Buying lumber from a sawyer/sawmill

Well, I didn’t cut anything, but I did want to bring this here and see if I did good on material. I found a sawmill in my area that we’re getting rid of skid size bundles of already cut wood. I spent $200 on this complete bundle of wood you see here. It’s white oak, red white, and hickory. Did I do good?

I decided, after going through the pile and seeing how good these boards are, I will be purchasing another two bundles. Was it worth it?

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I’ve spent a lot more on stock and come away with a lot less for a number of projects.

If you’ve got the space to store it (and if need be allow it to finish drying) you’re good to go.

Is this kiln, air dried or green? If green you have to get it stickered and stacked or you will have a mess. if dried keep a good cover on it to keep the rain/snow off of it. On top of the cover if you have any tin or R panel put it over the top so it overlaps your stack/stacks. The tarp should go all the way to the ground to keep splash water and dirt off your boards. Try to elevate it at least 6 inches.

My suggestion is to sort the material. If the boards are straight but not warped, dog legged, split and cracked you did good. Depending on how thick some warping can be jointed out but if that is .75" you wont get warped boards straightened out unless you are going to cut the boards into 12-18" lengths.

Seems like a good deal but you wont really know till it is sorted and stacked.

Sawmills dont give away material. They got rid of it for some reason. Maybe they were just overstocked but maybe they were rejects from customers.

Likely a good deal but just depends on what you are going to use it for. Cut up, jointed and planned and glued together you can make panels.

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It isn’t dried. I think it is still green, but not concerned with it sitting to get right when I am ready to be able to start using it. The boards are 1 1/8 inch thick. They are pretty straight and flat all through. I have multiple purposes for this wood. I am going to use some of it to replace my siding on my cabin. I have oak siding right now. Need to replace some bad boards.

Making panels is a good idea. I also have a butcher block counter top to make with love edge for my cabin as well. I also plan to run a bunch of the wood through the Shapeopo 5Pro. I went through the lumber already to move it from the trailer to the stack it is in now. It is there only temporary. I plan to cut stacking sticks to put between the layers as I go back through it so I can get it stacked to air dry. Once I get the other bundles and go through them, I will have all the wood sorted by type and for air drying.

I planned to tarp them completely up so no water can get to them from both up above and from splash up. I have 9 acres of land here at the shop, so I don’t think I have an issue of finding a place to stack it and store it. Would love to build a building to kiln dry all of my wood, but that will only be if the shop takes off better. I wasn’t thinking about the 6 inches above the ground though. That was a good suggestion for sure. I have it up 3 inches right now off the ground.

As for the sawmill getting rid of the wood so cheap, I live in wood country. The tornado we had go through here a few months back ripped down a ton of trees, and property owners started logging the trees out. The mills got overloaded with logs and stopped buying anymore. Right now the 1x wood isn’t selling good for them down here and so some of the sawmills are focusing on making crossties to send to the railroad company. What I bought is the stuff they are trying to recoup some of by at least selling for what they have in it to call it even. Their lost, my benefit. This stuff is great lumber and has plenty of room to plane smooth and get to nominal sizes.

This is why I plan on buying 2 more bundles, because will have enough oak wood to make pretty much anything I want for years to come. Hell, if I just ran it all on my S5P, then I will have 10 years or more worth of lumber for work.

Well worth the $ for that amount of rough cut lumber. Especially with the price of white oak these days.

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Place something on the ground to get the wood off the ground.
You should have “stickers” placed between layers of wood to promote drying . Stickers are about 1" square lengths. Put wide boards on the bottom so they stay flatter.
Use archorseal to seal the ends so they don’t split.
Cover the whole stash with blue tarp.
Awesome find

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If you end up throwing away (firewood) ½ of it 3 years from now, how good of a deal will it be? That’s how you price the deal.

Like Guy suggested, sticker it and get a roof over it and a floor under it.

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@CrookedWoodTex - He is way ahead if he just used 1/4 of the white oak in that stack. If one were to perform a count there is hundreds of board feet at 4/4 based on the photo provided.

I would have easily taken that deal and returned to purchase what else they had left.

But your point is made for how you price it.

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I have another building on the property that is 24’x24’ with a concrete slab. The roof is in disarray and when it warms up, I plan on repairing it. Then at that point I will have a completely enclosed building to store my lumber in. All of this lumber, plus the other 2 bundles, will easily store in there and wont rot away from weather. Most of the sizes of the lumber here is 1x6s and 1x8s, There are others of course and that doesn’t bother me because it isn’t nothing for me to size up my lumber to nominal sizes, or to have custom sizes for specific jobs that come up.

