In a discussion below two professionals spoke of buying lumber at Woodcraft and other consumer sources, perhaps implying they bought lumber for a project in small quantities. In general I see two ways of buying lumber- what is needed for a job at hand or buying in quantity and maintaining inventory for whatever comes up. I presumed most professional, and serious amateur, woodworkers bought inventory and worked out of it. The advantages would seem to be better price, better selection for the need, better quality if purchases are timed to favorable points in market cycle. The disadvantages are space to store and carrying cost of inventory, though with the ever increasing price of hardwood it can be considered an investment. Another factor could be knowledge of how to buy larger quantities for inventory.
How do you buy and what factors sway the decision?
I don't often buy lumber, but when I do I always get more than I need. If it turns out I need more than estimated it's already on hand. I save any excess for future projects. If I didn't have plenty of storage space I might do things differently.
I usually buy for the project plus about 30-40 percent. This will usually handle the other work that comes my way since I don't do all that much any more. I am 165 miles from any decent supply so that is why I add some each time. This past week I needed a little more Oak. So I bought one 1x6x8 for $31.96. OUCH.
I go to the lumber dealer/yard after I have a rough idea how much lumber I need (and of which types (4/4, 8/4, etc.) and which species).
I buy the lumber. While I'm waiting for my order, I usually peruse the racks and see what they have. Once in a while I buy some wood on spec.
My biggest problem is me - I find myself buying lumber for which I don't have a project. I also usually buy a little extra as the closest lumber yard to where I live closed - and it is a LONG drive to where I buy lumber now.
So I guess I buy what is needed for the job for the most part. But sometimes you just can't pass up that 12" W piece of lumber.
Odd man out, here. I'm strictly a 'hobby' woodworker, but having said that, I generally keep about a hundred board feet each of maple, red oak, cherry, and walnut on hand in the barn, along with a bit of ash, hickory, and birch.
Most of it is 4/4, with some 8/4 in the mix. I have several Amish sawmills close by, and also a local sawyer who has a kiln. The local guy will kiln dry wood for 10¢ a foot if it's going in with a load of his own stuff.
I run a small woodshop that is part of a general contracting company. Each wood purchase receipt has to be assigned to a specific job. I'd prefer to keep a stock of the species I use most, just for convenience, but buying for the project at hand works well. We get wholesale prices and by being on good terms with salespeople I get good quality.
Over time I've been able to save up leftover stock and by using the first principle of woodpile management (use the worst piece that is good enough) the shop now has a small inventory.
When I was first building for hire I carefully calculated needed board feet per project and purchased that and maybe a board extra. Usually worked out.
As I became more experienced I could figure what I needed without drawing up a full plan and materials list. I also learned to figure in a certain percentage for waste and usually bought a little more than I would have when I started out. Any extra was paid for already but used on the next project requiring that species, meaning it was paid for again.
I bought by the work at hand due to space limitations. Had I the extra space for storage I would have bought more in bulk. There were certainly times when I wished I had the space but had to walk away.
About 16 years ago I went on the family farm and cut about 2000 bf of cherry and 5000 bf of walnut on halves with a cousin. I felled the trees and cut the logs. A local sawyer picked them up and sawed them. Meanwhile I bought a truckload of reject lumber from Lowes and sawed about a mile of stickers. We stacked the lumber in an open shed one one of my cousin's barns. The barn is about fifty miles away so I go get a load when I need some.
I spotted some poplars on the side of a road they were widening near me and bought the logs and had them sawed and delivered to my house about ten years ago. That pile is covered with a tarp and I use out of it as necessary. That pile was abut 4' by 5' by 16'.
About five years ago a white oak 42" on the stump fell on one of my rental houses. I had it hauled to a local mill and quarter sawed. That pile was about 5' by 8' by 7'. That pile is also under a tarp.
Recently I bought a pickup load of maple, walnut and redwood from a lumber yard going out of business. That pile is also in the drive way under a tarp.
And there is more in the shed I have had since I was kid.
As I typed all this it slowly dawned on me I have a problem. I have become a wood hoarder.
I failed to mention I have become a Festool hoarder also.
We've both got Woodmizer LT15's, at lest I guess you still do. I don't saw for anyone else except a few friends, and don't even bother sawing all I could, unless it's going to yield something special or thicker than I can normally buy at the local yards. I like getting large trees that I have to rip with my chainsaw to even get on my mill, so I can get QS boards 15" wide and a bit thicker. But for just normal stuff, I don't find any savings if I have to get the logs, saw them up on the mill, stack and sticker and dry. By the time Ive got that much labor in it, it cost as much as off the shelf.
However, I do have managed to build a fair inventory. But then when my customers choose the wood for the job, I usually have to go to one of about 4 local yards.
