A Financial Analysis of Furniture Parts from Short Bolts

After completion of logging or forest improvement thinning operations, considerable wood material remains in the form of short bolts, i.e. those less than the standard 8-foot lengths or small diameters. In the past much of this material has been left in the woods or chipped to make paper or provide fuel. A computer program, the Furniture Bolt Cutting Program, was developed to quickly provide information on cost, yields, and quantities of 4/4 parts produced by a manufacturer of furniture dimension stock from short logs of black walnut, black cherry, yellow-poplar, soft maple, and aspen. The Furniture Bolt Cutting Program was used in an economic analysis to compare costs of short log-produced parts with the same parts produced from standard lumber grade material. Determination of break-even points between grade lumber and short log-produced material showed black walnut to be $455/MBF; aspen, $202/MBF; soft maple, $90/MBF; black cherry, $68/MBF; and yellow-poplar, $61/MBF. When the sum of the bolt sawing and stumpage costs was less than the break-even point for a particular species, then bolts were economically advantageous. In general, the cost saving that can be achieved through using short log-produced parts was greater for high-value or high-yield bolt species than for lower valued, low-yield bolt species.

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