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. But by buying it this way, you cannot use the lumber for your projects for quite a while. I love using products that I personally made myself but if you have a lot of money to spend and you are in a hurry you can just purchase the lumbers you need in any home improvement shops.

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. If you go directly to a sawmill they will let you go around pick your choice of lumber. Getting a bit oversized lumber is advisable if you are picking the green lumber because it will shrink when dried.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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As soon as the lumber gets home drying it will be the next step. 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 Then you allow it to air-dry for roughly one year for every 1" of thickness. This means that 1" thick boards will air-dry for one year, 2" thick boards will dry for two 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.If your shop has low humidity you can let your lumber finish drying for a few weeks in there. I suggest that you buy a thermometer/hygrometer from Radio Shack. It is only about $40 and you can buy remote sensors for it to monitor other areas. The humidity in your shop should be under 50%RH to allow your lumber to finish drying down to 8% moisture content.

One other method for drying a green lumber is by the use of solar kiln . There are a lot of solar kiln plans online. The set back if you want to have it built is around $200. As soon as the lumber gets home you can immediately put inside the kiln to have it dried. 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.

After your lumber is dried you can begin processing it. The first thing you should do is joint one surface of the panel. This can be accomplished by hand by using a hand plane or perhaps the uncomplicated approach with a jointer. Cutting the board to your desired length is advised. And in order for you to have a uniform thickness you may now run through a thickness planer. This is for you to have an equal thickness . Once you plane the plank down to your final dimension, afterwards you joint one edge either by hand or by using 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. Just set your fence or edge guide to the desired width and use the jointed edge of the board as a reference. After you have cut the final measurement you can now start building your project. You're done, and you saved tons of money by processing the rough boards yourself.