Woodmizer mills operate so different from a traditional mill that I have difficulty imagining how they work. Question: After chain sawing you have a hemisphere section of log. What next? I don't see how it gets fixed to the carriage any way but laying flat, when in fact one would want it flat side against the head stock for quarter sawing.
With a circle mill the fist step is always to create a flat face on the log that will be turned down to lay on the carriage for whatever comes next. Hydraulic rams, turner and dogs then enable any shape with a flat bottom to be oriented and secured on the carriage. I don't see how this capability is replicated with the Woodmizer. The few machines I have seen have dogs with limited holding capability for securing a log any way but flat face down, which would leave one sawing parallel to this face, which is going to yield flat sawn lumber until the log is sawed down to near this flat face.
I need to go watch someone that knows what they are doing run one of these mills
When I built my shop I installed custom trusses so that I have a upstairs room 30' X 10' wide X 8' high (with knee walls). When the shop was finished and I had retired I attended just about every estate auction for Amish families that were held in my area.
I purchased large quantities of Cherry, Walnut, Oak, Hackberry, Locust, Ash etc., all Air dried. I now have the entire upstairs full + some on the shop floor. Probably a lifetime for my me and my son with the exception of a few special sizes - when I need special lumber I don't have (or can't find), I purchase from a local sawmill.
I still have the LT15. I'm not the least interested in sawing and selling, that sounds too much like a job! I do much the same as you, saw only for myself or a few friends and when I want something cheap for farm use (siding, etc) or thick pieces for woodturning. I've posted these pictures before, cutting up short log chunks into bowl blanks for a friend and some platter and other blanks for our turning club wood auction:
(We brought in over $1800 in March this year from the auction! I got to be the auctioneer again.)
I like to saw wood I can't easily find elsewhere like persimmon, holly, and dogwood. When I have a tree come down or have to be removed I'll generally cut boards or thicker slabs to air dry.
>>>We've both got Woodmizer LT15's, at lest I guess you still do. I don't saw for anyone else except a few friends, and don't even bother sawing all I could, unless it's going to yield something special or thicker than I can normally buy at the local yards. I like getting large trees that I have to rip with my chainsaw to even get on my mill, so I can get QS boards 15" wide and a bit thicker. But for just normal stuff, I don't find any savings if I have to get the logs, saw them up on the mill, stack and sticker and dry. By the time Ive got that much labor in it, it cost as much as off the shelf.
Bill, drive over this way with a log (just north of Clinton) and you can see how it's done and try the sawing yourself.
On a band mill the logs are clamped to a bed and the carriage with the motor and the bandsaw blade is moved down the log.
The logs can be clamped on the bed round, laid on a flat, or turned up at almost any angle. Sometimes I have to get creative with wedges and things, especially for odd sized pieces. The blade takes a slice off the top then the entire motor and blade assembly is lowered for the next cut. Since you can usually clamp at or below the middle of the log you can flat saw at least 1/2 the log before turning.
Depending on whether I want plain or quarter sawn I might make the first cut down the middle (after wedging to make the pith horizontal) and saw the halves into quarters before cutting boards. I often saw a few boards with wane from the top of a round log from then turn the cant 90 or 180 deg and continue.
However, I usually skim off a flat spot on top, turn the log 180-deg and make a flat on the bottom, then depending on what I want to end up with I may turn it up on the side and start cutting boards or thicker planks. Sometimes I'll pick up the squared cant with the forks on the tractor and set it aside until I accumulate several and finish sawing them all together.
These cedar boards with wane are ready to be put back on the mill and have at least one edge flattened. This is only needed where both sides of the cant are not squared. You stand up a bunch vertically with the widest on the outside so they can be squared up first and removed, and work your way to the narrowest boards.
These slabs made a lot of platter blanks, nearly 2' at the widest.
The length between the horizontal bed supports is about 4' and I only have three clamps so for short sections I make a sacrificial L-shaped "fence" from 2x lumber for support. That's the way I cut bowl and platter blanks for woodturning. If the log is longer, I simply cut slabs instead and cut them into blanks with the shop bandsaw, before or after drying.
The kerf on the bandsaw mill is much thinner than a circular sawmill so less wood is wasted and there is less sawdust to manage. The Woodmizer LT15 mills are manually cranked to move the carriage and the logs are turned with cant hooks. Other far more expensive band mills have powered carriage and use hydraulics to turn the logs. The manual mill is good exercise but although I've done it, I hate to run it without the tractor or bobcat to load the logs. I usually have forks on the tractor and offload the boards directly onto the forks.
All of these band mills are limited in the log diameter by the height and width of the opening below the blade. I keep an axe and chainsaw handy to trim off irregularities or stubs of limbs as needed to clear the carriage. The length of log is only limited by the length of the bed - more sections of bed can be bolted on as desired. Mine will handle a 17'+ log. The entire sawmill was delivered on a FedEx truck.
