Firewood Processor To Build or Not To Build

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You're kidding... right?

Do you realize the level of "burden of proof" that has to be met? Have you considered the concept of "intent"?

I'm not trying to step on any toes, but do you REALLY think that this guy, who wants to TRY to build his own processor, with no prior experience in processors, poses ANY risk of "loss of revenue" to either of the two manufacturers he mentioned. Do you REALLY think that they even care that an individual is trying to emulate their product for personal use? They know that they've already worked out the kinks and may even enjoy reading the forums where the trials and tribulations of the attempt might get aired.

I'm building a splitter right now... a fairly high capacity one... comparable in productivity to several produced by the commercial splitter manufacturers (several of which are site sponsors). Does my painstaking "reinventing the wheel" experience concern those manufacturers? Not in the least... it's a one-off experiment. It has a fixed wedge... (ut oh, so do several others). It has a 4-stroke gas engine (Copycat!!). It uses a hydraulic cylinder powered by a 2 stage pump (Travesty!!!!).

A top drive roller is NOT a patent by one of the well known processor manufacturers... it's been used for MANY years in other industries. A "v-profile", hydraulically operated, arrayed serrated plate, roller is a Timberwolf idea (as best as I can find). So if "Bubba" decided to build a processor and use a car wheel and tire on top of the wood as a clamp / drive mechanism... guess what... NO PROBLEM! But he may have first seen the concept on their processor.

I have had to protect "intellectual property rights" as a course of business for the past 20 years. The burden of proof and the whole concept of "intent" are tough to overcome. I'm in no way condoning someone trying to manufacture replicas for sale. Nor am I suggesting that the ethics of exact duplication should be overlooked. But in this world, there is a reality that imitation is the greatest form of flattery. And it's doubtful that any individual is going to go through the steps necessary to duplicate a major design concept that would risk patent infringement.

I understand your position, but reality is reality....
 
Mr Good Wood said:
I have been reading the threads on firewood processors and I am debating on building one that combines the best of the cord king and multiteck processor. My question is if I build it what is the market like for people that would like to have their logs processed. I know of one guy in my area (Northwest, Oh) that has a Timer wolf processor and he is charging $100 an hour and putting out 1.5 cords of wood and hour and half of it need split again. If you were a firewood guy would you pay that? I know I would not. But I am thinking of I building one because I need it for myself and I am thinking I could run it for other people too. Aside from the number above can anyone give me the going rate that they know of if you were to have someone come out and run a processor on an hourly basis. I'm thinking if you charge 100 an hr and can process at least 3 full cord and hr people would pay. It takes me about 3 hrs to cut/ split a cord so at 3 cord an hr that's $33 a cord. if you had to hire someone for $10 hr at 3 hr per cord well.. Plus the faster you process it the more dry time, the better. I would appreciate anyone's thoughts seeing that there is no true and exact way to test the market.
Click to expand...

Running a large firewood processer like a cord king aint like they show in the video. Output on the machine can be as high as 4 cords an hour but you will need someone to feed the machine and someone to move processed wood and debris away from the machine. So to be efficient, you need 3 guys, the processor, a log truck, the conveyor, a truck to covey into, a front end loader for debris and a place or truck to dump debris. That is a lot of equipment and man power for $100 an hour. You can skip conveying into a truck but you can only pile wood so high with a conveyor, then you are forced to move the rig and conveyor. If you make your piles too big, the wood does not dry out well.

Fixed box wedges on these conveyors will produce wood that does not need to be resplit but they produce a tremendous amount of slivers and waste. Plan on a cord of waste for every 5 cords sellable firewood. Fixed box wedges can also get stuck due to knots or careless operation. With 58 tons behind it, when the wedge gets stuck, to unstuck is usually a time consuming and dangerous ordeal. Adjustable star wedges cut down on the waste and rarely get stuck but in larger wood, you will need to resplit many of the pieces.

Can you run one of these processors by yourself? Yes, but by the end of the day if you cranked out a cord an hour you will be doing pretty good. That’s not bad for $100 an hour but I doubt your customer will pay that for a cord of processed wood. A two man team might go 2-3 cords an hour with the right equipment and really nice wood.

Your other option is to have the wood brought to your site, process it and give it back. Sounds kinda nuts but if you had the right lot and some equipment, it may be easier than moving the rig to the site to process the wood especially when you start factoring in breakdowns.

