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How to price wood??

Joined
Sep 2, 2008
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I'm in the process of working out a deal with an orchard to use their trimmings and dead fruit trees to make pens and bottle stoppers for their gift shop. I'd like to just buy the wood and then wholesale them finished pens, ect.
This way I'm not tied to them if I want to market to other gift shops.

What's a fair price to offer for the wood. They expect to remove over 50 apple trees this winter.
 
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
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Location
Greenwood, SC
I don't mean to be flip Dennis, but what would they do with the wood otherwise? I suspect they would discard it somehow. If that's the case why pay them for it?
 
Joined
Oct 6, 2008
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North Charleston, SC
Fair price

I have never had to pay for local wood. What are they going to do with the trees? Firewood? There is no market for apple wood that I know of. They should be willing to give you the wood in exchange for getting the pens at a wholesale rate. They then have an additional product for their gift shop made from their own trees.
 
Joined
Jul 9, 2011
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Calgary
At best it would be firewood, at worst they would have to pay for disposing of it. I agree that they should be willing to give you the wood in exchange for getting a wholesale rate and having an additional product to seell in their shop
 
Joined
Jun 28, 2010
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Location
Hawi, Hawaii
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www.kellydunnwoodturner.com
Dennis, I tend to pay a hundred bucks a truck load. That way they offset a bit of labor cost and you have no ties so to speak. There are many things that can change that figure. If a person is going to have to pay to have it hauled, any you take is less to get hauled. Or chipped. Our cutters work a couple ways. By the job or hour. If I get a call and take some of the wood I come up with a figure and if agreement I pay the cutter. That way he gets paid by the job and a bit extra from me. If a homeowner pays for a job yet lets folks come get wood I pay the hundred a truck load. It only barely offsets the costs of having the trees taken down. Plus whatever is left the owner has to pay to have it chipped or hauled. Finished products are many thousands for my hundred bucks. None of this is rare or prime woods. Koa limbs are gonna cost me 6 to 800 a truck load. And thats a pig in a poke. No idea what I get until I start cutting.
The no ties to the company in getting the apple wood would mean a lot to me.
 
Joined
Jul 18, 2006
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Location
Central Florida
Dennis - I find myself wondering exactly what the total demand is for pens / bottle stoppers made from apple wood? How is that apple wood going to stack up against all the exotic woods and other materials that are available? Do a lot of people in your area really want apple wood pens?

It would be a shame for you to spend good money to get this apple wood (even if it's free, you have time and expense in going to get the wood and dragging it to your shop) and then find out that even if you price your pens / stoppers so that you are barely making minimum wage that you only sell a handful a year.

You can buy a wide selection of really nice pen / bottle stopper blanks for a couple bucks a piece. You can buy all sorts of exotic lumber and cut it into blanks yourself for less than half the price of buying precut blanks. Starting with the tree, you have to get the wood to your shop, slab it, sticker stack and store, wait for it to dry (or spend a lot of time / money to microwave it), cut to size, sticker stack and store. Your investment in time and equipment to do this should be worth at least half the retail cost of a blank. That would imply that the wood in a pen blank is worth maybe $0.50 and the wood in a bottle stopper blank is worth $1.00.

How many apple wood pens and bottle stoppers will you realistically sell in the next year? How many will the orchard commit to buy? Multiply those numbers by what you figure the wood is worth to you for your use and don't pay more than that.

When I get wood from the local tree trimmers, I will either give them a $20 for a pickup truck load (and they load it in the truck for me) or I will give them some pens / bowls / whatever around the holidays. $20 may seem cheap, but around here they either get $20 to put it in my truck or they load it in their truck and pay to dump it. If I cut it myself (into smaller pieces) and load it myself, no money changes hands.

Ed
 
Joined
Sep 2, 2008
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Thanks for the replies.

The orchard is in a big Apple growing tourist area. Last weekend they had 40,000 people for the fall festival. (In a town of about 2000)

I think there is a market for products that actually come from and are made from the local wood. Local products, besides apples, were hard to find. Even the caramel apples were from out of state.

I may be wrong, have been before.

If this takes off I just don't want to be tied to only the one gift shop/orchard.

I'd also like to tie up the supply, so some other turner/woodworker doesn't take my idea and make a deal to cut me off from the wood.
 
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