What a Profitable One Man Sawmill Operation Really Looks Like

All you got to do is start is put the Power to the motor through the Capacitors Now we're making three phase Hey it's Brock here from Rock Hill Farms And I'm on my way to visit my friend Paul case And today I'm going to sell him a couple Of logs and I'm going to check out their New Sawmill building So I think there are a couple of things From this trip that might be really Interesting to you guys number one is How much these logs are worth and how They price them when they're buying logs The second thing is the way they set Their building up with at least one Unique feature And you know they've been mailing logs Professionally for several years now They've got two really nice fully Hydraulic wood Miser Sawmills and You know they've learned a few things About what they like and they what they Don't like about a sawmill setup so We're going to go through and check out Their setup we're gonna Mill some logs Should be a lot of fun Yeah Good morning Paul It's morning trade you're gonna start a Little quicker well I call it morning When I do something productive I also be Uh dirt at your place it's all wet

Foreign I mean you know how Lube Works if it's Lube when it started and the Blade's Going by a 70 mile an hour it ain't Gonna be losing just a second But uh I did like several things about that Easy Boardwalk one of them being that They make them in Missouri All right so uh how would you determine What these logs are worth The when they show up at our place we Pay 40 cents for them 40 cents a board Foot a board foot so and then this stick Is just the magic stick that tells you How much Board foot is in the log What are the what do the marks mean Uh that's how many board foot is in a Log and there's a length to each side so I have an eight foot side and the 10 foot side and so are you just putting This across the narrow end yep along the Small end ten foot board If the small end hits right there you've Got 106 board feet yep sweet and then Sometimes you can look at them and see Defect Of uh Like that's not too soft Um but you can we usually mark back if There's too many defects because you Know you're not going to get as many

Board foot Yeah each of them so Yep this is just what I happen to have Laying at the house The eight foot board and sometimes And we usually count the bark Uh so the element would be 98. Sometimes you can See there it might be there 85. But it was pretty pretty good one so It's not an exact thing huh yeah Yeah if there's no perfect Perfect one and Sometimes a knot like that you can see Visible bad from the outside but That one's not really that bad So That one's kind of 75 one way and 50 in other ways so middle 62. Pretty easy to figure out So that's all you need to know right There yep Then you just uh Add those up and I'm Gonna Be Rich when he gets done Calculating Times 40 cents 62 20. 62 or 69 20 cents So bringing them here these two logs are Worth 69 yep Might not get rich logging anytime soon I'm out here with Paul case and his son Scott and I'm here today to sell them a couple Logs but more than that I'm here to take

A look at the building that they've put Their Mill in because that's my first Question is what is the ideal type of Building if I do get a mill so you've Been running this it's a wood Miser lt40 For a long time and So I just kind of wondered what were Your things you felt like you had to Have in in a building or how'd you Decide to make it like this uh the way That we're set up and what we saw Yeah I'm kind of a one-man operation so Um We added a few things from where we was At as far as cleaning from underneath The mill was awful so we added a Conveyor under it Um but other floor yeah yeah concrete Floor it's a little easier to clean up Um but besides the the mill and the Edger Um other than just being out of the Weather So you got to have a ton of access Really to get in that's one thing Because I'd wondered if it would be Better to have it Open on two sides so you could get in And out the back so where we were at Before we didn't have big doors and now We can get 20 foot lumber in which is Kind of the max of what the mill will Cut So yeah big doors and access to get

Stuff in and out without tearing it up Piece is pretty ideal don't get any big Ideas when people come and ask us about 16 18 and 20 foot lumber we recommend They go to Lowe's Home Depot and ride Out and first you know because we're Going to make it higher than that Because those things are heavy and Difficult to handle it's a lot of extra Work to go along and hard to get logs Good enough to make good lumber at home I I really think that's cool what you Set up I'm gonna get a better look at it They've got a way to get dust out of Here without much manual work yeah so I Think we can turn it on for you and let You watch it run yeah awesome so let's Let's see this thing Mill some logs and Take a look at the uh at the way that is Pushing out the sawdust In three phase without three phase by By rotary phase and Tell you how that works You guys know I've been going around and Visiting different Sawmill owners and Asking them questions and trying to Learn about the different brands of Mills And Most of that is from a hobbyist point of View but what we have here is people who Are earning their living and putting Food on the table primarily By Milling Lumber and that takes a

