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Big Slabs: Sales and handling

Started by jemmy, June 23, 2017, 10:44:34 PM

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jemmy

I have acquired a few special logs that I intend to slab. I have a white oak that is 20ft+ with a 56" diameter at the base and tapers to 40", a red oak that is 16ft+ with a 40" base and hardly tapers, and lastly another piece of white oak that is 12ft long with 56" at the base and tapers to 40"...

Now I would love to keep all of these slabs true, and not cut them in half. However, I do not know the feasibility of selling 12ft+ slabs. I do not know even the first thing about selling slabs so if someone could bestow some knowledge about moving this many slabs for maximum dollar that would be great. I am not set on it, but I do plan on kiln drying them, but nothing further. Basically if someone could share marketing strategies, price points, how I should handle the logs or any other potential knowledge/perspective that would be a great help.   

 
Plan for the worst, hope for the best, and take what comes with a grin. - Grandpa Chuck

ToddsPoint

Impressive pic.  You look like you are victorious over that huge log.  Hope you have a wide mill.  Gary
Logosol M7, Stihl 660 and 290, Kubota L3901.

Savannahdan

Nice big logs.  I haven't handled that size of slab as far as length.  Do you plan on cutting them live edge top to bottom with a chainsaw mill or super-slabber (Lucas)?  Knowing your location would help some in giving you advice.  How long ago were the logs cut?  Good luck.
Husqvarna 3120XP, Makita DCS7901 Chainsaw, 30" & 56" Granberg Chain Saw Mill, Logosol M8 Farmers Mill

jemmy

The white oaks were cut two years ago, and the red oaks were cut this year. I am planning on using a chainsaw mill to slab them out. I am still looking for a power head that is capable of cutting 60". I am in Toledo, hio.
Plan for the worst, hope for the best, and take what comes with a grin. - Grandpa Chuck

paul case

life is too short to be too serious. (some idiot)
2013 LT40SHE25 and Riehl edger,  WM 94 LT40 hd E15. Cut my sawing ''teeth'' on an EZ Boardwalk
sawing oak.hickory,ERC,walnut and almost anything else that shows up.
Don't get phylosophical with me. you will loose me for sure.
pc

Ron Wenrich

I would think if you're going to be handling logs that big you could use a 4 stroke engine as a power source.  Are you planning to build the mill or buy a commercial one?  Who's going to do the kiln drying?

I've seen some 20' slabs that were spruce and used in a massive table at a B&B.  Very limited sales for something that long, unless you get to corporate.  If you cut 2" thick slabs, that white oak can be as much as 800 lbs.  You'll probably cut thicker, as you're going to have to level it out after drying. 

Before I would get very involved in getting into this, I would find someone that is actually doing what you want, and visit their operations.  You'll find out what you're getting into, and how long it will take for a turnaround in your investment. 
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Brad_bb

You do have time.  Mill them and restack them in order to air dry.  You need to create a level, flat base to stack on.  then you want to cover the top with tin.  Then let them air dry for a couple 2-4 years (assuming 2-3 inches thick).  Then if you want to kiln dry them to get the last bit of moisture out you can. 

If you're slabs dried and didn't twist and get all funky but remained fairly flat, you can then go to work with a 4x24 belt sander and smooth them out. 

Then you'll have to market them.  Will you be making them into tables or someone else?  Is your customer the end user or another wood worker who will build the tables?  Then they have to find the end user.  There's a lot of work involved in just making the table top start to finish, but can be profitable if you work efficiently.  It's probably best if you make multiple tables simultaneously.   You'll need a helper too.
Anything someone can design, I can sure figure out how to fix!
If I say it\\\\\\\'s going to take so long, multiply that by at least 3!

pineywoods

Please update your profile to show your location. that would help a bunch. There's a sawyer just down the road from me that can bandsaw a 53 inch slab. I see snow in your pic, meaning you not close enough to use him..
1995 Wood Mizer LT 40, Liquid cooled kawasaki,homebuilt hydraulics. Homebuilt solar dry kiln.  Woodmaster 718 planner, Kubota M4700 with homemade forks and winch, stihl  028, 029, Ms390
100k bd ft club.Charter member of The Grumpy old Men

Beavertooth

Your oak needs to be kiln dried. If you let it air dry it will dry out to fast and do things that you will not like. Red Oak has to be dried slow and white oak even slower. If you have it kiln dried you can control how fast it dries.
2007 LT70 Remote Station 62hp cat.

redbeard

Welcome too FF Jemmy
If you can slab them long all the better gives you lots of options for sales.
Consider milling 1/2" thicker than your projected finished thickness. We do alot of 2-1/2" and 3" thick slabbing.
The money slabs are on each side of pith or center of log.  Your live edge is closest to being 90°
Some features that are attractive are spike knots or where there was a limb, if you can catch it right it will stay with the slab when it dries.
Sometimes taking less money for them and selling them green is a good way too go, everything is beautiful when you first mill them. But alot happens as it air dries and kiln dries. Keeping them long gives lots of options for customer to pick the best length that they need for there project. Charge accordingly for the lengths left over. 6'- 8' lengths are good sellers also. Coffee tables too dinning room table.
You must have some heavy equipment to get that monster loaded.
Good luck with your slabbing venture.

