The cheapest way to buy lumber is green and rough cut from a sawmill in your area. Because the lumber is still fresh you need to dry it for a while before you can use it for your projects. If you have a lot of money to spend then you can probably purchase the lumber from home depot, but if you ask me I prefer mine to be rough and dried by me.

After you have planned everything from the project to your desired materials it is now time to make a purchase. If you go directly to a sawmill they will let you go around pick your choice of lumber. Getting a bit oversized lumber is advisable if you are picking the green lumber because it will shrink when dried.It will not be necessary to haggle the price of the lumber since the prices here are already discounted but if you are frequent customer they might give you better deal

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Drying the lumber will be the next thing you would want to do after bringing it home. Air drying is on of the ways to dry you green lumber this is done by piling your boards directly under the sun but protected from the rain Then you allow it to air-dry for roughly one year for every 1" of thickness. This means that 1" thick boards will air-dry for one year, 2" thick boards will dry for two years, and so on. After a year you can bring the umber inside your shop to continue the process since it still has 12%-18% moisture.If your shop has low humidity you can let your lumber finish drying for a few weeks in there. I suggest that you buy a thermometer/hygrometer from Radio Shack. It is only about $40 and you can buy remote sensors for it to monitor other areas. The humidity in your shop should be under 50%RH to allow your lumber to finish drying down to 8% moisture content.

Using a solar kiln is one way of drying your green lumber, so if you don't have it yet the plans is downloadable online. Building it will only cost you around $200. When you bring your lumber home you can immediately put your lumber in the solar kiln and begin drying. Drying the lumber can sometimes depend on your location and the temperature however it usually takes 30-60 days to have it dried or reach the 6%-8% moisture to make it ready for use.

After your lumber is dried you can begin processing it. First thing you need to do is joint one surface of the board. This can be accomplished manually by using a hand plane or maybe the quick method with a jointer. You may now cut it in close to the dimensions that you need. And in order for you to have a uniform thickness you may now run through a thickness planer. This process will make the board equal in thickness. Once you plane the plank down to the final thickness, afterwards you joint one side perhaps by yourself or by making use of a jointer. As soon as the board is planed you can now cut it to the final width. You can do this with a table saw, band saw, or even a skill saw with an edge guide. Make sure that you are able to set the edge guide by using the jointed edge for reference. After you have cut the final measurement you can now start building your project. You're done, and you saved tons of money by processing the rough boards yourself.