Good deal on logs....would you?

[Thomas Colson]

So I got a pretty good offer on a literally bottomless pile of logs that a large tree company has on their lot. I can "tag" what I want and they'll set it aside, for a very low cost (in advance of "where?", the locals are already all over this and this is a limited time offer....). So I tagged some red and white oak, hard maple, and cherry, and am sitting on the fence on some walnut. Sawmill guy will bring his saw onsite and is very reasonably priced. Logs are 18-40 inches, 8-14 feet long. This seems like a no brainer but...

As I am an amateur woodworker, I know less about drying. I do know 1" per year, sticker it well, weight on top, and I can keep it in an open-sided wood shed, anchorseal the ends. Kiln drying is 100%, absolutely not going to happen, not an option due to cost, distance, don't have the space to build one, etc..

What I'm struggling with, is this still worth it? I know air drying is hit or miss even if you're careful, but is there a species I should avoid, and double up on another? 2000 BF is about what I can fit in the shed, stickered, and I'd like to be using the shed for something useful and not have to toss half of it in the stove when it corkscrews as soon as I get it near the planer. My plan is to do most of this at 8/4, and a few hundred bf at 6/4. I hear oak is the worse at air drying, problem is, for every maple and cherry log in this pile, there's 10 oaks. The walnut isn't yet in play "yet", as I said, locals are all over this and the trucks with the walnut often "lose it" between where they cut it and the lot. Given what I spent at the lumber yard last year, if I can keep even 60% of this stuff after 2 years air drying, I'm ahead, but the math really doesn't work for me if air drying is going turn 50% of this stuff into noodles.

[Alex Zeller]

Around here you can bring your lumber to a mill at they will kiln dry it for you. I have had a guy come up to my property with a band mill and cut up my wood about a half dozen times now. I'll do it again. Do you have a pickup and a trailer? Depending on how much wood you get the weight will add up. If the deal is good enough you probably could rent a U-haul if needed to get it home. I would store it outside to allow for better airflow. I made a simple roof to cover the top. What you will have to do is prevent power post beetles from getting into it. If I was offered logs at a good price I would jump on it.

[Thomas Colson]

The truck is no problem, lot is 10 minutes away. I could get truck load home and be back while he's still sawing the second log. Nearest Kiln is 1.5 hours one-way and is not cheap. Just not an option. I was thinking spraying them with Timbor before stacking might mitigate the PBB problem, which is pretty bad where I live. If you put a piece of wood outside, just assume it's instantly full of PBB, because, in reality, it is.

[John K Jordan]

So I got a pretty good offer on a literally bottomless pile of logs that a large tree company has on their lot. I can "tag" what I want and they'll set it aside, for a very low cost (in advance of "where?", the locals are already all over this and this is a limited time offer....). So I tagged some red and white oak, hard maple, and cherry, and am sitting on the fence on some walnut. Sawmill guy will bring his saw onsite and is very reasonably priced. Logs are 18-40 inches, 8-14 feet long. This seems like a no brainer but...

As I am an amateur woodworker, I know less about drying. I do know 1" per year, sticker it well, weight on top, and I can keep it in an open-sided wood shed, anchorseal the ends. Kiln drying is 100%, absolutely not going to happen, not an option due to cost, distance, don't have the space to build one, etc..

What I'm struggling with, is this still worth it? I know air drying is hit or miss even if you're careful, but is there a species I should avoid, and double up on another? 2000 BF is about what I can fit in the shed, stickered, and I'd like to be using the shed for something useful and not have to toss half of it in the stove when it corkscrews as soon as I get it near the planer. My plan is to do most of this at 8/4, and a few hundred bf at 6/4. I hear oak is the worse at air drying, problem is, for every maple and cherry log in this pile, there's 10 oaks. The walnut isn't yet in play "yet", as I said, locals are all over this and the trucks with the walnut often "lose it" between where they cut it and the lot. Given what I spent at the lumber yard last year, if I can keep even 60% of this stuff after 2 years air drying, I'm ahead, but the math really doesn't work for me if air drying is going turn 50% of this stuff into noodles.

One caution: many people get into the excitement of a supply of free wood and end up with much or most of it wasted, ending up that it would have been cheaper to buy the lumber. I think it is important to research this well before committing.

There is a lot of info on the internet about successfully air drying for research. There are also useful government publications. If you have enough wood, it might be profitable to pay for kiln drying.