JKJ
>>>Woodmizer mills operate so different from a traditional mill that I have difficulty imagining how they work. Question: After chain sawing you have a hemisphere section of log. What next? I don't see how it gets fixed to the carriage any way but laying flat, when in fact one would want it flat side against the head stock for quarter sawing.
With a circle mill the fist step is always to create a flat face on the log that will be turned down to lay on the carriage for whatever comes next. Hydraulic rams, turner and dogs then enable any shape with a flat bottom to be oriented and secured on the carriage. I don't see how this capability is replicated with the Woodmizer. The few machines I have seen have dogs with limited holding capability for securing a log any way but flat face down, which would leave one sawing parallel to this face, which is going to yield flat sawn lumber until the log is sawed down to near this flat face.
I need to go watch someone that knows what they are doing run one of these mills
I forgot to mention the band mills have a set of vertical supports down one side, adjustable for height. A hemispherical or quartered section of log can be held tight against these supports with clamps. The clamps are adjustable down to where the blade will clear them when cutting a 1" thick board. Instantly obvious once you see it.
Keith spoke of 15" quartered boards. I still don't see how a 30+" hemisphereical log section is held on the frame shown in your picture to saw a 30+" half a log, or maybe the log is quartered by chain saw and then on to the band mill.
>>>Keith spoke of 15" quartered boards. I still don't see how a 30+" hemisphereical log section is held on the frame shown in your picture to saw a 30+" half a log, or maybe the log is quartered by chain saw and then on to the band mill.
You can stand up the hemisphere with the flat vertical, clamped against the vertical supports. Use lots of clamps. Now that hemisphere will be only 15" at the widest and 30" tall. One edge of the hemisphere will be resting against the bed. Then saw it in half.
This depth of that cut is only limited by the clearance above the blade and the below the blade housing. If the piece turned like this is too tall to make the cut you can first trim off some upper edge of the hemisphere, sapwood and bark that will be thrown in the burn pile.
If the hemisphere doesn't "feel" stable enough (based on experience), trim off just a little on the top to make it shorter and with al narrow flat on the top, turn it 180-deg to put that narrow flat securely against the bed, and then start with the real cuts.
You could quarter the hemisphere with a chain saw first but that would be a lot of work.
Half the fun in sawing is figuring out how to make the cuts.
Note that any techniques I describe are what I've used and what worked for me in the in the dozen or so years I've had this mill. Others may have different techniques but I've never watched someone else.
Hi Bill. A lot late to the parade but as a hobbyist, I buy lumber based on the project and my limited storage capacity. I use DeltaCad to roughly draw out the project, CutList to optimize the layout, and then sort by thickness. I shop at the local based first on thickness and down-scale from there. I have neither the time, storage, or energy level to entertain buying in quantity for projects that I will never get to. I envy those that do as the prices of hardwoods continue to rise. Hope this helps. Jim
Most of my projects are red oak. My dad used to have 50 acres of red oak. This is where my hobbies collide.
I own a 1912 steam tractor, and it goes to a local tractor show once a year. For 3 days, it powers a saw mill. I would go to my dad's place and come back with 12 saw logs and yield 6-800' of 4 & 5/4 lumber. A friend had surplus farm buildings, so it was stickered and dried there for at least 2 years I have a 6x18 Rockwell planer out in the garage. Other than 2 tanks of gas going up and coming from my dad's property, and a bunch of labor, I pretty much work with red oak cheaper than you can by cheap pine.
Yes, not all of the boards are clear. I carefully select the trees for their clearer yield. Not all of my projects need 8' boards. I do have to cut around some of the knots, but I enjoy the fact that many of my projects go from forest to living room.
For the few odd projects I get asked to do, searching Craigslist or Facebook Market place, here in Michigan, there are people not too far away that I can buy rough sawn lumber at a pretty good price.
Buying finished lumber at the local lumber store is pretty much the worse place to buy it, but I understand that not everybody has resources & machinery like some of us do.
If you have a lot to choose from and are skilled at choosing, waste from lower grade lumber is minimal. I used to buy a few hundred bdft of #2 common poplar for secondary wood. By sorting through it I could find just the lengths of cuttings needed and be left with just the knots as waste.
I would love to come run you steam mill for an hour. You have good cherry, maple and walnut up there.....none on the farm?
Bill, it's a shame you don't have faster Internet.
Barry Irby
There are endless hours of people swing with Woodmizers and similar mills on the internet. Some of the owners are very good and some not so much. I watch them like some people watch cat videos. Fascinating.
And then thee is Matt Cremona. That young fellow built his own mill that can saw five or six foot logs.
- and it is a LONG drive to where I buy lumber now.
