Forestry Now

John Sherlock 0:00
John, big question now, how's the firewood business going? Well, the firewood business is busy at the minute. Our firewood business has evolved. Every year we work on it. No business Dermot, as you know, can stand still, so you have to stay working at it. And every year we try and do a little bit of something. We are this year in particular, we've we've spent a good bit of time on developing online sales, and that has, that has showed the new legislation of firewood, the EPA requirement that you have to have a quality cert, you have to produce and drive firewood, that I think will come into play. It will help the firewood industry. Now, our aim within the wfqa and as a fire producer, none of us want to be the king of firework producers and take over all the fire producing in Ireland. That's not. Ireland's not structured like that. Ireland is a country full of individuals to an individual, small businesses, and every small farm, family businesses and most fire businesses are that's what we are. So we are the same. But what we're saying is, unless we ensure that the quality of the firewood, ie that it's dry, clean, well presented, and that it's not hooky timber or anything like that, that it has to be dry unless it's done, the problem with air quality will continue, and the only way then that will be rectified will be if people talk about Bannon stoves, so that then again, will have a poor for forest owners. Because if you remember back to prior, to before people started installing mud stoves. Pulpwood was on the floor. You could and that was and you couldn't give it away, and it was costing you money to get it to get tinned. Now, at least there's some money coming out of it when you're getting tinned. So we need to make sure that we're producing quality firewood,

Dermot McNally 1:55
if I remember right, John, one of the things that happened was you were thin in your own forest around the time that you set the firewood business up, and maybe you tell me what kind of investment you made the machinery you had to buy, because that was, that was a new business for you at that stage.

John Sherlock 2:12
It's, it's a funny one, Derek, it's a, I do tell people this story, we were here, and we have a we have a we have a warehouse business, small warehouse business going, and I'd have staff here and there wouldn't be, if you can imagine when the trucks are in the rain and when they're not. So I was looking for a standard product that I could make, that wouldn't go out a date for the boys to do. And by Jesus, I couldn't find any products that looked hard and fast. And one day I got an email in here, into the office from Noel Gavigan in the Bioenergy Association, the Woodfield Quality Association, and he said, we're holding an event in Kenny mcgolley's Firewood business in mobile and you're invited. And because our forest was coming up to first thing, I was sitting in the office. It was a porter cabin at the time, and I said to me, wife, Evelyn, who's a who's the real boss in the business, I'm going off tomorrow for the day to look at firewood. And she was right. And I went down to Mohawk, and I looked at Kenny's business. And I thought, but you know what? I could probably do that within our premises. And then the second heart for the day was, at the time, was leader from Leitrim. We had a chat with them, and they showed so I came home and I said to me, wife, I'm going to be starting doing firewood. And she says, with what well as I want to talk to leader, so we did an application to leader. We got funding, and we're very lucky, and we're very grateful at the time, and that enabled us to buy the equipment. We went off on a study tour with the WF, QA, and I remember it, there was ain't those 21 of us went, and we're all still friends. And I learned more from them lads, because of some of them, again, like the forestry, some of them were well ahead of us. And those, a few of us are just like me. Hadn't even a fire processor in the yard, and they were saying, Are you producing much fire? This is known, and you know, but from that, it kickstart the firewood business. So we, we, we bought pulp, and we started that summer. We produced for that winter. And I think we'd probably came in on the on the golden years of firewood. My wife had done website design in a previous job. So she did a small website, and we just put the website up and we started selling. And every year we've achieved growth, every year since that but, but every year we seem to invest in our business. So we do have this conversation within the wfqa of when are we going to see the real money? Me because, yeah, we're investing in our business every year. Because obviously, if you're producing more firewood, you need more space, you need more giant facilities, etc.

Dermot McNally 5:09
Yeah, constant reinvestment is a necessary evil if you want to keep going. And John then, so the initial setup would that have been expensive in today's terms. What are you talking about there? I mean, you had the warehouse, you had the you had the sheds, but I presume you didn't have the poly tunnels that were set up for drying.

