Buying vs making experiment

Chuck Thoits

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Ok here is the deal I am in the middle of a stair project. I need 11 treads made from red birch, so I find a tread suppler on line and ask how much 11 36" X 12" per finished treads would cost. Thinking the whole time if they are cheap enough I'll just buy them to save time. So a week later and 4 emails I get a quote of $80.00 per tread. Knee jerk reaction is holly cow this guy must think his treads are made of gold. So I call my lumber yard and get a price on red birch. Well they don't have any so he will make some calls and see if he can get me some. A day or 2 later he calls back hat in hand and informs me that he can get it but his suppler has to hit him with a $50.00 charge for a small order. All I need is 33 bf so that's way under the 1000 bf min order he has to place to get fee waved. So with that in mind he would have to charge me $132.00 for the 33 bf I need.(or $2.50 a bf plus the fee) So I told him to go ahead and get me 100 bf of the red birch. Now I only need 33 bf but I will come up with something to do with the other 67:thumb: So where we stand now is materials for the treads at $300.00. Really only $132.00 but we will toss the rest in for good measure. Now to see what I end up with in time to mil, glue, and finish them. We shall see if the online tread guys $80.00 per tread is spot on or just plan crazy.:huh::huh:
 
I agree.....If my calcs are right.....you will be about 1/2 the price, depending on what you charge for your time
 
Ok so we have another 45 minutes rough cutting and stacking the boards. They read 6/8 on the meter but I think I will leave them next to the heater for at least a week. Just to make sure.:thumb: I would rather the reading hold at 6 "that's as low as my meter goes":thumb:
So if you add the time into ordering them we are at 1.5 hours
 

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Opps forgot to add that I had 12 BF of wast. Most all the boards came as 8 footers so 2 feet of each board went in the scrap pile.
 
Today we did planing, jointing and ripping. 5 treads are glued up. Waiting on the glue to set so I can swap them out later.
Another 5 hours should have been less but the planing too way longer with dull blades:doh: And the quick trip to HD to get a new set proved to be a wast of time. So now we are up to 6.5 hours
 
Quote Originally Posted by larry merlau View Post
"Ever heard of having a spare set on hand bud??"

"Oh sure mister boy scout!!!"

Heck I have both a portable planer & a Belsaw 5 hp planer & 3 sets of blades for both & it's just a hobby. Of course the way it really went is I purchased the portable planer & all the blades came with it. Dad gave me his Belsaw planer & my friend that I purchased the portable planer from had the spare sets of blades that fit the Belsaw & he gave them to me. I also have 3 blade sets for my jointer.

It does give you time to get a set sharpened.
 
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So by my calculations, you're at about $100 per hour plus materials. That hourly price will drop as you put more time into the project, but so far, it looks like you're ahead. ;)
 
Ok so we are all ripped to size, bull nosed and sanded ready for install and finish. Another 1.5 hours for a total of 8 hours 10 minutes.
So we have the wood at 112 dollars and the labor at 320 for a total of 432 into the treads or 39.27 each that leaves me with 448 dollars to finish them. I think I can handle that.
In real dollars I have a whopping 82.5 into the treads so I saved 797.5 plus the 210.16 shipping charge to just make them myself.
 
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