A friend of mine passed away and his widow wants to sell his barn full of rough cut lumber. Most of it is Cherry in the form of 16′ long by 1 ft wide 4/4…about 1000 feet, and another 800 ft of 8′ lengths. There’s also about 800 bdft of cherry beams in various sizes, and about 200 bdft of maple beams.
I’m trying to help her figure out the value of this wood for sale. Altogether I estimated about 3600 bdft of wood. It’s all been sticked and drying for about 6 years in a good barn in SE Ohio.
What is it worth? Or, what would someone pay for it assuming they had to come pick it up?
Thanks.
Replies
I'm in Athens, and I'd be willing to take a look at it (and maybe buy some of it). I can get her in touch with some local sawmills (there are several in Vinton County, and others scattered around) that could help with pricing. The price could be anywhere from $1 to $10 per bd ft, depending on quality.
-Steve
The value will depend on what grade it is, but the 12" width has a lot going for it. Most cherry is not that wide. And the bf value will increase on the "beams" which I take to mean, thicker stock. Check out the local lumberyards and mills for a starting point.
I'm in WV
I've purchased cherry about those same dimensions for $1/bd. ft. about 5 years ago.
Not any more.
Around here, away from bigger towns local mills usually get around $2 to $3 a board foot for cherry at a minimum.
You should easily be able to get $3.
The 12" width makes me think the trees were good sized and so the grade would be high.
I think around $5/bd.ft. is as high as rough cut, good grade cherry will fetch around here.
shady
There is a publication called hardwood market report It gives week by week prices of woods as they are sold at sawmills
Cherry's highest price in any I can find indicate that 4/4 cherry FAS grade which we don't know if this would be that grade was $2.35 a bd.ft. Since we are speaking about boards 12 inches wide the likelyhood of getting more grade #1C ($1.34) is pretty remote. (that's for Appalachian hardwoods (another words your neck of the woods) If you are paying $5.00 a bd.ft. for Cherry and it's not FAS (virtually free from knots or "character") you are buying wood at retail prices not wholesale.
It would be extremely rare to find a 16 foot long board 12 inches wide without earlywood or character and or knots that down grade it below FAS.
My experience here is with two local guys who cut w/ a bandsaw mill.
One guy wanted $2/bdft
the other $2.75/bcft
both said I could select my own boards.
Seasoned cherry.
As far as buying at hardwood market report prices which I presume are buying direct from commercial sawmills as wholesale prices, I just don't know.
shady
If you can select at that price then I assume you are taking virtually knot free heartwood. Those prices are slightly lower & higher than wholesale but not extremely so considering you may take less than bundle sized loads.. (approx. 1000 bd.ft.)
Seasoned cherry has me confused.. That doesn't mean the boards are air dried or kiln dried but the logs have stood around for a while?
By the way anybody selling wood is a commercial sawmill.. It can be Johnny farmer with a woodmiser or some multimillion bd.ft. processing plant.. Anybody who sells wood reports those numbers to Memphis where the report originates (actually I suspect it's only those who subscribe to the service do the actual reporting which is averaged and reported)
seasoned meaning air-dried, in this case 2 years or more.
Thanks for setting me straight on the definition of commercial, although no one I'm buying from is reporting to Memphis.
I'm talking about local guys, sawing local logs, selling to locals. The rest of it is out of my league.
I recently brought 6 short logs to a band saw miller from a cherry that blew down in my driveway. I paid $0.22/bdft, go figure
essentially it is worth what someone is willing to pay
I'm trying to give the guy some info about what I've seen air-dried mill run cherry go for in my area. I think if he asks about $3/bdft for 12" wide 16' cherry boards that would be a good start.
shady,
Because of the length and assuming it's mill run heartwood it possibly should command a premium over what we're discussing.
As for reporting by guys with bandsaw mills that sorta still works.. chances are they know someone who's attuned to the local markets.. They call and in chatting discuss prices.. the person who usually knows prices may be the reporting member of their little group and those discussions affect national pricing to a tiny degree..
I can go around to 30 differant mills close by and get 30 differant prices however most will be close to prices given in the report. Oh, there is the occasional guy who asks more than all the other sawmills do but he'll sell so little that his numbers don't affect pricing all that much.. He may be ok with that prefering to use the wood himself or not work as hard etc..
I'm also thinking in terms of the width and length adding to it's value. A 12" cherry board 16' long, assuming its all heartwood, came out of a sizable log. That indicates to me quality grain structure and stable boards.
As far as the hardwood report. Seeing as the prices I was quoted are within the range you speak of I would assume you to be right about how the going rates are set.
Around here there are bigger mills, really big mills. They kiln dry and grade their lumber. Those are the places getting nearer to the $5 figure, and even that I'm not sure of only what I remember being told. Still yet how much do you have to buy? I don't really deal in that market.
I only deal locally as the hardwoods are local and I don't mind working with air-dried wood. Any small miller can saw all the hardwoods that are commercially available right here. The mid size mills seem to be fading away, can't compete with bigger state-of-the-art mill operations. So the market prices I see may or may not be determined any where else but on the guys front porch. That's probably naive to think so but like I said, it's all I know.