John Sherlock 5:29
So initially, we bought the machines and stock the the machines, at the time, I think, was about 60,000 and we got a grant from leader for that, for Park funding, we were lucky in that we had a forklift here. So they were the two crucial things. So we were able to get the timber dumped in the yard, and we had the forklift the first couple of years we were putting it, we were only cutting in the summer, and we were putting it into sheds dry. And we decided then, because obviously demand outstrip supply. I was just saying that for the first three years, I was telling people in February, I have no dry timber. And they were looking in a yard full of timber, and they said, You have timber. And I said, Yeah, let's not dry it takes a good bit of determination to turn down money in a yard in the middle of February, you know, to tell a customer, I mean, you have stuff sitting 10 volt away from you tell him and not selling it, because it takes a little bit of pig headedness to do that. So then we looked just so then we built a poly tunnel. I was very lucky. There's a neighbor of ours puts them up, and he actually was looking for somewhere to have put a display. So I says, Well, you can put a big display in my yard. So we, we, we came to an arrangement, and he had done it for a couple of other firewood producers. So I actually went and looked at theirs. That's the other thing about in our group, we've all been each other's premises. Now, you think that that wouldn't, you think that'd be a thing you wouldn't do, but we've all done it. We've actually, we actually, some of us inter trade, you know, some of us, we buy kindling from each other, and we might we, we've actually farmed. Now we actually, there's a group of us, and we buy all our bags together. So we buy a container a year of bags together, and we get a discount on that, but that's how we we worked. So we went into poly tunnels. Poly tunnels weren't that dear at the time. They're about 12 or 14,000 and then as time went on, we got a log grab to grab the logs. And then we bought a small teleporter put the log grab on it, and we had a small little lorry that we were using for our gate business and our warehouse business a little seven and a half Tonner. So we're using it. So as time went on, we bought a little another machine, and we bought another improved our delivery system, and we, you know, it just, it's a case of committing to what you're doing and deciding that you're going to do it right.

Dermot McNally 8:00
And John, how did it merge in with the warehousing business? Then? Did you find that it it balanced out the peaks and troughs? Or have you reached the point now where the firewood is full time for certain members of staff?

John Sherlock 8:11
Well, the way we work it is initially, it was only a very it works at the warehouse. It really does, because you're cutting timber on a machine and a container and a Lurie comes in, and we have two full time members of staff here, along with my wife and myself. So if a container comes in that's on pallets, one of the guys stops doing what he's doing, turns off the machine, and runs over and loads the machine, puts us in. Sometimes it can be it could be a container where the bags have to be palletized, so that'll be a more or less work committed for the bodies, but because it's firewood. So you're not clue, and you're not, as you know, downward, you're not in the middle of spray in a unit, or you're not in the middle of a process where you can stop so you literally can turn off the machine and go and do and I was only looking at there. We do a monthly financials every month here at the end of every month of where we're going. And firewood now is 50% of our turnover, you know. So the warehousing is just part of the business now. So it's interesting thing to find it is a high volume, low margin business. So yeah, the you have to, you have to batter it through, and you have to sell it. And that's the other thing we do within our buy in group. We do sometimes sit down. And we did it last year. We do it sort of every year in the spring when the when the fire business over, the group will sit down, maybe three or four of us sit down together and we have a chat. And we last year we did ISIS, can we spend a day or looking at her costs? So what a cost to produce? And it's very interesting, again, from a business point of view, because you would have an idea, oh, it costs so many such such, so much to cut that and put it in a drum, and it costs so much. And. Then somebody else says, Well, mine is such and such. And then you see, you've actually four lads looking at your business and discussing your costs with you. And if you've been a little bit optimistic, they're telling you, you know, so by, by being able to speak freely within a within a group, is a fantastic thing, you know what I mean. And the other thing which has evolved is people now who are buying timber, the general public, to buy a pallet of timber off us, which is like a drum. It's 1.7 cubic meters. As the years have went on, people have become more educated about dry timber. They when they ring it, they want that, they ask, Is it dry? Is it? And we'd say, well, it's certified dry, and we we weigh every palate before we take it out, we do moisture testing. So the general public have become more conscious of quality too. Now, obviously there is people who buy on price, and there's always going to be people who buy in price, and that's just the way life is, but a lot of people buy on quality too, and we would try and be up there with our quality in that every year, we try and do something that's just approved. We put in a couple of years ago, we put in a log cleaner so when the logs come off the process and it pops them along and and even stuff we were talking about last night, about at the meeting, at the fire meeting last night, I was saying something. I noticed that if you start taking this logs out of a stack on the southern side of the stack, yeah, and it mostly we'd be doing this during the summer, the wind and the air gets at the logs that's exposed going along now, it probably won't dry the logs, but it dries a lot of the death rates that it be attached to the logs. So you're a bit of clear you're a bit of bark loose Barker. So when that goes through the processor and it hits the cleaner, it just falls off a lot quicker than when it's damp and it's glued. So all these little things, you know what I mean, but that doesn't happen unless you think about it, you know, unless you, unless you sit down and start thinking about it's like every other business, you have to think about what you're doing and how you can improve it.

