Board of Low Log Prices
A new, cost-effective solution can help loggers or woodlot owners turn marginal felled trees into sawn boards, either to boost revenue or to help out at the camp.
by Bruce Boyers
Woodlot owners, small-scale loggers, or even weekend hobbyists may be sitting on extra revenue or a handy supply of lumber without even realizing it. The cedar that the client wants taken down at the edge of a field, the oak to come out to make way for new houses, or the low-grade hardwoods no local commercial operator seems to want - all of these can now be sold as lucrative lumber instead of the traditional and far less valuable firewood.
"You do make a little bit of money out of firewood, but nowhere near as much as you will if you've got some quality timber to sell," says Robert Dyer, a tree surgeon from Lymington, Hampshire, England. Dyer and the company he owns, Always Greener Ltd., has joined the ranks of many others discovering how to make milling such lumber a possibility.
Not long ago, Dyer realized that the wood he was hauling away was turning to waste. "I had a couple of really nice big trees I was due to fell, and I thought, instead of turning them into firewood, is there any way that I can, myself, turn them into planks and useful wood?" he says. He typed the term "chainsaw mill" into a search engine, and on an American website discovered a mill which would enable him to saw lumber from a tree right on site. He realized that he already owned the chainsaws and was already being paid to take away the wood, and for far less than a thousand dollars investment, he could be paid for high-quality lumber as well.
Dyer ordered the Granberg Mini-Mill, not available in England at the time, from the US manufacturer. "I couldn't believe the great results you could get, just from a chainsaw on logs," he says. "And as soon as I started using it, I could see that the system works pretty well. It's just a good, solid, easy to use system." He then graduated to a larger Granberg model, the Alaskan.
What he found ideal about the mill was its portability. In the case of approximately half the trees he was required to remove, no other sawmill could be taken to the location. The only other answer would have been to move the logs to a sawmill, which in most cases wasn't possible. But with this solution, he's been able to mill every tree he's come across.
Dyer did explore other brands of mills, but found them to either be much more expensive, in the thousands of dollars or more, or more complicated to set up. What sold him was a combination of price and ease of use.
"As a tree surgeon, you haven't got much time, you can't afford to fiddle about too much. And you haven't got too much space on your truck because you've got to load your other tools as well. This system clamps quickly onto your saw and is nice and portable."
Once Dyer had the mill, the question then became what to do with the milled lumber, a marketing proposition he's still exploring. The first option was to sell the lumber green - there are artisans that make what is called "green furniture." There are also those willing to buy the green lumber and dry it themselves. Dyer is finding regular buyers who he can alert when various trees are to be felled to see if they would like that particular wood, and how they would like it cut.
Of course, the more lucrative market is for dry lumber, and Dyer is now contemplating numerous ways to cash in. Kiln drying requires a kiln, which is quite expensive, and air-drying can take as long as a year. But as part of his business Dyer owns a greenhouse, and came up with the idea of building "a greenhouse within a greenhouse" in which to bring the lumber's moisture content down to 8-10%.
Dyer has also used his partner, a master carpenter, to build furniture, a table and a bed, which they sold for a tidy profit. While they may or may not continue a furniture line, the experience helped Dyer see all the possibilities with the mill.,/p>
"The good thing about this mill is you can mill the wood and make people a piece of furniture to the size that they want," he says. Specialty items such as fireplace hearths can also be made.
The mill can be used to mill lumber on site to needed sizes - e.g. 4x4, 8x8, large 2-in planks - all as needed. At the same time, depending on its intended use, the lumber can be milled roughly out in the field, and then further cut down and planed smooth later at a larger mill, at a negligible cost.
Dyer was so impressed with the mill that, after he'd been using it for a time, he made an offer to the manufacturer to become the first UK dealer.
As with himself, it is the combination of price (it is priced lower than any other brand currently available in England) and the mill's portability that sells it to others. He says that he's even had customers that own large sawmills buying the chainsaw mill for instances when they run across a tree which can't be moved out or to which they can't bring another mill.
They can cut it down into planks, then take them to the larger mill to be further trimmed or planed down.
Bruce Boyers is an independent writer based in Glendale, CA. Granberg International is based in Vallejo, CA.
