Buying a lumber can be quite costly sometimes so it is best if you buy it straight from the source and while it is still green. 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.

After you have planned everything from the project to your desired materials it is now time to make a purchase. Going to a sawmill and choosing the best lumber for the project is our next step, and if you go to a sawmill you will find lumbers that are just laying around that you can choose. You might also want to pick a lumber that is a little bit bigger because lumbers shrink when dries up.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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After bringing the green lumber home you will then need to dry it. In drying your lumbers all you need to do is pile them up make sure that there is around 12"-24" space between each other and it is dried under the sun but is covered from the rain, this is process is usually known as ' Air Drying" It takes a year to dry a 1" thick board so if you have 2" it will take 2 years etc... The moisture content of the lumber after it was air dried is 12% - 18% still wet to use but you can now bring it inside your workshop for the rest of the air drying process.The ideal RH of your shop should b 50% for the lumber to dry down to 8% moisture and for you to be able to monitor the humidity you can purchase the rmometer/hygrometer from radio shack that will cost you around $40

The other method of drying is to build a solar kiln. Plans for solar kilns can be found on the internet. The set back if you want to have it built is around $200. You can place your green lumber inside the kiln to begin drying. It usually takes 1-2 months for the lumber to dry down to 6-8% moisture and be ready for use. But sometimes the location and temperature matters..

You can start processing the lumber as soon as its dried up. The first thing you must do is joint one face of your plank. This can be accomplished by hand by using a hand plane or maybe the easy approach with a jointer. You can then cut the board to your lose to the final length needed. The thickness planer is the next stop for that board. This is for you to have an equal thickness . After you plane the plank into your final size, afterwards you joint one side possibly by hand or by using a jointer. With the board flat, planed to the final thickness you are ready to rip the board to your final width. You can do this with a table saw, band saw, or even a skill saw with an edge guide. 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