Dermot McNally 12:09
And John, if the businesses obviously expand, then from the start. So how much area of warehousing do you need now to store the dried and chopped and bagged product, and how many poly tunnels? And I know the you have a big yard that's full of pulp that's just sitting waiting and is going through an air dry process,

John Sherlock 12:30
that's the thing Dermot, every year you need more space. The more, the more you sell, the more space you need. And we're discussing that last night again, because if you can imagine you need, at least, if you were to give it you need a minimum of a year supply of timber in front of you. So if you think about it, when you come to say, the first of September, you have all of next year's firewood cut and ready for sale, and you've all of the following year's timber in stacks. So you're looking at two years timber sitting around a yard. So we we have three poly tunnels that hold 750 pallets. We have a shed that we put the small bags that we build on pallets during the summer, and it'll hold 450 pallets of small bags. We also then have an area where, when we cut our cubes, we stack them and we put a row of old curtains off trucks, and they do the secondary dyeing process. So if you can, and then we have all the stacks, and we utilize part of a forest road over the road for more logs. So it goes through a process where you where you dry it, primarily to get it down to about 30% then you put it in these, you cut it into their pallets, and then it drives further. And then we finish it off in the polytunnels. When we start taking stuff out with the polytunnels, we do it on a rotational basis. So you get, you actually get two runs through your poly tunnel per season. You spend your time buying stone and pushing out clay. That's what you spend your time. But then it comes to the stage where you where you're where you decide where your infrastructure can do, what it can do. So if you can imagine, we have two full time here, and we take on part time in the summer. So it gets the stage where one truck, which we have, and we've a pickup that's, there's a certain volume at which they can deliver. And if you decide, then what I'm going to go for extra staff, well, then you have to go massively bigger on turnover. You have to expand your infrastructure. So I think there is a critical level at which we all, I've probably hit it here, that we do about 3000 tone a year, maybe a little bit more, and that would be our, our critical limit. What's your

Dermot McNally 14:43
sweet spot? Really? Spot? Optimize the assets you have and optimize your turnover without starting to cause bottlenecks at one point. Here's a layman's question, because I know a little bit about what you're talking about, but not enough. Is there a way that you can. Fast forward the process by kiln drying, or is it just too expensive to kill and dry timber that's going to end up in a fire?

John Sherlock 15:07
There's a number of people who are using kilns to dry the timber, but they wouldn't be using it to dry it from, say, fresh down so they'd be able to they still would be stacking it to get it down to a reasonable level, and then they'd be accelerating the process by putting it in a in a force, a forced air heated kiln. The energy use there is very, very sore. It's very sore So, and it's an infrastructural cost. So our thoughts are, you'd be better off buying more timber, having it in stock, covering it than an actual force killing it depends on your market. The people I'd be talking about would be doing maybe 20, 30,000 tons a year. They'd be doing a lot of the small bags for the for the multiples. They'd be working on a lot smaller marriages. We we only do about 20% of our fire production is for wholesale uses, for shops. The other 80% we sell direct to the to the end user

Dermot McNally 16:11
and John, you know we were talking earlier about we don't want as far as donors to grow hardwood for firewood, because it's effectively one of the lower value outputs, yeah, but even within, even within the firewood, then you must end up with a lot of bark and a lot of sawdust that you have to process and get rid of. What happens to all that material, the