Don't forget handling and hauling large amounts of wet wood, preventing insect damage, cost of the support system and stickers, sufficient space for having stacks of stickered lumber around for years, and storage space for the dried lumber.

BTW, 1 year per inch is a very rough suggestion which makes a lot of assumption, not even close to reality in many cases. The typical rule-of-thumb is actually 1" per year PLUS one year. Even this falls apart in reality with certain species (white vs red oak vs cherry, walnut, etc), thicker timbers, untypical environmental conditions, poor handling.

I have a sawmill myself but I usually cut wood into woodturning blanks. When I do cut boards for air drying i use methods to measure the moisture instead of relying on a rule-of-thumb.

JKJ

[Bill Dufour]

Climate? extra words to make the count

[David Utterback]

Sounds good and others have raised some good issues to consider. Taking wood from tree to project is a great way to learn about the properties of different species. But 2000 bd ft is a lot of wood. A couple of lessons learned for me.

Be careful making sticker thickness consistent and use similar wood to the lumber being stacked. Staining may occur with darker wood stickers on maple, for example. IMHO, using dry wood for the stickers will help eliminate staining.

Second, if you can control the board dimensions, think about the capacity of your planer and jointer. You may also want to mill the wood prior to moving to workshop and an outdoor location such as a shed can help control the amount of waste handling.

Good luck.

[Ronald Blue]

No idea where you are but maybe build a solar kiln? There is a lot of info over in the Saw Mills and Kiln Drying Forum. Maybe pose your question there. Some real experts in there that deal with logs and drying wood frequently.

https://sawmillcreek.org/forumdisplay.php?68-Sawmills-and-Kiln-Drying

[Bob Andre]

Thomas
I air dry all of those species very successfully down to 12 or 13% here in WNY with the same process you are looking at. Bring inside shop for another % or 3 and you are all set. No bug problems here. My only question would be quality of logs and possibly difficulty in sawing. I mill my own and any "urban" logs would be internal garbage metal suspect. Trees next to a road maty be loaded with sand. You might discuss this with the sawyer. Bandsaw blades are around $25. One nail and the blade is toast. I have found metal over a foot deep in woodland trees far from urban influence. I like your plan just talk to the guy sawing for you.
Bob

[Izzy Camire]

I have a sawmill and dry wood frequently.
I sticker it outside for 1 year. Make sure the platform you put it on is coplaner and well supported. Walk on it and make sure it does not pitch down anywhere. Sticker the boards with dry stickers -- species does not matter. Place them every 15-20 inches and be sure where they transfer weight to the platform it is well supported at that point. Be sure the stickers are in a vertical line.
After the year I bring them into the loft of my barn which gets very hot in summer. The boards will spend at least 1 year there. They are simply piled but not stickered.
With this approach I have good success. Be aware however if the tree grew at an angle the wood is stressed and in drying will move sometimes more then you will like.
Good luck

[Don Stephan]

If the person operating the saw knows what makes good and bad lumber for making furniture, and the logs are not full of knots and metal, might be okay. Urban and perhaps suburban logs may not be good choices.

Try one or two logs. If the resulting boards meet your standards order more next time there are logs available,

[Patrick Kane]

Absolutely load up on walnut if it’s cheap. it’s the best/highest priced domestic hardwood in high demand. Worst case scenario, even trashy twisted walnut is still $2-3 bdft when dry. In comparison, twisty/warped flat sawn red oak is garbage. Fire wood. How much are the logs? If they are basically free then I would buy more and have the sawyer be more wasteful in his cuts. Quarter/rift saw all the white oak. Probably stock up on thicker cuts(these are more wasteful to produce) because they are harder to come by and much more expensive.

I am not a person to ask for advice, but I believe the majority of movement occurs within the first 4-6 months of drying. I’m around month 3.5 with 3500bdft of walnut and I am very happy with how flat/straight it’s dried thus far. I did spend a fair amount of time prepping the base of each stack to be straight and in the same plane. So far it seems to be paying off.

If you are into it for a buck a board foot, then I say do it. Avoid the bugs and be patient. If it’s going to cost you $2.50+ for anything less than quarter sawn white oak or walnut, then I would say it’s maybe not worth it. I don’t think it’s worth waiting 1-2 years to have a usable product that only saves you 20% versus what you can buy off the shelf in the quantities you need today.

