Forest Products Equipment Magazine, May 2000
Reprinted with permission.

East Texas was in the middle of a drought in the summer of '98 when Nutt & Osborne Enterprises - a land company co-owned by brothers Keith and James "Wade" Nutt, their father, James "Haywood" Nutt, and M.N. "Ike" Osborne - purchased a single 4000-acre block of land along White Oak Creek. The dry conditions were perfect for harvesting the hardwood timber along the creek bottom, so taking advantage of the opportunity, they hired four contract-logging crews to begin removing the timber before winter rain forced them to higher ground.

Because of the drought, conditions were also good for other loggers in he area to remove lowland timber that is normally inaccessible, which was keeping the sawmills in the area filled to capacity and holding prices down. To maximize their profit from the harvest, Wade and his partners came up with a plan to store the logs until the market improved in the winter and early spring. "We decided to build a wet storage yard," Wade explained. "We prepared a 20-acre site out by the road and started storing the wood. When the market improved, we would load it up and haul it to the sawmill."

It was a good plan, but when you count on Mother Nature to be predictable, she usually isn't. Conditions remained dry throughout the winter and by the spring of '99, the market was even worse than it had been when they began harvesting the timber the year before. By July it was apparent that the market was not going to improve any time soon and something needed to be done before the logs on the yard started to rot. That is when they started looking at scragg mills. If they were not going to be able to sell the logs for a profit, they would saw the logs into something more marketable. "What really got us serious about a sawmill was a crosstie company in St. Augustine, Texas," Wade said. "They said that they would be willing to buy from us when we got the mill up and running."

"We liked the Baker Scragg because of the end-dogging system and circle saws," Wade said, "but it would only handle logs up to 18 inches. Half of the logs on our yard were larger than that. We started talking with the Baker engineers about what we needed and they came up with a design that would handle a 26-inch butt. This was in late July, we signed a contract with them August, and by October they started delivering and setting up the mill."

For material handling, the company selected Morbark. Engineers from Baker and Morbark got together and formulated an assembly plan, so the systems would meld smoothly during installation.

The basic mill and log yard layout is simple and efficient. Out on the yard, logs are loaded onto a dolly that is hauled behind the loader. The loader operator will then transport the logs to the mill where they are offloaded onto a Morbark 20-foot, four-strand merchandising live-deck. From there they go to a Morbark 60-inch cut into ten-foot lengths, down to a six-inch top.

Debarking is accomplished on a Morbark 640, which completely debarks both hardwood and softwood logs up to 40 inches in diameter and at a rate of up to 100 linear feet per minute.

After debarking, the logs go to a kick-on/kick-off. Good logs are kicked onto a baker 40-foot live deck, which feeds the sawmill. The operator also has the option to kick the log off if it shows signs of rotting or is too big for the scragg. If he gets a pulpwood end or something that is too small, he opens a gate and drops it down a chute to a vibrating conveyor that feeds a Morbark Chip-Pac. "We are in the process of getting a whole-tree chipper in the yard for those logs that are too big for the scragg of the Chip-Pac," Wade said.

When the logs arrive at the BakerOverhead End-dogging Circular Scragg Mill, they are processed into cants, which are presently being sold to a nearby pallet manufacturing company. The bottom fell out of the crosstie market about the time the mill was ready to start cutting, so the company had to turn its attention to pallet lumber and cants. "It didn't really hurt us," Wade said, "because 60-70 percent of the logs on our yard were only suitable for pulpwood or pallet lumber anyway."

Wade is especially impressed with the quality, attention to detail, and functionality of the Baker sawmill. "The saw cab baker built is really nice," he said. "It is spacious, comfortable, and the sawyer has a good view of everything. The scragg is equipped with a laser light for centering the log, and trunnion gears that allow the sawyer to position the log for the best cut. Once he gets the log positioned, he dogs it and sets the computer. We have the computer programmed to cut cants from as small as four by four to as large as seven by nine."

The company does not presently have a slab recovery system. To reduce the amount of wood being sent to the Chip-Pac, the sawyer slabs as thin as possible. "When we get rid of this old wood and start sawing green logs," Wade said, "we are going to look into buying a Baker resaw to start recovering boards from the slabs."

After the cants and lumber leave the scragg, they are directed 90 degrees to a Baker 40-foot green chain. Cants are removed and stacked using a Morbark Stac-Trac. Lumber is routed to a Crosby edger and sorted and stacked according to grade.

"The crew is new to sawmilling," Wade said, "so we had to go real slow in the beginning. Most of the personnel are from our old logging crew and we wanted them to learn safety and quality before they started focusing on speed. They were a good logging crew and they are turning out to be a good sawmilling crew; for example, our sawyer, Jesse Walters, ran our sawhead in the woods. I knew he was good with joysticks and had a feel for what was good timber and what was bad, so I though he would also be a good sawyer. He proved me right. Even the baker guys commented on how good he was for someone with his limited experience."

the mill is presently producing around 25,000 to 20,000 board feet of cants and lumber a day, but when the old logs are gone and they begin to process good green logs, production should climb to about 40,000 board feel daily.

Wade and his partners are very satisfied with the service they have received from baker Products. "This was the first mill they had ever built like this," Wade explained. "The basic design was the same as their standard scragg mill, but all of the components had to be built larger to accommodate 26-inch logs. We expected that there were going to be some problems, and there were a few, but we wanted the Baker design and we were already well aware of their quality and product support, so we considered them our best choice."

The location of the mill couldn't have been better either. "There is a lot of hardwood in this area, "Wade said. "But before we built this mill the market for it was over in Texarkana and Ashdown, 80 to 100 miles away. The loggers working this area would much rather haul 20 miles to us than all the way out to one of those places. It basically gives them a convenient market for their wood."

Now that it is up and running, the company's plans for the mill are twofold. "We intend to grow the company and change with the market, whether it is sawing pallet, cants, crossties, or adding a resaw for slab recovery," Wade concluded. "However, we also intend for this mill to be here for a long time and we want to establish ourselves among the timber owners and loggers in the area as a consistent and reliable company that is willing to deal with them fairly and offer them competitive prices for their hardwood.