John Sherlock 16:33
sawdust, we sell it for horse bedding and the bark, then that comes off, so we shred all the bark, and then we sell that as bark mulch for weed control throughout the year. Believe it or not, there's people still buying back office. So it means that every single bit of stuff that comes into the yard goes back out. Now, people say, Oh, you're selling everything. You're only selling a back out of cost. You're selling it to get rid of

Dermot McNally 16:58
it, you know, yeah, we just moved back there to your customer breakdown then. So you've got a breakdown between business and public but within the businesses that are buying, are most of them resellers, or have you got many, you know, the likes of the saunas or the hotels that keep a kind of a fire going or a bar? What way does that all that breakdown,

John Sherlock 17:21
yeah, it's when you go down, when you take away from the small bags, which are beyond like the site with the filling station. We supply them to fuel, to shops and fuel suppliers. We then the larger what we'd sell to the public. We also sell to saunas. That's a growing market. Our biggest customer is a sauna, a local sauna user here, wow. Okay, and he's taken four pallets every week all year. It's another string. It's two hour to our our bow is we sell to saunas sauna users. They definitely know the difference between good and dry firewood because they're burning it every single day. So they want it. They don't want to, like they're public coming in. They want heat from what they're buying. You know what? I mean,

Dermot McNally 18:09
we've talked about the WF, QA, the wood fuel quality assurance group that you're involved in. But if I'm a timber firewood producer, how do I get that certification and and what will it guarantee the people that are buying my firewood,

John Sherlock 18:25
the wfqa in in an essence, is an assurance that, if you see their label, the wfqa label, and the supplier name on it, that that timber is certified to be under a certain moisture and It's written on it What might your content it's under. So basically, if you wanted to join the wfqa, there's a coordinator there, Noel Gavigan, you contact him. You tell him what way you do. If he comes out and he does a site visit, he looks at what you do, basically, he looks at what you do, and if you're doing the job right, and he thinks, you can, you can get the timber for a year supply under that he then goes through the process of getting you certified, which is not an onerous process, that you have to be able to do ongoing moisture tests, and you have to document them, you have to have insurance along with Insurance quality. It's shown that the that what your attitude is, right? We have an auditor in here every year. So every year the auditor comes and he will inspect your your records for your moisture testing. He'll inspect your, your premises to see, are you doing what you said you were doing. I think it's all about a system that you have a system in your head and your business of producing stuff, that's right, you have to be willing to sometimes change what you're doing and be capable of producing quality timber.

Dermot McNally 19:48
There must be a big synergy between running the firewood business and then expanding into salt milling, in a way.