[Bill Dufour]

A kiln is simple. a cargo container painted black with some venting.Leave it in the full sun for a few weeks when it predicted to be 110 degrees or more outside. Throw some blankets on it at sundown. It should be over 160 degrees inside for hours each day.
Bill D

[Richard Coers]

Pay particular attention to John K Jordan's advise. It's like he wrote my story. I cut free logs for a full year. Luckily for me I sold the mill for the same amount I paid for it. After air drying I stored the wood on my Mom's farm for my retirement. What I found when she died, was that I probably had a world record powder post beetle infestation. I had 26" wide 8/4 ash with not a foot of clear wood between beetle trails. It breaks your heart to throw that on a burn pile. So rule #1 if you do it. TREAT EVERY SINGLE BOARD WITH A BORATE PREVENTATIVE PESTICIDE!!!!!!!!!!! After I sold the mill I continued to harvest turning blanks and burls. I didn't learn my lesson after almost killing myself milling. It's a back breaker moving a wet 2x26x10' by yourself. I have a lean-to filled, garage attic filled, 1/2 my shop filled, all the gaps between my home floor joists filled, and even a pile in my house attic. My son likes to say if this house burns, they'll see it from space. Now that I am retired, and after 48 years of woodworking and 35 years of turning, surprise! I want to do some things other than woodworking. I want to be outside in the sun. I've taking up cycling and ride about 3,000 miles a year. All this wood is going to be a massive pain for our kids. I sold 8,000 pen blanks 2 years ago, and it was literally a drop in the bucket. So the fever is real, and PPB will destroy a pile of lumber. BEWARE!

[John K Jordan]

... Make sure the platform you put it on is coplaner and well supported. Walk on it and make sure it does not pitch down anywhere. Sticker the boards with dry stickers -- species does not matter. Place them every 15-20 inches and be sure where they transfer weight to the platform it is well supported at that point. Be sure the stickers are in a vertical line....

If it's not planar you may end up with a stack of boards with dips or bends.

I put down two rows of cinder blocks then put lengths of 3x3 or 4x4 on each row. I put 3x3 cross pieces every 20-24" depending on the length and thickness and type of wood. Center ed on the top of each 3x3 I put my first stickers. The first layer of boards then the next sticker lined up exactly with the first stickers and repeat. I like to put the boards close but not touching with a 3-4" gap near the center. Put stickers on the top, some scrap boards on those, weights on the very top, and cover from sun and rain with metal roofing, old plywood, etc.

The stack is something like this, but with the cinder blocks to keep the long supports off the dirt.

I like to use cedar for stickers since it dries quickly. I use 1x1 pieces trimmed when edging boards.

449552

BTW, I'm no professional, just a guy with a sawmill behind the barn.

JKJ

[Andrew Seemann]

A dozen years ago, the old man had some nice white oaks and elms from his yard taken down, and he decided to have them milled up into boards. He paid someone with one of those portable mills to saw it up. He then stacked and stickered them and covered them up, and they sat for a few years, some in the basement, some outside.

He only used a little of it, and I ultimately ended up with nearly all of it when they moved. Probably 90% was not suitable for anything but firewood. It was either too warped, too moldy, too rotten, or too full of bugs. Most of that I ended up burning in my maple sap evaporator. Of the rest, the wife was able to make some of the elm into painted yard snowmen (too much mildew for inside use), and I managed to salvage some of the quarter sawn oak. I used that for parts of a desk and file cabinet that I made him and his wife for their new place in the old folks home.

I have decided that it is much cheaper and simpler to use lumber from the hardwood supplier that has been cut, milled, and dried by people who know what they are doing. Plus they have way more room to store it than I do:)

[Jim Becker]

Since you have access to what appears to be a lot of material, be very selective with what you choose to acquire and have milled. It can feel really wonderful to have "a lot" of lumber, but it takes a lot of space to properly dry it and then properly store it until use. I've honestly wasted some material because of my own stupidity and I currently have some logs set aside that upon second thought, I'm not going to bother with. I have others that are "much more worthy" of my investment in time and money so those will get done and the less-worthy ones will get cut up and left for the firewood crowd in a pile down by the road.

BTW, the best place to do the initial year or two of drying is out in the open where prevailing winds can get through the stacks to wick off moisture. A simple cover on top to keep standing precipitation off is all you need. Drying under cover may not provide enough air flow unless your prevailing winds will always be coming from a predictable direction that can flow through the stack(s) effectively. (through the sides of the stacks so the stickers don't block the air flow) You can "finish" the drying process in a more limited area including a warm/hot loft/attic space, but the primary drying should be done as I mentioned for best and "quickest" (relatively speaking) results.