Whidbey Woodworks and Custom Milling  2019 Cooks AC 3662T High production band mill and a Hud-son 60 Diesel wide cut bandmill  JD 2240 50hp Tractor with 145 loader IR 1044 all terrain fork lift  Cooks sharp

jemmy

Thank you all for the information. Now I would love to move a lot of slabs quickly because I know they are worth good money even as green. But how do I do so? I have heard of big suppliers that will buy them, but I cant seem to think (or find) any company that would want to buy these. I imagine if you get some really awesome slabs it wouldn't be hard find that right buyer, but I just don't know what mediums I should advertise or go for. Also what should the price of slab that is 20' total in length, 3" thick, with a taper of 56-50 for 16ft then spreads out to 60"+ for about 2ft in length, then finishes with 40" top? I have a lot of footage of how I got this tree loaded, and I didn't use anything besides my trucks, logs, chains, and some red-green/red neck ingenuity. I find all this stuff to be a riot, its tough work but I truly enjoy it, I am very thankful for all of your guys help!

 
Plan for the worst, hope for the best, and take what comes with a grin. - Grandpa Chuck

Magicman

Often the best way to develop a marketing scheme is to first try to buy the product.  Try Google and whatever sources that a prospective buyer might use to find the item(s).  Watch and see how fast they are selling and for how much. 
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

Brad_bb

Yeah, what they are actually selling for, not what crazy price someone is asking and hoping for....
Welcome to the addiction!....
Anything someone can design, I can sure figure out how to fix!
If I say it\\\\\\\'s going to take so long, multiply that by at least 3!

redbeard

Pricing wide slabs has some things too think about.
Value of the wood BF price
Expense of cutting the slab
You need too keep track of your time and efforts from getting the log to display for sale.
Measure the middle of slabs width use that for your BF price.
Leave the metal hits intact , you would be surprised at how many people that look for that feature.
Have a story for your log, location, age, ect. People like to connect with the tree.
Even if it was saved from the landfill that's a story.
Always get a picture of fresh cut slab you won't see these colors again untill someone finishes it down the road.
Most important have a secure planned out area for storage because every time you handle the monsters there's damage too it either a fork scrape or helping it check more. Pics are your seller.
E bay and Amazon are good outlets to sell and search for prices.


Whidbey Woodworks and Custom Milling  2019 Cooks AC 3662T High production band mill and a Hud-son 60 Diesel wide cut bandmill  JD 2240 50hp Tractor with 145 loader IR 1044 all terrain fork lift  Cooks sharp

rjwoelk

X2 on the sales story.
Here is a example what worked for my kids early teens.
The puppy's 6 weeks maybe 8, momma done got herself run over on the highway. They took pics wrote up a sob story sold all 5 in one day. $5 each .
All in the story.  :P
Lt15 palax wood processor,3020 JD 7120 CIH 36x72 hay shed for workshop coop tractor with a duetz for power plant

jemmy

Quote from: redbeard on June 25, 2017, 12:22:28 AM
You must have some heavy equipment to get that monster loaded.
Good luck with your slabbing venture.

I just got done with my video of loading this log onto my trailer! All I used was some dead ash trees for ramps and some trucks hooked up with chains. I hope you guys enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-91l2yEt6GQ&feature=youtu.be
Plan for the worst, hope for the best, and take what comes with a grin. - Grandpa Chuck

Classic1

If you think your going to kiln dry slabs in a conventional kiln at the same rate as dimensional lumber your going to end up with a pile of unusable lumber. 

You need to oversize slabs at least 3/4" in thickness minimum.  That's if you dry it properly.

People grossly underestimate labor it takes to post process large slabs after milling.  If your not drying in a vacuum kiln, you need to air dry for months before putting into a conventional kiln.
Lucas dsm23
Norwood hd36

Darrel

Welcome to the forum jemmy. Not much help when it comes to marketing, but I wish you luck.
1992 LT40HD

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

woodworker9

Quote from: Classic1 on June 28, 2017, 06:54:13 AM
If you think your going to kiln dry slabs in a conventional kiln at the same rate as dimensional lumber your going to end up with a pile of unusable lumber. 

