Thread: how much is this worth?

Don't have a clue on price, but I'd be interested as I'm about to have a crack at 10 or so (smaller) cypress logs my auntie has just cut down. Perfect for a test of my cs mill as I figure it won't Blunt the blade too much, and won't take all day to cut 1 slab ....
Of course there will be pictures (hopefully of nice neat slabs, not of missing limbs)

I'm not a fan of paying for logs unless they are really big and will give me a good return. Being that you loose around 30-50% of the log you have to think "will I be able to make back my initial investment, time, consumables, and still gain some cream." If the answer is yes then it's a good deal, if no then leave it.

Cube them up and do the maths.

I reckon the delivery is worth $120 and obviously he has to be paid for that but I would want to get the logs for a lot less than the remainder, at most half the remainder.

Okay, thanks for the advice. Think I'll give it a miss. I just found out a neighbor of mine wants to cut down a bunch of cypress and it'll be free any way.
I think I got a bit excited with my first offer of timber.

Lets say a log landed in the mill yard costs X.
We're real sawmillers and we know that long term average recovery is around 33%.... usually a bit more but thats the kind of number you should budget around in hardwood.
So the actual price of the timber in a sawn cube is recovery rate x log price = 3 X.
It costs us Y per cube to actually run the mill.
Of course, to get the cube of sawn, we needed to saw 3 cubic meters of log at that recovery rate.
So milling cost = 3 Y
So the price of producing a cubic meter of sawn is 3X + 3Y.

Lets throw some real numbers at it.
Decent hardwood sawlogs run to around $200 per cube landed.
Milling cost is $110 per cube.
Price of production = (3x 200) + (3 x 110) = $930.00 per cubic meter GOS.

Thats average price excluding byproduct, so its got to cover everything from downgrade to premium product. In reality we barely cover the log component value on downgrade, make a living on wholesale scantling (untreated), and average up our downgrade with the premium stuff. (There are mills that can run at break even on downgrade but you aint buying one of them unless you've got $50 million lying around in loose change)

So lets look at your log there. I cant read the tape measure but a log with a midpoint diameter of 50cm and a length of 4.5 m is 1 cubic meter. That log doesnt look that big to me, but lets call it a cube for the sake of a number.
Pine is a four letter word here so I dont know the numbers on cypress but lets be generous and give it a 50% recovery rate. Ambitious but why not?
Cost of producing sawn at that is 2 x log cost + 2 x milling cost = $900 + $220 = $1120.00 per cube. At 40% recovery cost of production equal $1400 per cube.
At 33% recovery it better make some real nice boards...

Anyone know what GOS cypress is worth?

John, I don't think the OP has much of an interest in onselling it. He just doesn't want to get ripped off.

Originally Posted by John.G;1917395 [SIZE=4

Anyone know what GOS cypress is worth? [/SIZE]

Thats the problem with unusual species timber where the worth is is unknown so it is then related to how desperately someone wants it and what they are actually prepared to pay for it.

Cypress Mac is pretty common around here and readily available, and can range anywhere from $1500-2500m3 sometimes more. I should note this is not from commercial suppliers, I just happen to have a lot of people with mills living in the area

So I did a twenty second google search this morning and found I could buy 100 x 100 F7 Select Grade Macrocarpa for $10.20 a linear. That equates to $1000 a cube - not bad for pine, certainly a lot better then the $600 or thereabouts for radiata.

So the thing is that, armed with a market value, and once the OP has been able to establish a recovery rate for Macrocarpa by running a whack of logs of differing sizes and recording intake log size and recovered volumes, and whilst so doing has also been able to track the operating cost of the mill: well at that point you can reverse engineer the equation and come out with a value to pay for log timber.

Originally Posted by shedbound

Cypress Mac is pretty common around here and readily available, and can range anywhere from $1500-2500m3 sometimes more. I should note this is not from commercial suppliers, I just happen to have a lot of people with mills living in the area

Are those prices GOS or for dry timber, either air seasoned or KD? (I got pricing off two suppliers I found on a quick google search.)
The seasoned vs KD vs green sawn prices are a whole different set of calculations.

The 10.20 l/m price you got I believe might be from one of the local guys around here, usually the stock from the small guys varies from GOS to partly seasoned depends on how long they have had it sitting around, pays to have your own moisture meter on hand. I have never actually paid money for anyone else's timber as I cut my own when offered a log. I am just basing my price in what I have seen go through Gumtree. And the quality of the stuff can be very hit and miss.

Originally Posted by asheddie

it'll be free any way.
.

That's more like it
You can mill away and make the odd mistake...who cares?...it's free
Learn on the 'free' stuff Ash...and enjoy the experience as you go!
Don't worry too much about recovery...you'll get better at it,the more you mill.
Try not to mix grains together and always remove traces of the heart (or pith)
And mill oversize...it helps to have tolerance ...MM

wow, some great replies guys. Thanks for taking the time to break it down for me. It'll really help me in the future. I'm more or less just milling timber for myself at this stage, so on selling isn't a big factor yet. Once I'm confident with the mill, I'll offer my services for others and try to re coop some money by selling some timber, if all goes to plan anyway...!
My in-laws have cypress lining the front of their property. One of their trees came down a few weeks back. It was cut at 9 in the morning, every trace of it was pinched by people driving past by midday... I was because I was going to use it as my first ever milling project! I guess this is why I wanted some more Cypress to play with?
Once again thank you for helping me out so much as I'm going through this steep learning curve.

PS. I put the mill together and chopped up a piece of pink gum. Not to use, but just to practice. I will keep one nice board and the other dodgy bits will be fancy firewood!

Thanks,

Ash.

Been a while since I've been paid for Cypress logs that I've recovered off my own sources for the local bloke that I contract to, but he paid me $90 per log cube landed in his yard, which was about a year or two ago from memory.

My crane truck is currently out doing deliveries but when it's back home I'll pull some of the dockets out and see what the going rate is. I'll also mention that local mill has two rates, premium and standard. Premium is good clean stuff free of defects and standard is for the rest

Don't forget the nails.....
They come free
Greg