price for milling

[willt1981]

what would you guys charge others to mill lumber on a bandsaw mill where everything is manual? circular mills around here charge from $125-$150 per thousand bdft. A friend of a friend wanted about 700 bdft of hemlock sawn up for his barn and I said i'd do it for $250 per thousand. i got done this afternoon and figured up that after accounting for bands and gas i made around $17 per hour. doesn't this seem low for using such equipment - not to mention that im totally wiped out from milling it? when i hire out for tractor work i charge $50 per hour and its a hell of a lot eaiser than milling... is sawing on this kind of mill for people who are building just cost prohibitive to the person getting the lumber milled? there are some guys who have portable manual mills around charging $40 per hour but they mainly do a few cherry logs that a second homeowner wants cut up. if i charged this guy that price he could go buy the boards cheaper... thoughts?...

 

[deeker]

I charge $45 an hour. Looking for and pulling nails...sawing...

Sometimes I only work for fifteen minutes.....and charge for fifteen minutes.

I have a manual LM2000 and do all of the work.

Kevin

 

[redprospector]

When working by the hour I charge $60 and hour straight time. Dosen't matter if I'm running the mill, a chainsaw, or my ASV. That way it kinda evens out. When I'm milling by the board foot I charge $0.36 a board foot.
My mill has power feed, and lift though. But the bed is all manual for now.
The customer has to figure that for the circle mill's to cut their log's at $125 to $150 a thou. they are going to have to get their logs to that mill.

You can't compete with the box stores on 2x material, but you can saw better grade than the box stores sell, if the customer's log's are good. On 1x material I can beat them pretty bad.
I was at Home Depot the other day looking at lumber, and their #2 wouldn't have made #3 shelving grade 20 years ago. Their select grade was standing on end, and looked like a horse shoe. It's a shame to see a good select & better board ruined by a bunch of dummies.

Andy

 

[glennschumann]

I'm curious if any of you have priced yourself for Alaskan style milling. I do a lot for friends (for free) which I enjoy greatly, but if I advertised, what would be a reasonable rate for slabbing large logs on site... I've got a 36" and 54" granberg with 3120xp / 066 and a range of bars up to 60". I'm thinking about the wood worker who lands a nice 42" maple log, and wants slabs... By the hour? By the square foot of a cut? I guess I'm not interested in bd.ft. pricing, as the style of cutting I do isn't so tied to usable bd.ft. as it is to number of cuts. At $2/sq.ft. for a cut, a 10' long, 42" wide slab would be about $70. I'm thinking you make a cut, measure the sq.ft. of one side, and multiply by $2. Or should it be $0.50 or $5? $0.50 for 24" and under? $2 for 36 and over? At 2" thick, $70 for a 70 bd.ft slab seems cheap compared to some of the prices I've seen for slabs... Thoughts? I still have a day job for now, but I'm just curious if any body else has priced themselves for this type of work in the event that I find myself with lots 'o free time on my hands...

 

[Backwoods]

Keep it simple. $60.00 an hour is a good price for specialty equipment, and if it takes 42 min. it is easy to calculate. If that sound to high or to low for your area check with others in your area that have specialty equipment, like trencher, backhoes ect. And see what there rates are.

 

[hazard]

I have always been curious about charging for cutting with the chainsaw mill. For how much work goes into cutting with the mill it is hard for me to put a money value on it. Say cutting a 8' x 28" maple log. Limited to the 36" bar. This would take me like 4-5hrs cutting at 1" Probably 25 cuts or so. 10-15 min a cut. Sharpening every 3-4 cuts and refueling. I don't think someone is going to pay $250 to have a log cut. I wouldn't. I guess this is why I cut only for myself.

Chris

 

[oldsaw]

Glenn, I know what you mean. I put nearly 8 hours in last Saturday moving two huge logs and milling up most of one of them. There is 6-8 more hours of work left. Half of one of the logs is unusable, so there will be some extra time trying to cut that back to a usable spot, time sharpening four 42 inch chains twice, saw maintenance offsite twice, 5 gallons of mix, 3-4 gallons of oil, and a lot of hot, backbreaking work. He was complaining about the split, which was funny since he got a years worth of firewood out of the tree, but has no dollar investment at all outside of trimming with his 025. I'm the guy with the costs, the nastiest job, and providing the heavy equipment.

You would have to pay me BIG money to custom mill with an Alaskan, unless you were a friend, then beer is good.

Mark

 

[hazard]

I helped a woodturner friend mill up a butternut log a week ago. Most of it was into 4-5" slabs. Easy cutting. I took home enough for probably 8-10 bowls. I was cutting probably 1 hr total. Easy cutting. No problems. I could handle cutting like this. Problem is the slabs get heavy. I could see charging $40-50 an hour doing this.

Chris