You need to oversize slabs at least 3/4" in thickness minimum.  That's if you dry it properly.

People grossly underestimate labor it takes to post process large slabs after milling.  If your not drying in a vacuum kiln, you need to air dry for months before putting into a conventional kiln.

+1

I have a shed full of 10/4 and 12/4 slabs that have been air drying for 2 years now, and they are NOT even close to ready for being turned into furniture.
03' LT40HD25 Kohler hydraulic w/ accuset
MS 441, MS 290, New Holland L185

YellowHammer

Truth in all of the above. 
Slabs are heavy, hard to cut, hard to handle, slow to dry, easy to ruin, easy to check, prone to insects, easy to sticker stain, take up lots of room, must be stacked high to prevent cup and warp, generally must be put back on the mill to flatten, take double the effort to plane, and in general a very high load product.  Also, if the bark stays on, they are death to planer blades.

On the other hand, we sell a fair amount of live edge and edged different species of 9/4 and thicker at $$ multiples of standard 4/4.  We just took about 3,200 bdft out of the kiln this weekend and people are already asking to buy them before I've had a chance to let them cool down, almost.

Every time a customer comments how expensive they are, I look at them deadpan and say "yep, even at that, it's not hardly worth it for me to fool with...".  ;)


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

YellowHammer

I thought I'd post a few more specifics, as many of the replies were exactly dead on with what we see, based on our experience using conventional techniques, producing high quality live edge slabs is a profitable but difficult part of our business.  Its far from foolproof, and I have ruined my fair share, and many years ago even threw one whack into the burn pit I was so upset at how they turned out. 

A slabs value will increase the further it gets away the log.  Thick green slabs are not worth much, if any, more than the same piece of 4/4.  The value of a slab is how dry it gets and how defect free it remains.  The crude rule of thumb I use is that the finished defect rate basically squares as the wood gets thicker.  So a 2 inch piece of wood will have 4 times the end product defects as a 1 inch piece.  A 3 inch piece will have 9 times the defects.  This is also based on that a thicker piece of wood will have more internal defects and grain pattern changes so will move more as it dries.  So the only way to see how the slabs behave is to expend the time, space and expense to dry them, and the ones that show the best behavior will look great and be worth more money, considering that the ones that dried poorly will be cracked firewood. 

So we typically air dry most hardwood slabs for at least a year, then we put them in the kiln, finish and then sterilize them.  Then we sometimes have to put them back on the mill to skim them flat again, then we slice and dice out the ugly parts, and finally plane and sell.  Its a lot of work, and so we accordingly charge for it.

The problem with big slabs, and the reason their price goes up as they get closer to an end state, is that most people don't have the time, space or equipment to handle  and process them, so won't buy them until they are processed.  For example, very few furniture makers, let alone individuals, have the ability to plane a 50 inch slab, 20 feet long and make it come out executive table furniture quallity.  So to them, it may be a great piece of wood, but impossible for them to deal with.  So they won't buy it.  If I can't plane and straighten it with my machines to make it look good, how could I expect them?   So there are realistic tooling limits on live edge slab size that to be commercially marketable, except for the folks who take the wood all the way to finished product, who have invested in very specialized tools, and they can make really good money.  Also, most folks only want on live edge on one side of the board, and the other straight lined to go up against a wall, or to join to together more pieces of wood, such as a book match.  Its pretty hard to get a joint quality glue line 20 feet long, much less 8 tor 10 feet. We have invested many dollars to get the equipment required to do this.

The wood must be dried in a manner not to exceed the species maximum drying rate, and for red oak its 3.8% per day, white oak about half that.  I personally like to stay at about 2% per day red oak and about 1% for 4/4 white oak.  For 2 inch wood, half that number and the max rate I would be comfortable with on red oak would be 1% per day.  Unfortunately, outside air in Alabama usually dries the wood faster and it cracks, so techniques must be used to actually slow the air drying process down, which is what a kiln would do.  With a kiln, an acceptable drying rate can be maintained, and with thick wood, it is actually slower than air drying.  Of course, sometimes its faster, depending on species. The trick is to know how to dial in kiln time to maximize output. 

The value of a nearly perfect 60 inch slab is very dependent on the customer, and could be worth a lot of money.  However, retail folks rarely can handle a piece that big.  So you would have to find a specialty market.  Most of the slabs we sell are less than 25 inches wide, very high grade, planed both sides, table quality flat, 3 inches or less thick, and 8 to 12 feet long.  That covers 90% of the retail demand in this area.  We do have occasionally have thicker stuff but it will all have cracks and significant drying defects and typically will requires us to post process them to bring them to a customer's specifications.

