At one time, just about every pioneer farmer had a sawmill in the yard and nearly every small town had a hardware store with a lumberyard. Not anymore.
Most small town lumberyards across Canada have shut down and as a result, people have become accustomed to driving sometimes an hour or more just for a couple of two-by-fours. It is frustrating and it doesn’t make sense.
That frustration has created strong demand for local custom and retail sawmilling services, especially in areas a bit further removed from major retail centres. There is also strong demand for niche lumber sizes and products. Wood is still a very popular building material.
And, there are many more good reasons to take a serious look at the potential of adding a small-scale sawmill to your farm.
Technological advances among small-scale sawmill suppliers over the past two decades have resulted in more accurate, more dependable and less labour-intensive sawmills, particularly with improvements to hydraulics and computerized setworks that control mill functions. Companies have also added edgers, debarkers, planers and moulders to their lines of value-adding equipment.
Today, there is a wide variety of entry level and advanced small-scale sawmill products available with extra options. (See sawmill suppliers sidebar.)
Small-scale sawmilling isn't limited by the amount of space needed to produce wood products. Many Canadian farmers have established an entire operation on just a portion of their farm yards. It can get a bit messy, though, so deciding where to put the sawmill enterprise is an important consideration and it may require a burn pit.
Farm-based sawmilling can also be done during less busy times, after daily chores and during the colder months when the crops are in. It's a great way to avoid becoming a couch potato especially in winter, because despite all the technological advances, running a sawmill and piling lumber is still physical work.
As business builds, it could also be a way to eventually work from home and avoid the commute.
So the question is why don’t more farmers supplement their income with a sawmilling business in the off-season or year round?
The main reason is that launching a sawmilling venture is a long term commitment to learning. It may look easy when those boards start to fly off the back end of a bandsaw mill, but without a doubt, it took a lot of planning, education and trial and error to get to that point. It likely involved learning how to operate the sawmill properly to produce quality products to encourage repeat business; learning about sawblade selection, sharpening and maintenance; finding and securing log sources; calculating transportation costs from the log source to the sawmill and marketing the custom sawmilling business.
For some, farm-based sawmilling will always and only be a hobby. For others, it may prove to be the opportunity they have been looking for to improve farm incomes and/or quit their day job.
Here are some important considerations before making that sawmill purchase:
It is necessary to gain access to an inexpensive and consistent supply of healthy and mature timber. Potential sources include healthy woodlots located on the farmer's property. Other options for those who don't own a woodlot are bidding on government-sponsored timber auctions, purchasing logs privately from nearby landowners and larger diameter logs from large, commercial sawmills, or negotiating the purchase of salvage timber from oilfield, mining or hydro companies, or from municipally-owned landfills and tree removal service contractors.
After locating and securing a reasonably priced wood supply, it is necessary to calculate how much time and effort it will take to harvest the wood, if required, and deliver it to the yard. Transportation costs based on distance from the source to the sawmill are a key component when drafting a business plan. Whether to purchase your own picker truck that can double as a delivery truck for local deliveries or be contracted out is a consideration.
The next step is probably the most important one, and that is to calculate whether it is possible to saw lumber in your farmyard and make money.
While the cost of the sawmill, blades and accompanying blade sharpening equipment is an important factor, it is not the most important one. The most important factor is calculating how many board feet of lumber of various sizes and quality you can 'reasonably' expect to produce over an eight hour work day from your wood source. That number will vary widely depending on what species of wood is being sawn into what sort of wood products. For softwood products like spruce, pine and fir, board feet is the standard measurement used to calculate both the cost to produce the lumber and its selling price after mark up. Hardwood products like maple, birch, aspen, beech and oak tend to be measured in square feet and also valued on an appearance scale because they often are used in appearance applications.
The biggest rookie mistake among new sawmill owners is a lack of understanding concerning the volume limitations of producing lumber on a bandsaw mill. There is definitely a daily ceiling on how much production a bandsaw mill can produce per day, no matter what species are being sawn or what products are being manufactured. A bandsaw mill is not designed for volume. So that is why many successful sawmillers focus on custom sawmilling and specialty sizes not offered by building supply retailers. In these cases, there is potential to mark up products and services to reflect the effort and value of the end product.
Another rookie mistake is expecting to make a lot of money producing commodity lumber like two-by-fours from a low volume bandsaw as the foundational product for the business. In reality, the easiest product to manufacture by both beginners and experienced sawyers on any sawmill is square timbers. They are also highly profitable and in high demand because they have so many industrial, commercial and residential uses. For example, a 6 in. X 6 in. timber, measuring anywhere from 10 to 30 feet, could require only four cuts on a bandsaw mill, versus numerous cuts to break a log down to produce two by fours and two by sixes that are cheap as dirt in retail stores. Here's the key formula — fewer cuts means more volume per eight hours, less wear and tear on equipment and ultimately, more money in your pocket. (See sidebar, The Vohs Experience).