John Sherlock 19:53
There is how we ended up doing the sawmill. And was because I come from a giant or you would. Bren and background. And I've always sort of had a graph or timber, as they say. And we were looking at some of the timbers. Some of the timber we purchased comes from, comes from different entities, and those timber coming in here, and I was looking at it saying, actually, you know, that's way too good to be cutting into, into firewood, something we were talking about earlier there in that we grow timber for planks, not for firewood, and I was looking at this, so I looked at investing in a sawmill and stuff like that, and and again, you're making a leap of faith. And I just didn't want to, I didn't want to commit too much capital to a project that was unsure of so I bought an entry level saw mill and started sawmill. And believe it or not, I had that sawmill for about five years, and we worked it. Man, we worked it. When you start sawmill and you think everything you caught is gold, and it's only after a while you discover a lot of it is lead, you know. So I have found, as time goes on. Now I can look at something and say, Well, that'll come into something that's worthwhile. So what we did was we started saw mill and timber that wasn't of use that would that would be too good for firewood. We stacked it, we put it somewhere to dry, and we were tipping along. And next thing covid happened. And then a fella came into me one day. He was putting up a she bean. You remember all these little drinking dens me? Oh yeah. And he was making a she Bean, and he wanted to put a countertop, and I had two inch beach there, and he bought the two inch beach off me, and he bought a bit of inch beach off me, and a bit of inch planks to make up his, his his bar. And of course, he went, invited all his friends around. So then, you know what happened? His friends decided they wanted a bar. So there was lads coming in here, buying timber off me. Here during covid, I never had us go to covert. It's a nice thing to say, they nearly emptied me a timber for making these she beans. And that sort of gave me an idea that there is people out there to buy stuff like this. Then I also, at the same time, I wanted to do a timber structure. And, you know, post, post and beam buildings that were originally done in the UK and in America at the very start, but the pioneers were there, and I want to do a course. And I couldn't do a course using soft woods. I couldn't find anyone that was doing it using soft woods, because they all do it used in oak. I thought, I'm not going to be able to get Irish oak for a while. So I found a guy in Scotland who does it with soft woods. He does with Douglas. First I went over, I did a training day with him. I did a training course with him. And should that open my eyes up, and I come back, and I started doing post and beam work. So that led me to doing more beams. And then I bought a couple of load of Irish Douglas four. And now we're cutting beams and cladding. And then we looked at the saw we had. And because I pay people, staff here to do work, I couldn't make and get enough output out of the saw I was using to if we already was doing a work in it myself. So I looked at buying a bigger saw so we bought a more, more production orientated saw mill in Poland, and I actually bought it without seeing it during covid. The Scottish man has was buying one, and the two of us bought one together. Obviously it's far quicker you're able to get stuff out. You're able to get stuff out quicker and more accurate. So it has developed into another aspect. So we spent a couple of years building up stock. So if you can imagine, you saw a two inch plank a beach where you're going to have to stack it and sticker it and look at it for two years before you get it. So we also made, recently, we made a small kiln for drying planks, because, again, I don't want to stick too much money into it. Want to see it works. It's working all right. It's slow, but it's good enough. But we're now at the stage where we're starting to sell our timber, because it has starting to come out the other end. If you know what I mean, that the large volume of timber that we've been sawing into stock is coming out the far end. But along with that, we have our Douglas fir business, where we sell the where we sell the beams and stuff like that, and that sold as a green timber, because it's an outside that's so you have a it's a bit like a whiskey manufacturer. A lot of them start when they start doing whiskey, they start with gin, because they can have more of a cash flow from gin immediate. So that's where I'd look at my salmon and business. So we're actually doing quite a lot of post and beam bespoke projects. So give you an idea. And we were doing a project there for a guy in Dublin. He's doing a pavilion at the same. Side of his house. He's putting that last roof on it. So we did that there. Recently. We did a job for a distillery in Drogheda where they were making, putting a row of barrels, big barrel, oak barrels, and they were stacking them three row high. And they wanted, like, if you can imagine, a railway line that's we made, only was a bit narrower with an angle to shape to fit the barrels. It was 80 foot long, so we made it up over series of pieces joined together. We also did the cladding on that. We actually did some bespoke fencing for them. It could be anything for anybody. We're not a saw mill for the 4b twos, the 6b twos, because that's not our aim. We generally cut for people. Somebody can come in and say, Can I have this, you know, for a building, I can say, Yeah, well, we have timber and stock. We can re solve or do that. And we have a big four color machine, which will play in the four sides at the one time.

Dermot McNally 25:56
John, what's your maximum length and width? Then I did see the four color on online, there's fine machine, yeah, yeah,

John Sherlock 26:03
we've done 21 foot beams through that. We've done 21 foot or beam through that. I had it. I can't actually remember where I came across. It was a big tree, and I caught it into a beam, and a guy was looking for it, and he wanted to play. And then we pulled it through it now and on. They went through it fairly slow. But the beauty with that four quarter is you can also put, if you can imagine, when you're taking a convert in a tree from a round to a square, you're going to have these segments like oranges. What we tend to do is cut inch planks over them, and we use them for cladding. So we run them out through our fore quarter into tng, and whatever people want. And that, like, from bringing a small, very low value product in, when you get it into T and G and the like of that, you're into it into a very, very, very high value product, right? You're doing a bit of great. And then you have a bit of loss along the way, you know, but you are converting into something of high value, and the timber is local. And I can say I know where that Douglas fair come from. I came from a continuously managed forest in Wicklow. I know where the beach came from. I came from an estate somewhere. I know what that oak came from. It's a lovely thing to see something that came in as a tree going back. It was a plank to a building or somewhere within 10 or 15 mile. And that's what used to happen Herman, there is going to be this availability of timber, and it's common. It is common, and it's come quicker than people think. Jonathan there in Chagas, he's doing research on how much quicker Irish Oak has grown than the continental and he has an amazing, amazing statistics. So we're going to be into quality, into timber. And as I said earlier, there to you know, like some of the timber that might come out of the yoke, some of the hardwood could be used as beam timber. It doesn't, it doesn't all have to be barrel oak. So when you you can start with the you can start at the bottom and work up,