Aint no easy way to deal with wood. If you are looking to make money splitting other folks firewood check out the powersplit PSI double vertical. I was very impressed with this machine. It is simple, fast, easy to use and I believe you could actually make money with this rig splitting other peoples wood for $30 to $50 and hour.
 
firewood

2FatGuys said:
You're kidding... right?

Do you realize the level of "burden of proof" that has to be met? Have you considered the concept of "intent"?

I'm not trying to step on any toes, but do you REALLY think that this guy, who wants to TRY to build his own processor, with no prior experience in processors, poses ANY risk of "loss of revenue" to either of the two manufacturers he mentioned. Do you REALLY think that they even care that an individual is trying to emulate their product for personal use? They know that they've already worked out the kinks and may even enjoy reading the forums where the trials and tribulations of the attempt might get aired.

I'm building a splitter right now... a fairly high capacity one... comparable in productivity to several produced by the commercial splitter manufacturers (several of which are site sponsors). Does my painstaking "reinventing the wheel" experience concern those manufacturers? Not in the least... it's a one-off experiment. It has a fixed wedge... (ut oh, so do several others). It has a 4-stroke gas engine (Copycat!!). It uses a hydraulic cylinder powered by a 2 stage pump (Travesty!!!!).

A top drive roller is NOT a patent by one of the well known processor manufacturers... it's been used for MANY years in other industries. A "v-profile", hydraulically operated, arrayed serrated plate, roller is a Timberwolf idea (as best as I can find). So if "Bubba" decided to build a processor and use a car wheel and tire on top of the wood as a clamp / drive mechanism... guess what... NO PROBLEM! But he may have first seen the concept on their processor.

I have had to protect "intellectual property rights" as a course of business for the past 20 years. The burden of proof and the whole concept of "intent" are tough to overcome. I'm in no way condoning someone trying to manufacture replicas for sale. Nor am I suggesting that the ethics of exact duplication should be overlooked. But in this world, there is a reality that imitation is the greatest form of flattery. And it's doubtful that any individual is going to go through the steps necessary to duplicate a major design concept that would risk patent infringement.

I understand your position, but reality is reality....
Click to expand...



No the "reality" is that the burden of evidentiary proof and intent ends when the inidividual is served and the so called firewood processor is seized as an evidence exibit by the manufacturers agent serving the defendent at his or her premises to search and obtain evidence including bank records, receipts,
materials, notes, schmematic diagrams, drawings, worked steel pieces prior to assembly, welder, cutting torches, steel saws, and any and all information in the possesion of said individual at that time, so good luck.

we both warned you.
 
well, im gonna gas the fire again. Im with 2fatguys, i dont think anybody would give 2 chits if he built a processor. I dont know a whole lot about the patented deal, but if its not a direct copy, why does it matter? Like i said, i dont know alot about it, but have you ever wondered why Caterpillar builds the only high track dozer? Cause nobody else is allowed to. That design belongs to them for how ever many years.
 
Don't whip the patent horse to death - If it were so, no one could put a cylinder on an I beam & call it a splitter. Or, build their own bandmill? The list is endless. Trying to profit off someone elses product I agree is wrong, but to make something to use yourself? Come on man! :dizzy: One of the reasons so many jobs leave this country, the legal cost of doing business here.
 
again i understand your concerns with the patent stuff but realistically there are only so may ways to do a cretin task in a reasonably efficient way (ie cut and split firewood) there are only so many ways to design a machine that makes logical scene so...... anyways I will just talk to my lawyer that I use cause he is good with all that stuff. Not to worried. What, I should just buy a Timber wolf cause they are a sponsor. Lets just say I saw one in action.....
 
AGAIN I AM NOT GOING TO PRODUCE MULTIPLE MACHINES TO SELL FOR A PROFIT. 1 FOR PERSONAL USE AND IF SOMEONE WANTS TO HIRE ME WITH IT SO BE IT A AM CERTAINLY NOT GOING TO TURN THEM DOWN BECAUSE ITS NOT A BRAND NAME. I THINK YOU GUYS ARE BLOWING THIS A BIT OUT OF PROPORTION. i JUST WANTED TO KNOW WHAT THE GOING RATES WERE FOR RUNNING SUCH A MACHINE AND SOMEHOW IT TURNED INTO ALL THIS?????

