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.

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.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. 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" 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. 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.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

One other method for drying a green lumber is by the use of solar kiln . There are a lot of solar kiln plans online. Building it will only cost you around $200. As soon as the lumber gets home you can immediately put inside the kiln to have it dried. 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. First thing you want to do is joint one face of your board. This can be achieved manually by using a hand plane or the uncomplicated method by using a jointer. You may now cut it in close to the dimensions that you need. The thickness planer is the next stop for that board. This will make the board parallel to the flat face. As soon as you plane the board into your final thickness, then you joint one side either manually or with a jointer. Cutting the board to the final width is the next process after you have planed the it to your desired thickness. This can be done by using a saw. 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. Cutting your own board from scratch surely saves you a lot of money