Perhaps the easiest way that you can buy you lumber is while it is freshly cut by a sawmill. 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. The only alternative will be by purchasing dried lumbers from home improvement shops , that is if you have a lot of money but personally I'd like mine rough cut and prepared 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. 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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After you get your lumber home, you'll need to decide on how you will 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... After a year you can bring the umber inside your shop to continue the process since it still has 12%-18% moisture.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 .

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. These kilns can be built for only a couple hundred dollars. The green lumber can be placed immediately inside the solar kiln for it to start 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..

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 surface of your panel. You can do this manually with a hand plane or maybe the easy way by using a jointer. It makes things a lot easier if you cut the board down to a length close to your final needed length. After you have one face flat you then run the board through a thickness planner. This process will make the board equal in thickness. After you plane the panel down to your final thickness, afterwards you joint one side either by yourself or by way 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. 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're done, and you saved tons of money by processing the rough boards yourself.