, sawdust, even those annoying little bits and pieces of bark and wood that seem to accumulate everywhere. Your material handling plan will have to include dealing with things like dunnage, stickers (if you plan to sticker the wood), and lumber tarps (if you plan to use them).

You will also have to allow time for dealing with customers, doing paperwork, moving "stuff". You will need to deal with blades -- sharpening them, or packaging them up to send to resharp.

You will need to allow time to maintain the mill. I allow a full day for every hundred hours on the meter. That takes care of minor servicing every 50 hours, a full service every 100 hours, plus dealing with preventive maintenance and the odd breakdown.

In theory, with 3 full time, experienced workers and all your logs the ideal size, plus a perfect setup, you could push out 3000 BF/day -- but that doesn't allow for maintenance downtime. I would not expect to see this kind of production right from day one (if it is possible).


There is a guy just outside of town here who wants to try for 5000 BF/day on an LT40, sawing Western Red Cedar cants :o. His plan is to start off slow and over several months fine tune the material handling. I told him he was really pushing the limits, but he's going to try. I'll let you know how he makes out.
Bruce    LT40HDG28 bandsaw
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."

longtime lurker

I dunno much about bandsaws.
I know even less about thin band bandmills like an LT40. But thats okay because the guys who've commented above do: Theres some very experienced men with that same piece of equipment weighed in on this saying its unlikely to be achievable.

What I do know about is production sawing. Bigger repayments on faster equipment are always a better solution then throwing more labour at a problem - repayments are fixed and you can budget around them. Labour needs days off, disappears to other jobs when you can least afford it leaving you to train up replacements under pressure, and gets sour when the oil in the hydraulic tank hasn't been cold in three weeks.
Another issue is the support equipment (loaders and forklifts, log infeeds, transfer decks, docking saws, waste conveyors) and the site costs (power, property taxes, insurance, land and buildings) all cost pretty much the same to install and maintain regardless of how much wood flows over them each day.

The real question is "Whats the log resource?" Your log resource in terms of volume, log sizes, log grades, and species are the determining factor in what the best equipment for any operation is.

Theres nothing wrong with starting small and building up, or starting small and staying small.
But you need to start with the right equipment rather then starting with equipment not suitable to your logs or not suitable for the production of your intended market products. That way even if you've got a struggle sourcing ongoing log supply, and a struggle to establish markets, at least one part of the operation (turning the logs you get to the products you want) is efficient and relatively easy. Otherwise you're facing an uphill battle on every front, because theres one other place you can go when you start small and thats broke.
The quickest way to make a million dollars with a sawmill is to start with two million.

OlJarhead

Lots of great answers here and even though my new LT40 only has just over 200 hours on it I'd say:  not very likely.

My best days on the LT40 were in the 2500-2800bf range (would have to go back and look) and only with good logs, good help and milling larger dimension stuff.  Any time I get down to 1x's things slow down.

I'm happy if I'm milling in the 250-350bf/hr range and only once sustained just shy of 400bf/hr (you're asking if you can sustain 375 bf/hr over a month)....

I started on an LT10 which I later put on a trailer and though I did get that little mill humming I never sustained much over 150bf/hr on it...then I moved to the LT40 and while I have milled a sustained rate of just shy of 400bf/hr it was only one day milling larger stuff (2x's and beams)...most days I'm in the 250-300bf/hr range unless I'm milling small logs then it drops (sometimes like a rock).
2016 LT40HD26 and Mahindra 5010 W/FEL WM Hundred Thousand BF Club Member

tmbrcruiser

I have a question to add to yours. How much production would an edger add to the days average?
Once you get sap in your veins, you will always have sawdust in your pockets.

Bandmill Bandit

In the description I give reply #4, I sawed into an edger on that job.

I did not include edged lumber in the days totals cause I got the production numbers for that lumber at end of day on Friday. Average weekly production of edged lumber was 4800BF. So I was sending just shy of a 1000BF per day to the edger.

That would be real close to 50% productivity increase; BUT, I did no handling of the lumber once it was stacked & stickered. Loader operator picked it up at the end of my mill and took it to the edger. So 50% is some what misleading but its close.     
Skilled Master Sawyer. "Skilled labour don't come cheap. Cheap labour dont come skilled!
2018 F150 FX4, Husqvarna 340, 2 Logright 36 inch cant hooks and a bunch of stuff I built myself

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