Milled timber prices

[Ian Leach]

I'm looking at getting some milled oak and i'm just wondering what price per cubic foot it is going for.

or would it be better to buy in wood and mill myself.

Edited March 15, 2009 by Ian Leach

[Justme]

Mill it yourself if you are able. It will be much cheaper.

 

Justme

[tommer9]

It depends on how much and what dimensions of oak you want. Down here oak fetches about 50p a cubic foot roadside, and about £3-£4 delivered in. Milling costs are from about £30/hr for mobile milling upwards, but a decent operator with decent kit should be able to mill a lot of timber on site provided you give him a decent prepared area to set up in. If you need enough to justify a couple or more decent sticks to be mille, then buy it in the round and get a mobile mill in. Green sawn oak goes for from£22/cubic foot upwards down here, obviously depending on what size sections and what volume you have. The best guide for you would be to ring up some sawmills who deal in hardwoods- there are loads on line, and from what i can tell, the price seems to be fairly standard nationwide.

[Ian Leach]

It depends on how much and what dimensions of oak you want. Down here oak fetches about 50p a cubic foot roadside, and about £3-£4 delivered in. Milling costs are from about £30/hr for mobile milling upwards, but a decent operator with decent kit should be able to mill a lot of timber on site provided you give him a decent prepared area to set up in. If you need enough to justify a couple or more decent sticks to be mille, then buy it in the round and get a mobile mill in. Green sawn oak goes for from£22/cubic foot upwards down here, obviously depending on what size sections and what volume you have. The best guide for you would be to ring up some sawmills who deal in hardwoods- there are loads on line, and from what i can tell, the price seems to be fairly standard nationwide.

 

Cheers for advice, been offered some for £20 per cubic ft milled been air dried for a few years. Have got a mill thats shared with another guy but don't need it green.

[tommer9]

sounds about right- it is what i sell mine for. Usually start at about £25 then end up letting it go for about 20!

[wills-mill]

Mill your own if you can, definitely....

 

50p a cu/ft roadside sounds optimistically cheap for sensible timber. I'd expect to pay from £2 upwards if access and felling is going to be reasonable, so by the time you've felled and extracted it's closer to £3-5. With Oak weighing in at about 28cu/ft per tonne, that would mean your 50p sawlogs are costing £14 per tonne, which is cordwood money

 

There's a fair bit of wastage by the time you've milled the sapwood away, and the smaller the oak is, the greater percentage you'll be losing. I'd reckon to get between 60 and 80 sawn cubic ft from 100 hoppus cubic ft measured, depending on size and wobbliness of the butts....

 

Milling costs I'd think should work out at between £2 and £5 per cube produced, but obviously the costs are more or less the same if you are producing dreadful rubbish or prime timber!

 

All in all by the time you've priced everything up, there's a very sensible saving to be made over bought-in fresh sawn timber. I would say that round here (South East) Oak tends to be priced at between £18 and £22 per sawn cube depending on lengths sizes and quality, and nice air dried I have seen at anything from £35 to £65.