Shady,
Yeh, my sawmill is what you would call a midsize mill in that they saw about 2 million bd.ft. a year. I've spoken to the larger mills and they don't want my business and the smaller mills can't supply me in a timely fashion..
The trick that I use to determine if a sawmill is likely to be reasonable to deal with is do they saw railroad ties..
If I see some of those 9"x7" x 9 foot ties stacked up I know that they've learned that the $20-22.00 they get from the heart centers of logs is really all they will average.
If you check the price of the lower grade wood normally found in the center of a log and compare it with the prices paid for lower grade wood the differance is too small to make it worth while to attempt to saw for grade.
Those mid sized mills market is usually the pallet mills, a handful of wholesale buyers and the railroad tie market. Since those buyers are terrible to work with they appreciate the fact I show up with foldiing dead presidents and pay on demand rather than forcing them to wait for the billing cycle to come around.. They are so greatful they clue me in on deals too great to pass up.. That's how I got my 1200 bd.ft. of fiddleback maple for only $120.00 and the 917 bd.ft. of burl for only $366.80 Oh and I also got nine 10 foot long 6"x6" burl timbers for only $108.. Real burl!
Not to mention several thousand bd.ft. of thins for $60.00. (ask about thins)
You do realize that you can't air dry a log don't you? stack it for years and it will still be too green to use if you saw it into boards. Air drying time drastically increases by the thickness.. sure it's a year per inch of thickness but two inches is closer to 2 1/2 years and three inches takes more than 4 years to dry..
<<They are so greatful they clue me in on deals too great to pass up.. That's how I got my 1200 bd.ft. of fiddleback maple for only $120.00 and the 917 bd.ft. of burl for only $366.80 Oh and I also got nine 10 foot long 6"x6" burl timbers for only $108.. Real burl!>>Please.... stop... it hurts so much.If you come out one morning and the shed is empty but for a bunch of size 9 foot prints and and some Chevy tire tracks, I am sure I won't know any thing about it.AndySneaking into the night, whistling a soulful tune.
AndyE
Right now there is somebody with deals like that available.. They are desperate and need to make payroll or buy groceries and willing to do a lot to make a sale..
Finding them is the only hard part.. Start looking for railroad ties and stop in and start talking.. You'll find your source..
Frenchy,I understand. And I feel for the guy who has to sell at a loss. But I have yet to find anyone near me selling the kind of stock you have for any price. As a hobbyist, I have the luxury to pick and choose what I use, and try not to buy lumber at all. I much prefer to find my own logs where I can and have them milled. Not always so easy, but I feel it's worth it to know where a board "came from". And I know people especially appreciate having a piece done for them that came from a tree in their yard.Andy
AndyE
I should have looked up where you are.. While there are some areas of the country where trees are relatively scarce. I don't know of any major city where pallets aren't made.. Pallets are all made from hardwood and if you look at them remarkably decent hardwood.. Now those places don't pay high prices for their wood so somebody is providing them with decent wood at affordable prices..
Thanks to all for your help...I got a good education in roughcut lumber! I'll try to get her $2-$3 per bdft, but let her know that it could be as low as $1.00.
Thats kind of tough. Its air dried, not kiln dried. Its "unselect" - not graded. And its just milled by who knows who, cut who knows how.
That kind of thing is popular in small circles, but big cost differences. Cherry for example, 4/4 FAS nice clean stuff retails around here for about $9 a ft. But I can also get unselect cherry, still kiln dried, for $2. For your description, its all probably in the buck to buck fifty a board foot range for value, unless you find a real doozy out there with a lot of dollars and not a lot of experience in the area.
Real trucks dont have sparkplugs
You want to sell the whole lot as a unit if possible. If you start to sell it by the board you'll be at it all summer and still have half the pile left next fall.
Only a few people will be interested in buying and moving that much wood so you've probably got a pretty limited market. Just advertise it well and whatever the best bid is, you take it, that's the price you are going to get, market price or mill prices hardly matter.
It wouldn't hurt to open the piles up some and make them easy to examine, but that can be a huge amount of labor. The surer the bidders are about the quality of the wood, especially if it is good stuff, the better the price you'll get. If it is all stashed away in a dark barn with only the ends visible you'll get bids for its firewood value.
John White
Let me give you some facts. The hardwood market is about as soft as it has been since I've been working wood, 20 plus years.
I can give you the names of about 50 sawyers around the country that are sitting on large inventories of the type of stock you're talking about, and they cannot sell it right now without taking a loss.
If you can sell it piece by piece, and deal with the retail customers, and, as John White stated, be at it until this time next year, you can probably get the retail prices that some folks have mentioned here. Selling air dried, ungraded cherry 3 boards at a time will end up being a full time job for you. I know, I've done it. 2 years ago, I emptied an entire shed full of various hardwoods, approx. 10,000 bf. It took me almost a year, and I wasn't getting $5.00 bf for cherry, either.
If the decision is made to sell all the wood at once, as a wholesale transaction, you can email me. I'd be interested in quoting a price, once I know more about the stock at hand. If you decide to sell it piece by piece, then good luck.
Jeff
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