Dermot McNally 27:59
yeah, so John, so for myself, that has a bit of oak growing coming up on 30 years old. Now, are you going to be in a position to buy a lens of firewood or a lens of oak off me, to process them and then sell on to your customers? Is that what you hope to be doing? That's what

John Sherlock 28:18
I hope to be doing. And the one thing is, I think at the minute, most of the hardwoods that we're doing are what I'd call rescue timber. So they're timber that would come out of an estate or or a tree that has to be knocked now, the quality can be fairly as you can imagine. It can be ropey, and that that sort of timber is always going to be used for bespoke products. And the timber you're talking about Dermot, it will have been managed in a commercial plantation. So by its very nature, it'll be straight now. It won't be of large enough diameter to plank yet, but it will be of large enough diameter to put into beams. So what I'd be saying to the forest owners, there is a, there's probably a sweet spot there of about 25 centimeters, or, you know, depending on the SAP or depending what you're going to do with the beam. If it's an interior beam, I wouldn't be that hugely worried about sapwood. But what I'd be saying is that's just, that's going to be our first port of call is being beam beam timber. And so you can go down as far as like so for our average beam that we'd be our average post and beam structure, your hunt would be 15 centimeters by 15 centimeters. And there's loads of demand for that. But the one thing I'd be saying to foresters, forest owners, is, if you have a tree like that, and if you look at it, will you say to yourself, well, if it's coming out, because there's a better tree than beside it, well, there's nothing wrong with if it's a second degree. There's nothing wrong with spending a bit of time, you know, when it's younger, shaping it either. And the other thing too is, let's not cut it and then try and sell it. Let's try and sell. It before we cut it, and there is a demand for local product. And I think that's something we need to do, is to link up between people, the growers, the saw millers, and the end users.

Dermot McNally 30:12
John, you mentioned there Douglas for a few times, where are you sourcing that? And are you paying much of a premium on a typical Sitka spruce saw log.

John Sherlock 30:22
I'm buying that mostly in Wicklow, because there's a guy there. It has it. I do also buy it in another sales that come up, you're paying at about almost double what you'd be paying for Sitka for a quality three now you know what I mean. I think Douglas four is a is a fantastic timber, and underrated timber. It's for any uses. It doesn't move when it's drying. It's relatively stable.

Dermot McNally 30:49
So John, when you're buying your Douglas fir, are you trying to get a lurry load at a time? Or how's your

John Sherlock 30:54
I buy? Yeah, buy an Arctic load at a time. Yeah, yeah.

Dermot McNally 30:58
The Lurie load of Douglas fir arrives in your yard. Yeah, just talk me through how that gets and how long it takes to get it from delury to a product that's going out that you're selling and turning into money.

