The cheapest way to buy lumber is green and rough cut from a sawmill in your area. Your home improvement projects will need to wait for a while if these is the lumber you have intended to use, because this lumber needs to be dried out first. 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.

If you already have project in mind you may then plan for the materials you will need. This is a matter of locating a local sawmill and asking if they have any lumber of the species and quality you need. Chances are that they will have a pile lying around somewhere that you can sort through and take your pick of the boards. Getting a bit oversized lumber is advisable if you are picking the green lumber because it will shrink when dried.The prices of the lumber in the sawmill are really affordable so there is really no need for you to ask for more discount but if you've been a frequent customer they might be the one who will offer it to you.

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After you get your lumber home, you'll need to decide on how you will dry it. One of the ways to dry your green lumber is by piling the lumbers under the sun but making sure that it is protected from the rain you have to also make sure that every layer is 12"-24" apart For each 1" thick lumber , it will take you a year to dry so if you have 2" thick it will take 2 years 3" 3 years and so on. A lumber can b allowed to dry inside the workshop after a year because it usually has 12%-18% moisture therefore it is not yet ready to be used.However since most workshops has low humidity it is advisable for you to purchase a thermometer/ hygrometer that costs around $40 at radio shack so you could monitor the humidity on your shop . The ideal would be 50%RH .

The other method of drying is to build a solar kiln. Plans for solar kilns can be found on the internet. You don't need much to have these built just a couple of hundred bucks and you have it. As soon as the lumber gets home you can immediately put inside the kiln to have it dried. To dry the lumbers you need to leave it inside the kiln for approximately 1-2 months for it to be ready for use. However it will often times depend on your location, the season and etc.

As soon as the lumber is all dried up you can now make it ready for your project. The first thing you must do is joint one area of your plank. You can do this manually by using a hand plane or maybe the easy method with a jointer. It makes things a lot easier if you cut the board down to a length close to your final needed length. And then you can run the lumber through the thickness planer. This process will make the board equal in thickness. As soon as you plane the panel into the final thickness, you then joint one side perhaps by yourself or by way of a jointer. Cutting the board to the final width is the next process after you have planed the it to your desired thickness. You can use any kind of saw to do this. To set your board to the desired width you can used the edge of the board as guide. You're now almost ready to have a board for your project. You will really save a lot of money by processing your own boards for your projects