YES I DID SAY THAT I AM COMBINING FEATURES OF SOME OF THE MORE POPULAR MACHINES, BUT THEY ARE NOT GOING TO BE PRECISE AND EXACT REPLICAS. IN FACT THEY ARE GOING TO BE BETTER. AND FOR ALL YOU PATENT PEOPLE, WHO KNOWS MAYBE I WILL BE THE ONE SUING THE BIG GUYS IF MY DESIGN WORKS OUT.
 
CentaurG2 said:
Aint no easy way to deal with wood. If you are looking to make money splitting other folks firewood check out the powersplit PSI double vertical. I was very impressed with this machine. It is simple, fast, easy to use and I believe you could actually make money with this rig splitting other peoples wood for $30 to $50 and hour.
Click to expand...

That ia an unreal machine, comes back to the kiss principle (Keep It Simple Stupid)
 
As for you saying that it cant be built well I have access to cnc so technically I could build an identical fancy machine but the reason for building my own is to save money and not spent a absolute fortune. if i did not have to worry about money i would go drop the 100k +++ on a new machine
 
People should research the companies that build processors up in VT and NH and check into the court records up there. Some engineers were at one company and they left and started another company and there has been some pretty good fights from what I have heard. I have only heard about it from my brother who heard about it from the reps he has talked to over the years.

As for processing other people's wood it is a waste of time and money according to my brother that did it for about a year before he wised up. He has a processor and can get a solid 2 cord+ out per hour with good wood, much less with the junk people wanted him to process. The wood has to be straight to get decent production. People were expecting him to process tops and crooked trunks that barely fit into his processor. Plus the wood was dirty because several of them skidded the wood with a tractor and did not lift the logs out of the mud. They also skidded under the worst conditions of wet and mud and thus covered their logs with dirt needlessly.

Then there were the tight landings where they wanted the wood processed. No room to work and no room to dump the wood off the conveyer of the processor. Then they would beyotch about his tractor ripping up the ground loading logs onto the processor because with a 4WD tractor when you are turning with a load of logs in the front grapple, your wheels will be tearing up the ground. Tight landings mean a lot of turning under load and that means torn up ground.

Some of the neighbors beyotched about my brother starting at 6 or 7 in the morning and they could hear his processor and his tractor and thus they were annoyed. So he worried that they were going to sabotage his equipment. Someone with a set of bolt cutters can trash a lot of $ worth of hydraulic hoses if they want to and do it in short order. Or a simple fire and $60K worth of equipment is gone and an insurance claim is needed. That means down time to settle and probably a fight with the insurance company.

Then while you are doing this you have to remember you are doing it for your competition. Homeowners never were my brother's customers. Anyone using an OWB has the wherewithall to get or buy their own wood. They do not need to pay someone to do 50% of the work. If they have the stuff to get it to a landing, they have the means to cut it up. So all the people my brother did cutting for were sellers, and they often undercut his prices and thus took customers he could have had.

He does process wood for 4 people that use OWB but they are loggers and so they bring him the logs to his house, they unload the logs directly onto the processor and they provide a truck to catch the wood coming off the conveyor. They pay him in logs that he can sell once he processes them. These loggers don't have the time to process firewood, yet they and their family members have OWBs and so this is a nice shortcut they use to get the wood processed that they need.
 
Mr Good Wood said:
As for you saying that it cant be built well I have access to cnc so technically I could build an identical fancy machine but the reason for building my own is to save money and not spent a absolute fortune. if i did not have to worry about money i would go drop the 100k +++ on a new machine
Click to expand...

Ditto... I have benefitted a LOT from having a cousin that is a steel broker and a friend with a CNC plasma cutter. A lot of my splitter project has been cut via that plasma.
 
Currlycherry your reply is good and noted well, I figured on most of that stuff anyway. I need the processor for myself more than anything and if i pick up a couple of side gigs so be it... like someone said earlier that is just bonus money.
I know a bunch of people that I can work with to get logs and a major firewood seller that I have known for years and I know that he needs all the help he can get and in the end I will most likely get all his accounts so it don't matter. I give him 2-3 more years. He moves 5-600 cord a year so I want to help him out for the obvious reason.
 
Let me help put the fires out and tell you all what I personally learned when I went through in my patent lawsuit, (which went all the way to the US. Federal Appeals Court in D.C.).

