PAR

[lynx]

i think it's down to selection. If i ask for 2400 sawn, i get a 2800 board. Not 3800mm.

I understand snipe from a 4 sider, but not in the middle of the board. And even if it has, then THEY should be rejecting it before i get it. I can't send the client a door with a section removed in the middle of a stile or rails because of my hardywork so why should I receive it that way.

[mrgrimsdale]

I wouldn't dream of planing 3300 lengths - unless that's the size of the finished object.
I don't plane anything at all until it's cut to finished length.
The only exception would be if there were many short lengths say 300mm in which case I might combine them into say 1200

[jfc]

Id say half a day for a good machinest .

[lynx]

Thats one of my issues, But again, they don't want it either. Why send me 3800 when i asked for 2400mm. I think this issue is down to the timber yard just pulling out what was on top of the pile. Some of these are 94x80mm sections too, so it's a costly extra i'm paying for here. But again, this may have been the only lengths available in this thickness.

[lynx]

j, you reckon, On a small P&T. Never.

Cross cut, rip and P&T that lot, from the whole boards too.

[lynx]

J, actually, how much do you charge for half a day then.........

[tusses]

yebbut - how long have you been messed around trying to get it supplied correctly !

if you are doing it regular, you can set the extractor over a large pit.

but thats what it takes ! unless you can get a decent supplier

[mrgrimsdale]

Why send me 3800 when i asked for 2400mm

Why are you specifying lengths?
If I order timber I just total the required length for each section e.g. 150metres of 50x100 and add a margin for waste (or surplus stock more like) . If long lengths (finished size) are required I'd say something like "I need to be able get 6 straight lengths at 4000 from this pile" or whatever*. Otherwise the lengths are left to them entirely.
PS this might have crossed with another post

*or I might say "not too many lengths below 3000" etc depending etc

[tusses]

I get to know what lengths the yard stocks and work it out for myself. then I go pick it so I have minimal waste.

[jfc]

No i said a good machinest , i'm crap ;D Bri at Hansons Riverdale however is a good machinest and will get through three times your pile in the picture in half a day . But then he has good machinest . Every thing he does is spot on but i think we can all agree that what it does after that is nothing to do with him . Thats why i order my PAR in longer lengths , so i can pick the best and cut up the rest .
It seems to me that you asked for 40 % waste ? Is that why you got sent odd lengths maybe ?

[mrgrimsdale]

Dec 5, 2008 23:24:49 GMT tusses said:

I get to know what lengths the yard stocks and work it out for myself. then I go pick it so I have minimal waste.

I never go and pick it - I wouldn't go to a yard where you can pick it because some other tw*t has probably extracted all the best bits before I get there!
I order only by phone and grade. Saves hours of work!
If I really wanted something special I could have a chat with the rep but otherwise I keep well away from timber yards

[jonnyd]

I dont see how one man could do 6 times that pile in one day on a planer thicknesser by hand he must be super human.

[mrgrimsdale]

Dec 5, 2008 23:03:56 GMT lynx said:

i know he's bullshitting, he knows it too, thats why the little b*st*rd phoned my misses. I told her to put the f'ing phone down and get that little b*st*rd to ring me. He didn't ring, hmmmmmmm


One of the problems here, is that the suppliers use a local joinery company to plane the timbers, so i think it's time they looked elsewhere too.

mrG this photo is a third of the timber. The shortest length is 3300mm, thats a fair bit of timber to be planing on a small P&T single handed don't you think. How many times would you have to empty the extractor for that lot? How long would that take too

Is this lot planed? Madness! Extremely wasteful and ineffective. It should all be cut to length first. Yes it will take some time. So will the morticing and tenoning etc. But that's what you are doing isn't it, joinery? If it's all too slow you could get someone else to all of it!

[jfc]

That tw*t would be me as i get to know when new stock is comming in . Its the joys of being a nice fella rather than a grumpy old git ;D

[lynx]

this is one of my points. They supplied this when I asked for smaller lengths. But IF IS WAS DOING IT then i would crosscut first, then rip and P&T. They just shoved it in the 4sider and gazed at the page3 bird.

