Pricing your milled timber?

[nooie]

Hello all, I'm wondering how you price your timber? I'm milling mainly Sitka Spruce and Greenheart for a house, but I'd also like to make a bit of cash selling rough sawn timber. How do you guys price your timber? I could take a punt and just sell it cheaper than the builders yard I guess.

[Squaredy]

3 hours ago, nooie said:

Hello all, I'm wondering how you price your timber? I'm milling mainly Sitka Spruce and Greenheart for a house, but I'd also like to make a bit of cash selling rough sawn timber. How do you guys price your timber? I could take a punt and just sell it cheaper than the builders yard I guess.

Well that is the six million dollar question, and at the end of the day you will need to work out what prices work for you.

 

The only tip I can really give is to remember that what you mill will be very different from what builders merchants offer.  
 

Your timber will i guess be unseasoned.  If it is the right species (larch, douglas fir) it will have natural durability.  And you will be able to offer a bespoke service.  Eg if the customer wants beams at 135mm x 60 you can help, whereas the builders merchants will not.

 

Also I suggest always pricing up for the full length.  The customer may ask for many different lengths, but you should charge for the length your logs are.

 

And I haven’t mentioned that of course pricing should be by volume, except possibly for very thin or narrow pieces.

[trigger_andy]

19 hours ago, nooie said:

Hello all, I'm wondering how you price your timber? I'm milling mainly Sitka Spruce and Greenheart for a house, but I'd also like to make a bit of cash selling rough sawn timber. How do you guys price your timber? I could take a punt and just sell it cheaper than the builders yard I guess.

You've just put an order in for a 10" Peterson, right? I've just picked up a used model myself. I plan to do remote milling for customers with it and mill Oak Beams etc. But I'd like to offer customers 2"x4", 4" posts, 6" Posts, 2"x6" etc. 

 

On the practice log Im working on I ripped 14 of 2"x6" in 30 minutes. If I had a helper it would be significantly faster. I've been told localluy we're £30 for a 4.2m x 2" x 6" board. Sounds steep to me and I need to look more into it. But if thats the case on my tod I can rattle out 28 boards in an hour on a good sized log. Obviously there is a lot of prep time and waste removal before you get to the good stuff. But in an hour I could produce £840 worth of 6"x2" boards. I could sell at half the price of a Timber Merchant and still make good coin and they'd save a fortune. 

 

I'm trying to figure out how best to advertise this though. 

[topchippyles]

58 minutes ago, trigger_andy said:

You've just put an order in for a 10" Peterson, right? I've just picked up a used model myself. I plan to do remote milling for customers with it and mill Oak Beams etc. But I'd like to offer customers 2"x4", 4" posts, 6" Posts, 2"x6" etc. 

 

On the practice log Im working on I ripped 14 of 2"x6" in 30 minutes. If I had a helper it would be significantly faster. I've been told localluy we're £30 for a 4.2m x 2" x 6" board. Sounds steep to me and I need to look more into it. But if thats the case on my tod I can rattle out 28 boards in an hour on a good sized log. Obviously there is a lot of prep time and waste removal before you get to the good stuff. But in an hour I could produce £840 worth of 6"x2" boards. I could sell at half the price of a Timber Merchant and still make good coin and they'd save a fortune. 

 

I'm trying to figure out how best to advertise this though. 

I always went around 70% what the local builders merchants were selling at.

If 4x2 was £1 a metre i was 70p  that worked out quite well.

Mainly external timber so seasoned stuff made no difference all douglas fir or larch. 

 

All the outer rounds from the logs after you cube it up would be cut and bagged for fire wood hardly any waste. Saw dust was the main thing to get rid off but the horse guys will take that for bedding.

 

Facebook marketplace  is as good as anywhere. 

Edited Friday at 13:25 by topchippyles

[nooie]

Thanks for the replies. Our local builders yard on Uist is selling 6x2s at £35 or possibly more now. I've been treating the timber I use myself with Boron and so far it seems to be ok. It's only sprayed on though.

 

We burn all the off cuts ourselves and if theres too much I can easily sell it.

 

My wife has horses so the sawdust gets used up no problem. Horse shit and saw dust makes great compost for the garden.

[Macpherson]

2 hours ago, nooie said:

I've been treating the timber I use myself with Boron and so far it seems to be ok. It's only sprayed on though.

 

I've been doing the same for a long time, Sodium Borate Decahydrate...A saturated solution of around 1Kg into 5 gallons of hot water...  it definitely works.👍

[Squaredy]

On 23/01/2026 at 12:34, trigger_andy said:

You've just put an order in for a 10" Peterson, right? I've just picked up a used model myself. I plan to do remote milling for customers with it and mill Oak Beams etc. But I'd like to offer customers 2"x4", 4" posts, 6" Posts, 2"x6" etc. 

 

On the practice log Im working on I ripped 14 of 2"x6" in 30 minutes. If I had a helper it would be significantly faster. I've been told localluy we're £30 for a 4.2m x 2" x 6" board. Sounds steep to me and I need to look more into it. But if thats the case on my tod I can rattle out 28 boards in an hour on a good sized log. Obviously there is a lot of prep time and waste removal before you get to the good stuff. But in an hour I could produce £840 worth of 6"x2" boards. I could sell at half the price of a Timber Merchant and still make good coin and they'd save a fortune. 

 

I'm trying to figure out how best to advertise this though. 

Don’t forget to account for handling, positioning and storing logs, clean up and dealing with waste.  Also remember that a proportion of the boards you cut will be rejects as they will be too bowed or have major knots hence weaknesses.

 

Also as you have alluded to it is easy to totally overlook the part of the business that takes the longest - marketing and sales.  If you spend two hours on production but then another four hours actually selling and dealing with the customers the equation is turned on its head.

[Squaredy]

2 hours ago, nooie said:

I've been treating the timber I use myself with Boron and so far it seems to be ok. It's only sprayed on though.

What is the purpose of this?

[rapalaman]

33 minutes ago, Squaredy said:

What is the purpose of this?

I believe it’s to keep the boring insects away - not the uninteresting ones, the ones that will damage the timber 😏

[nooie]

22 hours ago, Squaredy said:

What is the purpose of this?

Aye, like Rapalaman said, it keeps the beasties away.