  1. You can not make, use, or sell anything that is patented, unless you obtained the patented item from a 'legal' source. Let me make this very clear, you can not make something, even if it is for your own personal use with no commercial intentions whatsoever. Patents are there to protect the inventor against anyone else cutting them out. The concept that they can't go after you because you're not going to be selling processors is flat out wrong. The patent holder is damaged by every single infringement. His loss is the same. You deprive them of the only thing patent protection affords, profit. It doesn't matter if it's from a single sale or a thousand sales.
  2. The owner of a patent is required to prosecute any infringement they become aware of. If they don't, they lose the patent protection. You don't have the option of prosecuting the big guys while leaving the little guys alone. If someone is infringing on your patent, you MUST defend your patent. One option a patent owner has if they don't want to prosecute someone would be to grant a license for a single use.
  3. You can't use a patented item as part of another product and claim that you have invented a whole new product. So even though you may be designing a processor with a common bar/chain and a hydraulic ram, you can't copy the Timberwolf Top Roller.
  4. Patents expire after a set period of time. They can not be renewed. Upon expiration, the design becomes what is legally termed 'Public Domain'. Anyone is free to copy the exact design to manufacture, use, or sell to their heart's content. You do not have to pay any royalty unless you entered into the agreement prior to the patent expiration.
  5. While patents are a powerful protection for inventors, they're also not that hard to overcome. Essentially, patents are made up of 'claims', which detail the various aspects of the invention. To get around a patent, all you have to do is not infringe on any one of the claims. To make it even easier, whether you infringe or not is subject to a three part test called a Function-Way-Means test. To infringe you have to do "Substantially the same thing, Substantially the same way, to achieve Substantially the same result. If you don't infringe on any one of the tests, you don't infringe on the entire patent.
 
Why would you want to process wood for your competition ?? Stick to processing and selling wood for yourself and you will do fine. Cutting wood for other people is generally a waste of time.
 
BuddhaKat is right on all counts. I would also add that it is important that a patent holder defend their claims. If they do not it is called abandonment, just the same as not paying the fees to maintain a patent, which BTW do not end when the patent is issued. So if someone from Timberwolf gets wind of a copy of their design out there, they must followup and use legal and reasonable means to see if their design has been copied. If it is, they have to file a claim for the person to cease and desist and destroy the machine in question.

The ONLY way to get around an existing patent is to do it better. You can use a general idea held in a patent by another person or company, but in order to get your own patent or use the idea you have to use an invention that does it faster/better/cheaper/with less parts, etc. You cannot copy a basic design like the top roller and use less spikes and say it is better, you have to demonstrate with hard data that less spikes is better.

Example, you could copy a lightbulb if your design uses less energy than that claimed by the original patent holder. Say they create a bulb that uses 60 Watts of energy. They would probably claim in their patent a light illuminating bulb that uses 50-70 Watts of power most preferred (close to what they actually did), 40-80 watts in some cases ( a wider range to keep out the riff raff), and in rare cases 30-90 Watts (huge range to cover their butts). They will typically claim 3 ranges, of good, better, best. Now if you come along and make a light bulb that uses 1-29.9 watts, or 91 and above watts you can claim that bulb as your own as long as it actually works. You could get a patent for your bulb that uses less energy because that is obviously good. Getting a claim for the higher energy bulb will be harder usless you can prove it has some major benefit.

Also, another thing about getting a patent or infringing on one is that you cannot do something that is covered in a patent if a reasonably skilled person in the arts would know that. Example in the top roller case. Say they claim it is made out of steel, you cannot as a machinist use aluminum or titanium and claim it is better because it uses a lighter metal. Any one that works would metal would know those are simple substitutions. Now using some new space age composite you invented in your garage might get you a patent with a top roller made out of your composite, maybe, but it would be an uphill battle.

Again, I ask how is it ethical to steal someone's idea and not say it is harming the person? It is like going to an apple orchard and taking a bushel of apples. You are only using them to feed your family, not selling them, so what harm is it? The harm is that the farmer that grew those apples and paid for the trees, the time, the chemicals, etc now has one less paying customer to get a return on his investment back from. If every person around him took just one bushel then he would be wiped out and have zero customers.
 
Curly,

What you're describing is the Function-Way-Means test. In your example you talk about using less spikes. That's a good example. Less spikes, or even something like using aluminum instead of steel. Basically, these small changes do substantially the same thing, in substantially the same way, to achieve substantially the same result.

In my patent suit the jury found that my invention did substantially the same thing and achieved substantially the same result, but that I did it in a substantially different way. Thus, I did not infringe on the patent and I won the case.
 
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