[jfc]

Cutting to length is a waste of time before machining . Why the hell would you cut to length 50 no 900mm when you can do a 2.7m in one

[jonnyd]

If the 2.7m length is bent like a banana cutting to 900 will save thickness

[mrgrimsdale]

Dec 5, 2008 23:48:13 GMT jfc said:

Cutting to length is a waste of time before machining . Why the hell would you cut to length 50 no 900mm when you can do a 2.7m in one

900 I might combine into 1800 lengths. But basically it's a lot easier in short lengths and you have much more control over getting a good finish. Also you get more thickness (if that's what you need) e.g. if you have 25mm sawn boards and want 900 lengths finished at say 20mm, you may not be able to get this from a 2.7 cos it's too bendy, but 3 x 900 might be perfectly OK. This is why PAR ex 25mm in a yard is likely to be finished at 18mm. DIY from sawn and you could get 20mm or more. This could mean big savings if the alternative is to ask for the next size up (37?), to be sure of your 20mm

PS johnnyd has just said the same thing but more briefly ;D

[mooretoolsplease]

I think one of the key differences here is the quantities involved.
For the likes of a pair of french doors, there maybe 15 metres involved, to machine that from sawn might take an hour on a very slow day, but when the quantities involved are as high as what Lynx needs, then the only way to make joinery and make a proffit is to buy in PAR lengths.
I probably get through 1000 linear metres of stock every month, of differing sizes. It's not feasable to machine this amount of stock and make money. The way I see it, is that with all the time I have saved not being on the machines I can make more joinery, increasing my turn over and my proffit.

[jfc]

But thats already account for in the waste isnt it

[jasonb]

I think you hit it on the head when you said they are forcing curved boards through the 4sided planer. They are preparing the wood to a price and it takes too long to flatten & straighten the boards to what we want before they go through the machine.

And if they do use a traditional P/T then whos to say they will take equal amounts off both sides of the board to keep it balanced.

I am in the same position as you, its OK to prepare a small amount of boards but on large jobs it is not economic or physically practical to do it all yourself. I just had 280m run of PAR euro oak from my usual supplier which would have been too much for me to machine particularly as there was 6 or 8mm of each face of a nominal thickness board.

Jason

[Dan Tovey]

Personally, I prefer to buy sawn timber and machine it myself using Jacob's 'rule of thumb'. I make one-off pieces of furniture so have no standard sizes of stock that might make buying PAR attractive.

By cutting to length before machining I am able to get 22-23mm planed timber out of 1" boards. The timber yard would take it down to 19mm.

Waste? I have no waste!

A friend of mine who specialises in hardwood windows, however, doesn't even buy PAR. He only buys machined profile which he then makes into window frames using a minimum of equipment. It works for him.

Horses for courses....

[mrgrimsdale]

Dec 6, 2008 7:59:53 GMT jasonb said:

I think you hit it on the head when you said they are forcing curved boards through the 4sided planer. They are preparing the wood to a price and it takes too long to flatten & straighten the boards to what we want before they go through the machine.

And if they do use a traditional P/T then whos to say they will take equal amounts off both sides of the board to keep it balanced.

I am in the same position as you, its OK to prepare a small amount of boards but on large jobs it is not economic or physically practical to do it all yourself. I just had 280m run of PAR euro oak from my usual supplier which would have been too much for me to machine particularly as there was 6 or 8mm of each face of a nominal thickness board.

Jason

Dunno maybe you ought to look at it more closely. If you are losing 12 to 16mm in thickness that's a lot of waste. If you do it the trad way (cut first, plane second) you expect to lose 6mm average - less on short lengths, more on long - but careful selection reduces this. Also you are more in control of the process, waste reduced by careful selection as you cut to length, quality of output controlled by yourself, not a team of gorillas in a wood yard.
Getting away from PAR could mean big savings and big increase in quality of product.

[jasonb]

Jacob, if it cut to length first the boards that were coming in 54mm thick that I want 40mm finish would still need the same amount off them, same for the 15mm finished thickness which would have come out of 25-26mm nominal.

I do do it your way when machining for single items and one off furniture, cutting to 125-150 over length or combining 2 or 3 shorter bits into one piece.

Its just for a large run like this its more cost effective for me to be doing other things. It would likely take me 2-3 days to machine that oak plus £200 for a skip to get rid of the shavings, thats the best part of £1000 to machine the oak and it costs less than £4 a meter to have it machined. Also keeps the neighbours happy as the P/T is not running all the time.

Jason

[dom]

In banana out banana.
You need to find a company with proper machinists and as Jacob said several times, supply a cutting list.
If you're doing joinery you can't, as others have said , afford the time to plane your own.
If you're anywhere near Enfield try Jennor Timber. They're not the cheapest, but the quality of timber and machining was the best I found.