Serious approach to being productive They're running this Mill at least six Hours a day five days a week so when you Can take something like cleaning up the Massive amounts of sawdust and bark out From under the mill and turn that into An automated process that is saving you Actual money not just an annoyance of Doing the job and what I love about Their setup is that it's not just Effective but it's also inexpensive Relatively and it's it's the simplest Solution I could imagine or they're Taking one piece of used equipment and Adding it to stuff they already had and Making it work S all right so I know you've done this Before but how you uh sitting there Making all those cuts and all that back And forth and up and down without Thinking about it you still have to know The measurements know where you're Where your Cut's supposed to be I I can Uh I have 16 options here and when I'm Cutting three befores I have an auto up And an auto down and I'm able to do the Math and on like those that I just cut That was a nine or an eight by nine and I'm able to choose my four inch cut and I can this is just a bunch a bump To move up and down And it reads all the way down to a 30 Second On being active so does that work like

If you're cutting the same things all The time you know that the first couple Cuts you're using button one and then The the third cut is that button and it Memorizes the saw height yep and yeah And I I have a couple orders that I cut All the time and I have my button saved To whatever To whatever whatever I'm cutting That's pretty cool And that's efficiency compared to all The those manual meals I've looked at Here this is so efficient so the coolest Thing about this building in my mind is This feed conveyor they've got down Under here they built a concrete trough To set it in and once a day he can just Turn that on and automatically feed out The sawdust Foreign ER hooked to this old tractor so they Can just drive it out and spread it Across the field if they want I bet There are not very many people out there Who got a conveyor set up under the mill Like that not like this one not not Maybe big operations do but not like big Ones do if I didn't have a big pile back There once a week and I keep that pretty Much cleaned up but being able to sweep All of each floor to it that's just yeah And then parking that that spreader Behind it that's pretty cool idea too And every other thing they're using here

You already had you just bought the yeah Conveyor 220 electric comes in and There's some rules about running a phase Converter the size we're running this One is a 30 horsepower motor And it will start and run A 30 horsepower motor with no load on it When it starts and it will run as much As 60 horsepower of motors She got to be within 100 foot of your Transformer and you got to have 100 amp Breaker that you're running it on so but Uh this this one's only running a 15 and This is the same size converter that We've got on the meal but all it does is Starts this motor on 220 with capacitors So it's got two hot legs and it drags The third one the way a generator would To make the third Hot Leg And so on three phase you have three hot Wires running into the motor A neat thing about three phase is if you Hook it up and it runs the motor the Wrong direction you just switch two of The wires and they'll go the other way And that's kind of neat but All you got to do start is put the power To the motor through the capacitors Now we're making three phase The nail in order to start the motor Now we're up and running All right and this This right here is an edger that you're Using to take the live edge off of these

And make them into straight boards right So Real Steel brand Real Steel I have to look that guy up he's in Pennsylvania And uh whenever you call And ever since I bought this edger when I call To get new blades I talked to the guy That killed it He said you sell that You fill that rack up with slab and you Just put straps around it and you get 10 Bucks for that And people are making firewood out of it I think it'll make somewhere just short Of a wreck of Harvard we got six dollars In the strapping that's around it so Selling it for ten dollars because uh You just need it going right mainly Right you want to know what the big boys Have to do they see something about this Wood and run a saw through it makes it Manufacturing waste you can't burn it Then a lot of the big Sawmills around That was always fire there It's burning slabs and burning their Sawdust or burning all their off Cuts or Whatever and Most of them have had to go to a chipper So they can grind it up and then sell Chips for 400 semi-load make a good Sense to me it's a lot of bark but a lot Of people use that for firewood anyway It works really good for partners

It starts easy and it burns off Foreign Wouldn't reach all the way around but It's sticking out both sides so I'll be Able to hook another chain to it and Lift that out with the skid loader all Right well I think this is a pretty cool Setup I appreciate you guys taking time To watch the video I'll put links on the Screen to more of our videos and I'll See you next time