ThrustSSC

Opportunity cost: good point, but not in this case, I'm afraid. One good reason for finding a productive use for it Insurance: another good point. i forgot that one. £35/ann more on the Defender insurance - so 35p a cube. Time to deliver: included in the sums as part of the 2 hours Invoices: about 1p each Banking: free Answering the phone: part of the 2 hours per cube Accounts I do myself, ditto the VAT, etc.

Hmmmm... an interesting thread this, and good to be on a forum where folks are disagreeing sensibly instead of the usual mud-slinging I see elsewhere. A very pleasant change. Anyway... I think this is coming down to a conversation on overheads and wanted to take a moment to think about those - and happy to share the results. Just what does a minimum-overheads wood business look like? I think mine is pretty close. I guess it uses land you already own but which is otherwise unproductive and therefore no rental cost (true in my case). I use a chainsaw and axe - so let's say £1000 or equipment depreciated to zero over 5 years at £200/ann. I do about 50 tons a year - 100 cubes - so that's £2 a cube. I use £30 of bar oil, a chain at £45, half a bar at £50, a sprocket at £50 and 50 litres of petrol at £75. So £250 in consumables, or £2.50 a cube. My 100 pallets last 10 years at £3 each, my 100 bags last 5 at £5 each. So £1.30 a cube. That's £5.80 a cube so far. Hardwood cord is £52 a ton where I live, so £26 a cube. £31.80 a cube so far. My trailer will give me 10 years, cost £1000 second-hand after add-ons like spare wheel and wheel clamp, and will probably cost me £1000 in maintenance bits over that time (e.g. replacement floor, brake pads, lights). So £200/ann, or £2 a cube. £33.80 so far. Assume 20 miles per cube for delivery, 50p a mile running cost for the wife's Defender, £10 a cube. I make that £43.80 in costs. The rest is pay for my time. £56.20 for 2 hours of work when all is told. Anyone want to offer a comparison? Or a critique of the above numbers?

Hmmmm... an interesting thread this, and good to be on a forum where folks are disagreeing sensibly instead of the usual mud-slinging I see elsewhere. A very pleasant change. Anyway... I think this is coming down to a conversation on overheads and wanted to take a moment to think about those - and happy to share the results. Just what does a minimum-overheads wood business look like? I think mine is pretty close. I guess it uses land you already own but which is otherwise unproductive and therefore no rental cost (true in my case). I use a chainsaw and axe - so let's say £1000 or equipment depreciated to zero over 5 years at £200/ann. I do about 50 tons a year - 100 cubes - so that's £2 a cube. I use £30 of bar oil, a chain at £45, half a bar at £50, a sprocket at £50 and 50 litres of petrol at £75. So £250 in consumables, or £2.50 a cube. My 100 pallets last 10 years at £3 each, my 100 bags last 5 at £5 each. So £1.30 a cube. That's £5.80 a cube so far. Hardwood cord is £52 a ton where I live, so £26 a cube. £31.80 a cube so far. My trailer will give me 10 years, cost £1000 second-hand after add-ons like spare wheel and wheel clamp, and will probably cost me £1000 in maintenance bits over that time (e.g. replacement floor, brake pads, lights). So £200/ann, or £2 a cube. £33.80 so far. Assume 20 miles per cube for delivery, 50p a mile running cost for the wife's Defender, £10 a cube. I make that £43.80 in costs. The rest is pay for my time. £56.20 for 2 hours of work when all is told. Anyone want to offer a comparison? Or a critique of the above numbers?

Should be good to see some of the footage in the future. Wasn't there Rory McGrath et al on the pole climbing, too? So nice to have the event so close to home. If I wasn't so idle I could have walked there :-) Anyway, did anyone hear where the next one will be? Presumably in 2014?

Should be good to see some of the footage in the future. Wasn't there Rory McGrath et al on the pole climbing, too? So nice to have the event so close to home. If I wasn't so idle I could have walked there :-) Anyway, did anyone hear where the next one will be? Presumably in 2014?

Marvellous stuff! I fire the trains on the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland railways as a pasttime, and the other year we did similar on the Ffestiniog - with steam, too :-). The views were getting badly encroached upon, so we got approval to fell the offending trees and took some of them out by train as a PR exercise. Back home I'm working on a 2ft gauge line for my own logs operation. Hell, why not?! Say hi to the Groudle Glen chaps for me if you see them again. I helped rebuild Polar Bear a few years ago. Cheers, Jeremy

Yep, had 2 of my regulars on to me today for this winter's load! :-)

I do 3 sizes: 6-8", 8-10", 10-15" - anything else by special request at the start of the season. The vast majority sold is 8-10", with a fair bit of 6-8" and frankly not a lot of 10-15". That suits me: I burn a lot of the larger stuff myself, so if a huge load of it suddenly sells, I'll just use smaller stuff. What I do find is the larger the log size, the even larger the order. I can't recall ever selling more than 1 cube of 6-8", for example, whereas a full 4m3 trailer load of 10-15" is not unheard of.

Wood is treated differently to coal - or oil for that matter. It's 5%, regardless of volume, as long as it's for the end-user's use. It doesn't matter if the end-user is a business or residential (not so for oil, for example). If you're buying to resell, like most of us here do when we get cordwood in, it's 20%. Hence it makes sense in our business to VAT register. Most of us will be net VAT claimers. It's all pretty clearly laid out on HMRC's web site. Just follow your nose. IMHO they've done a pretty good job of setting out the rules so they're easily understood (unlike their crass incompetence in other administrative matters).

Ahhhh... 'Tis not we who need to get a grip, then! ;-) Your quote was 10 pounds, for large rings... You said nothing about what they were for, and you're asking folk to sell them for less than cost. Their, there, they're...

Assuming you get 12" long by 12" dia rings, you're looking for about 1m3 of wood. Many folks here will be paying £25 for that before even sawing it up, and selling it processed and seasoned between £80 and £110. You might be better checking with your local tree surgeon to see if he's got some really vile twisty stuff he doesn't want to chop!

And when it does come out here, it'll still be a ripoff price. I just brought 2x X17, a Brush Axe and a 22" machete back from the USA - all in my checked baggage, all from Fiskars, purchased via Amazon and delivered to my hotel in a few days. Total cost £100 including shipping. Over here, very significantly more! Now I just need a longer case for bringing back X27s en-masse for resale!

Windfall is spot on. It's an empirical measure, not an exact science, because: 1) MC varies on initial purchase by species, time of year, period since felling, weather since felling, storage since felling, et cetera ad nauseam 2) Wood density varies by species So the best Ians762 is going to get is a rough guide. And 2m3 per ton is a pretty good rough guide in my experience! A load of wet oak will be rather less, a load of dry sycamore rather more. YMMV!

Sound advice. But what about this bl**dy weather!!!! ;-) I'm even worried about my ash this year

Thanks, folks. Clearly it's... errr... alder! Appeciate your help. Will now go investigate how to make fake tan out of it ;-) (Shades of Sir Percy trying alchemy, methinks...)

Chaps, any idea what it is? It looks quite like ash on the outside, is white on first cut, then rapidly runs orange? Just curious...

How are you all getting it properly seasoned? If this rain doesn't relent soon we're going to get to the winter with everything still at 35% :-( And then we'll be clobbered by the kiln-dried boys on one side, and the cowboys selling greed rubbish on the other...

It would certainly get one - when I pick up the X27 after an hour or two with the maul, it feels light as a feather!

It's a superb axe - just incredible on oak in my experience. But I'm currently working through 27 tons of ash and I've reverted to my old maul (from Countrywide!). Reason being the ash is a bit stringy and the X27 doesn't force the bits apart far enough to break the stringy bits - so they hang together. The maul just brays them nicely apart. Perhaps the lesson here is different tools for different woods?

LOL! Horses for courses... I only do about 100 cubes a year for my own use and for exercise, then sell the surplus. If it was a full-time business, I'd be using machinery like everyone else - but no point doing that for what is effectively just a trip to the gym 3 times a week.

LOL! And I could do mine in a weekend! :-)

Stubby has hit the nail on the head. I stacked my first 25 tons by hand and it seasoned beautifully, but it was a LOT of work. Since then I've used bags - just as effective, far less effort. Those piling up green wood indoors and leaving it to go mouldy are simply building themselved the foundations of a reputation for a poor-quality product!

I wish... 8 cubes a day using only a Husqvarna 576XP, a Fiskars X27, an Indespension 4x8 trailer with mesh sides, and my wife's Defender! But I do it as a sideline to keep fit :-)

Cheers, mate :-)

I make mine out of hard - for two reasons: 1) I only do hard, and 2) they burn for much longer. Customers love 'em :-)