Thank you for visiting our web site, North Jersey Saw Mill, hopefully it will provide you with the information you are looking for. I work with clients who have a wide range of reasons for seeking a sawmill service. Some are woodworkers who are looking for unique sizes not available in the box stores or even lumber yards. Some are homeowners lost a tree from disease or in a storm or must have one removed for various other reasons. Either way, they hate to see that lumber wasted and they are curious about the process and wonder whether it would be worth saving those logs.
There is a lot of information here related to converting logs into lumber. I take trees down, chip brush, grind stumps and split firewood, my company is RJS Tree Service. My niche in the process is to use every part of a log and not to have any waste. I mill logs into lumber suitable for the projects you have in mind. But whether you have a pile of logs, or just one salvaged from that special tree, I can most likely turn it into lumber for you.
I am located in West Milford which is the North West part of New Jersey. If you have a project in mind but don’t have a log, give me a call. I may be able to find a log suitable for your project.
Do you have a log but don’t need the lumber? I hate to see logs go to waste; if I can use it I may be willing to haul it away for free.
I have been in the tree business for many years and I have always split the logs into firewood, but needed to haul away dozens of loads of wood to recycling centers because I didn’t have a use for them. My firewood processor could only process wood up to 26” logs. Since obtaining a saw mill, I am able to mill all the larger logs into lumber. We can handle logs above 36”, which many band mills can not. We have virtually no waviness to our lumber. I purchased a horse bedding machine to recycle pine wood into shavings for horses.
We can pick your logs up with our tri-axle log truck, mill your wood and return it to you bound and stickered or kiln dried.
Whether you have a big pile of logs, or a sentimental single log from a family tree, we could mill this wood to create your special project.
Whenever a tree comes down there will be parts of that tree for which the best use may very well be as firewood, horse bedding or mulch. There may also be portions of that tree that would be suitable for furniture or other woodworking projects.
Our local landfill charges approximately $44 per ton with a 2 ton minimum for trees and brush. A 24″ diameter, 12′ long oak log would weigh about 2400 pounds. The landfill fee would be $88 plus the cost of cutting it into pieces, loading it and hauling it to the dump. You might find someone who would take it for the firewood, but they get busy and forget. The promise of removing it quickly turns into months, leaving it to rot on your property. Either way you end up with nothing.
That log should yield at least 300 board feet of lumber and the cost to have it milled would be about $525. Once air dried, you could have over $1000 worth of lumber for your projects. That’s a pretty good return on your investment. There is a great deal of satisfaction in a project that you took from a standing tree to a family heirloom.
There are definite ecological benefits to turning your logs into lumber. Trees process carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and, through photosynthesis, return oxygen to the air and store the carbon in the biomass of the tree, a process known as carbon sequestration. After that tree comes down, carbon dioxide is returned to the atmosphere as the tree decays or is burned. The portion of the tree that is preserved, milled into lumber and dried retains that carbon within the lumber indefinitely.
Urban trees are not without their challenges. Large mills won’t normally handle them due to the likelihood of metal or other debris in the logs. Although you don’t remember building a tree house, nailing up a sign, or attaching a fence or clothesline to that tree; who knows what has happened while humans have been around that tree for the last 50-150 years. I try to avoid metal by using a metal detector to detect metal in the logs so not to damage the saw teeth.
If you have a tree down and don’t have a use for the lumber, consider the benefits to the environment and donate the log. If I can convert into usable lumber I may even haul it away for free. If RJS Tree Service is not doing your tree work, we are still willing to pick up your saw mill quality logs.