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.

Once you decide what projects you are going to attempt, and what species you plan to use, you can begin the process. The first thing you need to do is procure the materials. 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.You should find that the price you pay here will be very good, so don't try to haggle the price down. If they like you and you become a repeat customer they will probably give you even better deals later on.

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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 Each 1" thick board will take a year to dry up so if you have like a 4" thick board it takes 4 years. After they air-dry the moisture content will be around 12%-18%, this is still to wet to work with, so now you can bring the lumber inside your shop to finish drying.It is best to keep your shops RH to atleast 50% for the woods moisture to go down to atleast 8% and to do that you can use a thermometer/hygrometer to monitor from time to time

Another way to dry your lumber is by using solar kiln and if you still don't have it you can find the plans online. The set back if you want to have it built is around $200. The green lumber can be placed immediately inside the solar kiln for it to start drying. The time it takes to dry will vary due to your location, time of year, and other things. But generally about 30-60 days in the solar kiln will dry your lumber down to 6%-8% moisture content. So it will be ready to use right out of the kiln.

Processing your lumber can start as soon as it reaches it's ideal moisture content. The very first thing you want to do is joint one area of the plank. This can be achieved manually using a hand plane or perhaps the easy approach by using a jointer. Cutting the board to your desired length is advised. After you have one face flat you then run the board through a thickness planner. This process will make the board equal in thickness. Once you plane the board down to your final size, afterwards you joint one side possibly manually or by way of a jointer. With the board flat, planed to the final thickness you are ready to rip the board to your final width. You can have this done by making use of saw to cut the board. Using the jointed for reference you can now set your board to your desired width. You're now almost ready to have a board for your project. You're done, and you saved tons of money by processing the rough boards yourself.