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Getting raw lumber
Ok this is a from tree to board discussion. Hopefully another way to reduce lumber waste. Lol what I mean by this is personally I dislike the thought of trees getting wood chipped after they are retired from service. Trees like this apricot that’s sitting dead and ready for the saw. Honestly I cry when my friends say they have cut down their walnut and had it chipped up. This is any hard wood from hickory to maybe cedar. (It smells good) so how many of you feel the same (or don’t) its hard work making lumber from a raw tree. It’s some times unsafe to even take that nearly branch and turn a candle stick from it. If I can’t truly think of a use then I smoke meat with it. Any way what do you all think?
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12 Replies
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I agree, 100%. The more years I spend in woodworking the more I want to work from tree > lumber > furniture. At some point I’d love to have a kiln, probably start solar and go from there.
There is a guy close to me that gets trees from arborist to mill and dry. He then sells it. From the looks of it there is no shortage of logs coming his way.
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I hope to show some good safe home methods for doing this stand by.
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Agree wholeheartedly. I made the pictured table from hard maple harvested from trees I cut off my dad’s homesite. The top is walnut. Virtually, all useable wood was processed and I maintain a very nice supply of stock from that cutting over twenty years ago.
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That’s still a wonderful piece of furniture. I have an English walnut coming down soon. Hope to show some diy steps. Safely of course.
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We do it all the time at our shop. I think there are several factors that could deter most from doing it. 1) Qualtiy resaw or saw mill availability 2) storage – depending on the thickness of the raw lumber it could take a year or more to get the moisture down to a workable level.
We’ve rushed some wood through the drying process with less than desirable results.
So if you don’t have a large bandsaw or someone with a portable sawmill or the ability of a sawmill then it’s really difficult.
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Had woods in back of house about 50 feet by like 4 or 5 semi and they were putting solar panels in there. Had every single tree chipped 😢
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Maybe 5 or 6 semi trucks
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Enjoyed your replies love it. Right now I have plans going forward to make a small batch solar kiln. An idea that is easily scalable u might add. It short it uses the sun. For people like me that live in the mountain west united states this is an exceptional option. As was stated above just air drying takes aloooooong time And it’s not always feasible. A solar kiln is a very good option to avoid this and as I said it very scalable. Plans to be posted soon.
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Yeah, I hate waste. It’s kinda how society geared bc they want to sell their trash before giving it away & once it is passed the items hold period they completely destroy it so no one can salvage it.
But anyway. I Get my wood from an Amish sawmill, where I’ll request fragments or sapboards- plain old pieces of trash & make small items. That actually is appropriated to help clean up debris & the owner then doesn’t mind giving me deals then. I paid $1.85² ft of walnut $1² ft of pine, $1.15² ft of locust
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