I will work through it faster then you think, but even if I didn’t, using half of the lumber will still pay for itself with the lumber being stored in the build mentioned above. In that building right now are other piles of lumber that I have been working through as well. These bundles are 1x4s and 2x4s all made from oak. The 1x4s I have been using to make trim and other smaller odd end projects. The 2x4s are my filler for the other projects when I need a little thicker board/s.

My recent project made use of these 1x4s and 2x4s in a custom tall bed for a small house that needs to take advantage of as much space as possible. So, it’s a bunk bed with the lower bed completely gone to use that space for a chest of drawers, clothes rack, and a computer stand, and its made from oak.

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found this:

years ago we built a home for family, and dried wood like this.

The boards were delivered like yours, before we knew it, it was snowing, and we had to free it from ice all over. Believe it or not: after properly storing the boards like this the ice was gone, after a week of continuously 25 degrees, ice sublimates. Wind needs to blow through the boards.

GL! I think this is a bargain.

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Seeing this diagram has me realizing why I kept the cinder blocks around. I have some red cedar in my shop stacked like this because when I bought it, it was completely soaked. I cut stickers and started it all on 2x4s on the concrete floor, then stacked like your diagram.

Thank you for sending this diagram. Makes me rethink the lack of supporting I have under the stack. I realize that I don’t have enough support under the pile for the length the wood is to start off, but I will remedy that when I restack it.

dries through 1/2 inch per year as rule of thumb, so 1 inch thick is dry after 1 year. I don’t know about kiln dryness.

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Kiln dried lumber can be dried in a matter of weeks, even less depending on the stacking. I don’t mind having the lumber sit for a year if I have to, but I think I would rather be able to dry it faster if possible, but not most likely. So, you are correct in the time frame of how long it will take to dry the lumber naturally.

I also think kiln dried wood is much more dry than naturally dried. We used kiln dried pine floorboards, they expanded while adjusting to the inside humidity, there where no gaps, smooth surface. All depends what one needs (and how fast of course too :slight_smile: )

@bigsmooth911 You didn’t do good…you did great!

Where I source my lumber for my projects, Red Oak goes for around $3.75 a board ft (KD at 4/4) - White Oak at $6.75 - so you have done very, very well…

However, you do need to dry it, as the others are saying.

Realize that anything you build with it now will likely check and warp - and your joinery will open up unless you’re using wet wood joinery techniques. Unless you really know what you’re doing, I recommend waiting 9 mos to a year for it to dry (stickered and stacked…as the others are saying).

But you did great…patience will be your friend, now!

Gary

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There is no question this was a good buy. Even if you burned it that’s a decent price.
As mentioned be sure to dry it. Stacking and sticking will totally be worth the effort in 12 months.
Lots of exploration awaits…

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I deal with green lumber and letting it air dry. It takes about a year per inch of board thickness. I also buy kiln dried lumber from suppliers and that is good but many woodworkers prefer air dried. A friend of mine has a kiln he can dry lumber in that is two oil filled heaters, a fan and a dehumidifier. That works well and the side benefit is it kills any bugs inside the wood. Green wood attracts all kinds of bugs when you stack it up outside to dry. So you need to inspect it on a regular basis and if you find sawdust around your stack find the bugs and remove those pieces of lumber. Bugs/grubs can really ruin all your hard work very quickly so stay vigilant. Someone gave me a pear log for turning. A few days after I got it home I noticed it had ants in it. I moved it and sprayed it with ant killer. Have not yet turned it but it may be full of holes inside where the ants made their nest.

I had considered a solar kiln. Still pondering/waffling .

Here are plans from Virginia Tech.

https://sbio.vt.edu/extension/resources/vt-solar-kiln.html

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Thanks for the information about air drying verses kiln drying. I like the idea of air drying the wood. I know I have to wait to use it, but I feel the process of air drying is better because it lets the wood relax slower and moving is less likely instead of forcing wood to dry and then building tension until it is cut and releases that tension and the wood warps or twists out of sorts.

I’ll let everyone know when I buy the other bundles of lumber. I might talk with these people that run this sawmill and see what they would charge for cutting some big logs that I might not be able to handle with my chainsaw mill.