Focusing on timber production first opens the door to breaking down that timber into various dimensional lumber sizes, as customer demand dictates, with end products priced accordingly, based on the time, effort and equipment wear and tear needed to achieve that final product. Remember, every cut costs you time and money.
While there are bandsaw mill products available, like the line of Canadian-made double-cut bandsaw mills sold by Select Sawmill, headquartered in Plantagenet, Ontario, that deliver higher production because they saw in both directions, it's possible that a bandsaw may not be the best option for the new sawmiller if the goal is to produce volume. A better option might be an affordable high quality thin kerf circular saw. Many examples of the Kara line of Finnish-made, small scale, circular saws are already in use in several rural-based, sawmilling businesses in Canada. Another option is circular sawmills offered by Canby, Oregon-based, Mighty Mite Sawmills.
Then finally, there is the selection and maintenance of sawblades. A dull sawblade translates into the production of a lot of extra sawdust, slower production and costly wavy lumber that may end up in the burn pit. Realistically, however, beginners should expect to produce a considerable amount of wavy lumber early on. Chock it up to a learning experience, but work hard to get better at both sawmill operation and blade maintenance quickly.
It is necessary to sharpen sawblades regularly, and depending on the amount of production, a blade change may be required twice a day or more. Whether a sawmill is purchased new or used, sawmill retailers provide the required equipment and should provide blade maintenance training on how to keep blades sharp. There are both manual and automatic sharpening systems available, with the benefit of the automatic systems being that they have the computer-controlled, 'set and forget' option. With manual systems, it is a required hand's-on time commitment every day, rather like the need to feed livestock on a daily basis.
For example, Christiansen Lumber, located near Big River, Saskatchewan, uses a Wood-Mizer Turbo 7 blade, with a deep gullet seven degree hook angle, and 7/8 in. pitch in their newer Wood-Mizer LT70 electric bandsaw mill. The blade on Christiansen's bandsaw is 1.5 in. wide and .055 in. thick. Learning a bit about sawblades is part of the sawmilling experience, with the eventual goal of determining what works well for you and sticking with it.
"That's really where the rubber meets the road because if you don't have sharp blades your sawmill is useless," says Christiansen Lumber owner, Dean Christiansen. "That's why I spent the extra money and bought their (Wood-Mizer's) best grinder."
To sharpen blades, Dean uses the Wood-Mizer BMS500 sharpener.
"It's an improvement over my old drag grinder, where it would come down over the face of the tooth and then drag back," says Christiansen. "This sharpener has a CBN grinding wheel made with a special material which comes down and hits the tooth in one grind. You are getting a perfect grind every time."
His sawmill requires six sharp blades every day, as blades are changed every 1.5 hours. They are a good example of a company that has learned and evolved along the way for over a decade, having developed a keen understanding of the importance of blade maintenance. They are also located in a rather remote area in northeastern Saskatchewan.
Wood-Mizer is one of the most popular small-scale sawmill suppliers in North America, but there are other options.
The Will Vohs experience
Many current small-scale sawmills are designed to minimize the labour requirement and also offer power options like electric, gasoline or diesel.
For just about every successful, farm-based, custom sawmiller, there is an 'Aha' moment.
For Alberta farmer and sawmiller, Will Vohs, it was when he did a quick comparison between what log buyers wanted to pay him for raw logs and how much money he could make selling sawn lumber from that same wood resource.
One of the easiest and most profitable wood product from small scale sawmills are square timbers because of how few cuts are needed to create them and because they have residential, commercial and industrial uses.
He says that he can manufacture a 12 in. X 12 in. X 20 ft. timber on his bandsaw mill and sell it for $250 compared to the $50 to $100 per raw log that log buyers wanted to pay him 10 years ago. It's even less now.
He operates a seasonal custom and retail sawmilling business on his farm near Caroline, Alberta. His sawmill is a Wood-Mizer LT40 band sawmill equipped with a debarker that he purchased for $30,000 about 12 years ago.
Dorian Lavallee, Wood-Mizer National Sales Manager in Canada, says for a small scale sawing business, they recommend the LT35HDG25 portable sawmill starting at $30,000. For a full time sawing business, he recommends an LT40HDG26 starting at $40,000.
The 'Aha' moment for Caroline, Alberta area farmer, Will Vohs, in his decision to manufacture and market his own lumber was when he compared how much forest companies wanted to pay him for his standing timber versus what he could make selling wood products from that same timber.