John Sherlock 31:12
Generally, what we do, we'd have a load ahead of us in our Douglas four. So we could have Douglas for sitting there three months, you know, in a stack. So what we do is, at the moment, what we do is we generally then cut it into what we would call cans. So we cut it into the largest square size we could get it into, unless there's a particular demand for a product, for a poster beam that they wanted immediately, we still cut it wet, because we sell it green, and that's the way it is. But generally, what we do is cut it into cans at a certain stage that you know, if it's going to start going off, if it's if it's going to start decay, well, then we have to cut it into cans and we square it off into cans. We square it, we put the rest into into inch planks for tongue and groove board. And we'd we'd sticker them. We'd have, we'd always have a supply of an, probably an Arctic load of these cans, as we call them, in various sizes. So they'd sit there. The inch planks would be drying. So then a customer comes in and he would say, I want X, Y or Z. Well, we'd look straight immediately to our cans to see what's the nearest one to them we can get. And then if we're if we don't get close enough to it that we've to mill a bit off, we'll mail off a 25 we'll mail off an inch plank, because we can still use it as a conversion into a into a board. Then they might want it. They might want it planned. So then at that stage, then we bring it in and playing it, run it through the big four quarter. And with everything they want, there's obviously an additional cost. Some people see a post and beam building and want to do it, and they might initially say, Well, John, will you do it? And I'll say, Yeah. Then they'll see the price, because, yeah, it's, it's mostly hand work. And then they'll revert back to, they'll do a lot of the donkey work if I can produce the beam with them, planed and squared and ready, and the other products, then they'll go off and make it themselves. And that's the way we work with with the Douglas then you see, we have all these inch planks, and we leave the ones that have the bark on with the Waney edge, as they call it. We leave them. We don't cut them until we need them. Because what we found in the past is sometimes you get jobs where people want to weigh in the edge. There was a guy who came in from he was doing up a pub in Dublin, and the wanted to do the whole interior way in the edge. So what we did was he still wanted to play and finish. We just ran it through the planner and playing the top side that was shown. And he wanted so I don't really convert it into into a plank onto because we do have a good percentage of actual inch boards with with us, on edge that we can run straight through, but we tend to keep the others. So see you try and get the conversion rate. So most people work on it, on a fact that if you buy timber, that if you buy a cubic meter of round timber that when you have it's on, you're going to get a half a cubic meter, so you lose 50% in your conversion process. So the

Dermot McNally 34:08
beam goes out green, which means that you haven't done any kiln drying on it is that right? John, whereas the tongue and groove all has to go through your kiln?

John Sherlock 34:18
No, it'd be the tongue and grooved, and that would still be going out as air dried, but it would be for what would you say? It wouldn't be for internal use. Still be, it would be outside platinum or an outside structure with cladding inside it. So for example, if you did a post and beam, we supply you with the post and beam for all the lats that you put on top, under the slates, or under whatever covering you're getting, you know. So it'd be perfect for the like of that. So there is a use furrow within the so if you think you put up a tongue and post and beam building, if you're going to tongue and groove or even plank that for the roof, you're going to need a lot of planks. But you. Want to do it in the same timber, because you don't look up and see and you'd know it, you know a timber that's different, you'd know that anyone else had not looking at it. So that's what we do. They can buy the whole structure, then for stuff like that, and and for that matter, then people come in, they might want to make gates for or they might want to make doors for a cottage, but I might throw some of that into the into the kiln and dry it. Do you know? Yeah, but it depends on the timber and depends on the look.

Dermot McNally 35:29
Okay, so John, I wanted to ask you about the new guild of Saul Millers that you're involved in.