There is a lot of information in the Drying and Processing section on this Forum.
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

woodworker9

Yellowhammer

That is an excellent, well written post, that describes, to a T, exactly what I go through.  I'm a guy who cuts my own, dries my own, and takes it to the finished product....making tables, benches, etc.....

I live 60 miles NW of Chicagoland, and the market for trendy furniture and cabinetry is always high, if you know what you're doing.  Many $2M plus homes around here, and the people who own them seem to always want to keep up with the Jones'es.  The simple fact is that live edge slab and farm tables are all the rage, and the more I can make, the more I can sell. 

There are over 100 post on Craigslist in my area alone trying to sell slabs.  I have taken the time to visit some of these sellers, and most of it is mishandled junk.  They've ignored almost all the important details that you hit on with your excellent post.

We have a lot of guys around here who think that they can take a chainsaw mill to a yard tree, slab it up, and next week sell the slabs for $800 to $1000 apiece.  Reality is dictating that these guys are making a lot of expensive firewood.  I brought my moisture meter, a very good Lignomat, to a guys place who was advertising "dried slabs" about a month ago.  My moisture meter had flickering lights between 18% and 20%.   Dried, huh.........yeah, right!  He asked me to leave.

On the other hand, a local retailer is asking, and getting, $1200 to $2000 apiece for 14/4 (yep....3 1/2" thick) walnut and cherry slabs from 20" to 40" wide.  He's got a sign up in his showroom explaining, with pictures, his new dehumidification kiln.  More than half his slabs had "SOLD" written in lumber crayon on them, with receipts stapled on, waiting for pick up.

I can tell you that for my own little furniture operation here, cutting and moving big, heavy slabs is a ton of extra work for me.  I have help from my 27 year old son some of the time, but most of the time, I'm cutting and moving them by myself.  I have a skidloader for moving logs, and then loading slabs, but it will not fit inside my current drying shed (19' X 25' with a doorway that is too small, with no room to turn the skidloader inside anyway, as it's almost full.)  I use a combination of pallet jack and appliance dolly to move them from the doorway to a sticker-stack.  I've got about 50, or so, 8/4, 10/4 and 12/4 slabs that have been air drying for up to 2 years now, all waiting for me to finish building my solar kiln.   There is a kiln service a couple of hours away, and I may just look into that.  I truly HATE the idea of losing control of the process, because if they ruin all this hard work I've put in to get this far, I think I'd probably lose it......

Anyway, thanks for a great post detailing several of the pitfalls of the slab business.  Bottom line is that I think a person can generate a lot of gross income cutting and selling slabs.  Whether or not that person actually makes any profit will be determined by how quickly they learn the lessons you describe above.
03' LT40HD25 Kohler hydraulic w/ accuset
MS 441, MS 290, New Holland L185

rjwoelk

If you decide to dry these slabs, you need to dry a lot of wood you can aford to lose first. then i would slab some aford to lose wood and try that out. then when you feel confident go for it. Take a drying course and see if it is someing you want to do . Search for some one with a dryer to do it. See what his sucesss is first.
Just my 2 cents. 8)
Lt15 palax wood processor,3020 JD 7120 CIH 36x72 hay shed for workshop coop tractor with a duetz for power plant

grouch

Quote from: Brad_bb on June 24, 2017, 10:51:04 AM
[snip]

If you're slabs dried and didn't twist and get all funky but remained fairly flat, you can then go to work with a 4x24 belt sander and smooth them out. 

[snip]

Couldn't you do this faster (with less dust!) with a router in a sled and frame?

[Edit to add photos:]

I've only done this on a small scale, but could it be scaled up to the size slabs y'all have been talking about?








Find something to do that interests you.

Ianab

Assume a big slab of wood is going to move somewhat, and for a table or bar top, you want a perfectly flat surface, not a slightly cupped one. Once you get it all smooth and varnished, any cup etc is going to be obvious by looking at reflections of windows etc in the surface.

The router bridge that Grouch shows will work, but it's not really a production tool. But it's cheap and would get you started with some slabs to sell and gauge your market. If you are making furniture, then smoothing down a couple of  table tops is certainly practical.

I use a similar method, with my router mounted on my old mill frame. Router rolls up and down the slab on the mill carriage and I can slide it across the slab each pass. Works well. You don't get a "finished" slab, there will be some "swirly" machine marks, but it's perfectly flat, and ready to start sanding  with maybe an 80 grit?

If you get serious, there is a planer attachment for most swingblade mills. Replace the circle blade with a round cutter head with carbide cutters mounted in it. Ready to go with a ~20 hp router.  ;D
Weekend warrior, Peterson JP test pilot, Dolmar 7900 and Stihl MS310 saws and  the usual collection of power tools :)

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