Vohs also focuses on lumber dimensions not readily available from retail lumber yards and recently milled a load of 1 in. X 10 in. boards for a friend. He generally cuts nothing smaller than 1in. X 6 in. and as large as 2 in. X 12 in. He produces a fairly high volume of 2 in. X 6 in. and 2 in. X 8 in. for cattle fencing that he uses both on his own farm and sells to others. Waste wood from sawmilling is processed through a small wood chipper, with the material used in Voh's cattle operations. First-cut slabs are processed into firewood for his home and shop.
When queried by friends and neighbours about the wisdom of making this investment into a band sawmill, he points out that the cost of the sawmill was about the same as a round baler. Having spent a couple of decades raising cattle, he says he’d rather be sawing lumber than baling hay.
Will Vohs was fortunate in that he had a good quality woodlot to source his logs and also a building to both install his small-scale sawmill and stack his wood products.
"I don't have the pressure of harvest and haying weather anymore," Vohs says. "The sawmill is really nice that way. If the unit breaks down, it's not that bad because there is nothing spoiling on you right away. You can just fix the sawmill and carry on."
Today, between running his sawmill, custom grazing cattle for other area farmers, and offering farm services to his neighbours, Will says, “I am plenty entertained every day.”
The Gary's Mill experience
Gary Francis operates and stacks lumber from his Timberking small-scale bandsaw mill. He says on a good day, he can produce about 800 board feet per hour.
Tired of plying his skills as a sawyer for other custom sawmilling businesses, Nipawin, Saskatchewan, area resident, Gary Francis, dreamed of one day working from home and putting up his own shingle. A few years ago, he took the plunge, with a business simply known as 'Gary's Mill'.
The backbone of the business is a Timberking 2200 portable, one-man, band sawmill that he purchased two years ago.
"The wood doesn't sit here for very long," says Francis. "There's a big demand for band saw lumber because it has a smoother finish and the boards are true from one end to the other."
Gary's Mill manufactures a variety of custom wood products, the most popular being
The entire sawing enterprise for Gary's Mill, located just outside Nipawin, Saskatchewan, is handled within his farmyard.
dimension lumber from 2 in. X 4 in. to 2 in. X 10 in.. He also markets live or rough edged 1" lumber primarily for corral windbreak boards and timbers in a variety of dimensions, some as large as 10 in X 10 in.. Lately, he has also been manufacturing thick and wide planks for customers wanting to use the material to make tables and benches. There is a good, local market for 2 in. X 8 in. and 2 in. X 10 in. dimension lumber for use as corral planking. Francis is investigating if he can qualify for a grade stamp so that his dimensional lumber can be used in building construction, as well as the addition of a planer/moulder to expand his product line.
"When I went shopping for a bandsaw mill, I wanted fully hydraulic features, with a board return and debarker, which to me is critical because wood logged in the summertime can get pretty dirty. Dirt and bandsaw mills don't mix," Gary says. "And I wanted a diesel powered unit because it is more user-friendly and cheaper to operate than gasoline."
A front end loader at Gary's Mill allows him to move logs around the yard and load them onto the sawmill carriage. A loader also comes in handy for loading wood products onto customer trucks or flatbeds.
Among the features Gary appreciates about his Timberking 2200 sawmill is its sturdy construction.
Advertised as a one-man sawmill, Gary says that based on the Timberking 2200's design, one person can definitely both operate the sawmill and stack lumber, estimating that with the right log mix, he can manufacture about 800 board feet per hour. Sawing a 16 ft. long, 12 in. wide log takes him about 40 seconds per cut. He appreciates that the band mill's setworks and hydraulics minimize the amount of manual labour required while also speeding up production, especially with his history of back problems.
The day's not over till the sawblade's teeth are sharpened for tomorrow's work.
He uses 1.5 in. wide, 7/8ths pitch, double-hard blades that are 177 in. long. Blade use and sharpness varies depending on the logs he is sawing. To sharpen blades he uses Timberking's Talon automatic sharpener and manual setter.
Sources
Here is a list of popular small-scale sawmill providers. The key to any purchase is preferably local after-sales technical, parts, and training support. Also, do they have an expanded product line to help you grow your business?
Wood-Mizer - (bandsaw) www.woodmizer.ca
Norwood - (bandsaw) www.norwoodsawmills.com
Timberking - (bandsaw) www.timberking.com
Select Sawmills - (double cut bandsaw) www.selectsawmill.com
Baker Products - (bandsaw and scragg) www.baker-online.com
Hud-Son - (bandsaw) www.hud-son.com
Logmaster - (bandsaw) www.logmaster.com
Mighty-Mite - (bandsaw and circular saw) - www.mightymitesawmills.com
Kara - (thin kerf circular saw) www.kara.fi
Helle - (carriage and scragg) - www.4helle.com
- Tony Kryzanowski