John Sherlock 35:35
So basically, a number of years ago, the limerick Tipperary group had a project called hardwood focus, which was to try and seek at the redevelopment market for small diameter hardwood. And I accidentally joined that. Well, I went on a study tour with them, because somebody dropped out, and we ended up in a saw mill in the UK, and it was a hardwood sawmill, and they had a program called woodland to workshop, and it just went from bringing forest owners straight through and educating people about timber saw milling. It was a treat. Of course, it was excellent. So we came home from the Northeast forestry group, and I was all excited about this. So we did a mirror image program within the Northeast forestry group, and we got funding from the Department of Agriculture, we were very helpful to us and very supportive. And from that we had such an interest in it, we decided we'd open it to all the forest owner groups in Ireland, to the IFO. So then we did a project with the IFO, and it was called bringing value to hardwoods. So for this, it was more, it was more a focused project in that it was people who had to have a sawmill, or people who were about to purchase a sawmill. So we had 15 participants in it, and we went around various sawmill and entities like ourselves, not large scale saw mills. It was such a such an interesting project. We were with wheel makers. We were with boat builders. We were with a member who has his own small scale saw mill, who refurbished his own castle. We have a castle, a guy with a castle, Dermot. He he refurbished his own castle with his own company, John Yeah, with his own saw mill from timber from his own forest. And they want to see. It was stunning. And then we ended up with a guy who's made a business out of producing chopping boards. So we had this group of people, very motivated, very interested. And when the project ended, we felt it was, it was again, we had reached a artist from, if you could say, a third project. So we decided, let's form some form of a structure. So we looked at all the structures we were thinking of doing, and we decided, well, what we see as a need is education of people who have purchased these small scale saw mills. So if you can imagine, I was speaking to one saw Miller, saw mill provider. And who does the majority these small scale saw mills in Ireland, and he has sold 170 to them in Ireland, 100 170 so I would guarantee, Derek, I would guarantee that at least 60 to 70% of them are forest owners. So we have, potentially, all these small scale saw Millers who have the ability to convert timber into something worthwhile. But I would say, and I include myself in it, need further education to maximize what they're doing, that the product that they saw milling is suitable for market and is what the market wants. So we looked at this and we said, this is where we want to focus on. Is as not that there is existence for mills of various sizes. We're talking about is people starting out who are wanting to add value. So we got funding from the Department. We actually held an in house meeting of all the original project people, and we got in a consultant. So we spent a day last two, last week, or the week before, down in Tullamore, going through what we see the needs of people. So we're going to have a report from that in the next two weeks, and we're going to move on further within the project, we have funded for a website for some publications, but we're also doing a signature event, which is a post and beam course for two weeks for eight participants and James Thompson, my original tutor from Scotland, he's doing that and interesting. He's doing a the design he's doing is for a small cabin that he has designed for first. Students who wish to stay overnight when he's doing his post and beam course. Because my thoughts on this is that if we got this design, and this could be used for a cabin in our woods, because, as we're talking about earlier with my repant, and I think this is going to be more of a recreational in the short term. And so I'm looking at putting a cabin down in the woods there for the for family use. And so if we had this, this could be something that forest owners could use as a resource. So this is where we're so we're again Dermot. We're at the start of a new adventure. But I think if this provides a demand and a skill for people to convert Irish hardwoods primarily and some minor conifers into a saleable item, I think it benefits everybody. You know, yeah, but I do doubt and if, if within that we develop a brand, and I think it's a brand that people, if you can think of initially, what everybody's going to produce, and what we all will be producing with these type of saw mills will be small scale, bespoke runs of particular Types of timber. And I think within the upper echelons of furniture manufacturing, design, etc, there is probably a demand for high quality Irish grown timber. And I think if you look at what the product these people the raw material, is a very small percentage of the cost of the finished goods. A lot of it is labor time, etc, design. And they will, I am convinced that they will be prepared to pay a small premium for to be able to market their product as made from Irish timber, with a brand and with an authentic Irish timber. So this is where we're looking at, you know, we're also looking at, there's a huge demand, there's a huge market, I'd say, within Irish schools, for Irish grown timber. At the moment, we're supplying all our schools with imported timber. And I think if you think about all them, 170 200 probably but if you, if you had the half of them supply in schools by some manner or means, let's explore it. Well then people, then are supplying local people, local students, maybe our future timber users, with Irish timber, and that ties in with, with with educating school attendees about forestry and the benefits of it.

Dermot McNally 42:48
No, fantastic. It all ties in. Lovely. Yeah, it does, you know,

John Sherlock 42:51
and, and I think, and we're lucky in a way, that we have this funding mechanism within the forestry promotions to do the like of this, because for a group of individuals to do that on their own without funding, it just doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen. Or if it does happen, it's in a very, very small scale, and it takes longer to get done, whereas the funding itself, it's not doing something. It's accelerating the process.

Dermot McNally 43:23
Yeah, and the peer to peer learning of that, not only will you the interviews train up, they'll come back, they'll know each other, and they'll, they'll know each other for life, and they'll, they'll help to push each other on so.

John Sherlock 43:34
And the other thing too, we would hope then that they would be speaking to forest owners to say, we actually can sell this timber, if you actually can grow it, yeah, it's all very well. Same way. We won't have the hard ones for another X amount of years. That doesn't matter. We we will have enough to keep us going in some manner or farm, if we can produce it quality wise, like what I was talking to there earlier about salmonella, there's a there's a home for every piece of timber, if you just have it in the size and and the way that the end user wanted it. So you have your fence and you have your posts, you have your post and beam, you have your tng, you walk the whole way up in the grades. Do you know? Yeah, yeah.

Dermot McNally 44:16
No, absolutely. Adding value all the way. Adding value the whole way. John, listen. Thanks very much for joining me. That was fantastic. No problem. David.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai