Earlywood Design & Services
Converting Urban Logs into Beautiful Live Edge Slabs and Furniture
Wide Slab Sawing
All sawing is done using bandsaw mills. Bandsaw mills have the benefit of producing a very narrow saw kerf, which means very little of the log is wasted in the sawing process.
Sawing of logs greater than 34" in diameter is done using the Tru-Cut 72 wide bandsaw mill. This mill is capable of sawing through logs up to 72" wide.
Custom Wide Slab Sawing
I will do custom sawing of logs for customers who want their logs sawn into slabs and the green slabs returned to the customer. You, the customer, provide instructions on the desired thickness of slabs, and how many of each thickness you would like. Here are some items that go into determining the cost of this type of custom sawing:
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Hauling your logs to Earlywood: Typically $400, depending on your location and effort required to load the logs
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Sawing charge is $150 per hour. Time starts when the process of moving your logs to the mill starts. Time stops when the last slab is off-loaded from the mill and placed with the other slabs.
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Hitting metal in the log with the sawblade: Urban logs often have some type of metal in them ( nails, screws, bolts, etc) Each time a piece of metal is hit by the blade, there is a $150 charge for the blade.
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Hauling the slabs back to your place: Price depends on how far away you are from Earlywood, how much help you have to offload the slabs, and how long it takes to offload the slabs.
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Call for a price estimate to saw your logs.
Sawing Logs 34" in Diameter and Smaller
Logs that are 34" in diameter and smaller are sawn on the Woodmizer LT70 Widehead saw.
The Woodmizer mill can saw slabs at a faster rate than the wide slabbing mill. This mill has full hydraulics for lifting logs onto the mill, turning the logs, and leveling logs on the mill. This is a portable mill, but I no longer transport this mill to customer's locations for sawing.
Logs need to be at least 5 ft long to fit against the sawmill backstops to be held in place for sawing.. Logs need to be at least 12" in diameter to be sawn. Smaller logs are too difficult to lock in place and held safely for sawing.
Here is some information on the cost of custom sawing your logs on this mill.
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Sawing is charged at an hourly rate of $100 per hour. Time starts when your logs are being moved to the mill for sawing, and ends when the last boards are offloaded from the mill to your stack of lumber.
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If the sawblade hits metal in the log, the customer will be charged $75 per blade.
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There is a minimum 1hr charge for any logs sawn.
Quartersawing
All quartersawing is done on the Woodmizer mill. Really large logs are first ripped in half on the slabbing mill, and the two halves are them moved to the Woodmizer mill for quartersawing.
I generally quarters all my large oak logs, and some large Sycamore logs. The large Sycamore logs also make beautiful wide slabs, so some of the Sycamore logs are used for slabbing.
I often leave one live edge on my quartersawn boards so they may be glued up after drying and flattening to produce a live edge quartersawn tabletop.