Start preparing your drying space now...you have to be able to level the bottom supports (4x4 or 4x6 or 6x6 PT typically) spaced no more than 24" OC along the full length of expected material size for a particular stack. A sticker goes on top of each of those leveled supports before you start stacking. Don't pack too densely, either. Drying is about air flow to wick off the moisture and air flow needs space to, um...flow. Wider stacks can go higher; narrow stacks are more limited if you want them stable. Special logs that you slab, if that's appropriate, need their own stacks if you want them to remain in order as a "sliced log". And yea...you need a gazillion stickers that are the width of an intended pile long and all the same thickness....75"-1".

[Rod Sheridan]

I dry wood over the winter outside.

5/4 dries enough from October to March where I live that it goes down to approximately 12 to 14% RH, then it goes into the shop to reach equilibrium.

Regards, Rod.

[Thomas Colson]

Lots of good advice here! We get a few 100 degree days, but never 110, and just the way my property is situated, no one spot gets more than a few hours of sun. I'm basically on top of a mountain, nothing but steep slope all around me. Which leads to.....I have a few options for where to stack this stuff:


Lean-to on the side of my shop. Plenty of room, tall and wide. Doesn't get one minute of sun all year long, moss had replaced the grass near by. Roof hangs over the "frame" by 2 feet on all 3 sides.
Under my second story deck. 100% dry, won't ever see a rain drop even during a windy thunderstorm. Problem is will get 2-4 hours of "morning" sun on the side of the stack facing east.
Built a shed/stacky thingy on the west side of my driveway. 2 hours of mid-day sun per day, again, only on one side of stack, but the best air flow location.
Car port attached to cabin. 3-5 hours of mid-day sun on tin roof, but not direct sun, cherry and maple tree kinda in the way. But I have to find where to store the firewood.....


My thoughts are with the existing lean to next to shop, because there's no sun excessively heating one side of the stack. Humidity in my neck of the woods is pretty bad in the summer, soon as I open the shop doors I'm drenched. Thanks for all the replies, at this time, a kiln of any type just isn't feasible.

[Jim Becker]

Sun isn't really something I'd be worrying about. It's about air flow as I noted. But I wouldn't put the stacks under a bunch of trees, either, because that can exacerbate moisture and critter challenges...DAMHIKT! Lots of folks air dry out in full or partial sun, honestly, including the folks I buy a lot of my lumber from.

[Thomas Colson]

I guess the ultimate factor on where I put this stack is space. Roughly, how high would a 4 foot wide stack of 1000 BF QS 8/4 be? Or 2 500 BF stacks. 4 feet wide is the limit in the few options I do have. Let's assume I'm using 3/4" thick stickers.

[John K Jordan]

I guess the ultimate factor on where I put this stack is space. Roughly, how high would a 4 foot wide stack of 1000 BF QS 8/4 be? Or 2 500 BF stacks. 4 feet wide is the limit in the few options I do have. Let's assume I'm using 3/4" thick stickers.

If you know the length of the boards (or the average length) you can use the formula BoardFt = T x W X L/12 where T and W are in inches, L in ft.

I can imagine several ways to estimate closely, I might solve for T to get approx thickness (stack height without stickers). Be sure to add estimated spacing between boards in W. Then figure the number of layers and add the sticker thickness for each layer, then add the height of the foundation.

Or calculate the solid volume of 1000 bd ft (1 bd ft is about 144 cu inches or about .0833 cu ft) and divide up the volume to get the solid stack height at given board lengths and your 4' width (with spacing accounted for) then add the stickers, etc. So 1000 bd ft is about 83 cubic ft.

Or a rougher estimate: use bd ft calculation. For example, one 8/4 board 4' wide and 10' long contains 80 board feet so 1000 bd ft would be 12.5 of these wide 10' boards, about 2' high if read my pencil scratches correctly. (Do the calc yourself) Decrease width number to allow for space between boards, increase height for stickers, etc.

There are plenty of board ft calculators on the web if needed, like https://www.omnicalculator.com/construction/board-foot

[John TenEyck]

Actually, you can easily kiln dry lumber yourself. Go to the Sawmill forum and read my recent posts. I at least partially air dry lumber first, shooting for 30% or less, and then load 500 BF at a time into a very simple insulated box that cost less than $500 and uses a dehumidifier, fan, and oil filled radiator. It dries 5/4 lumber from 25% to 7% in two weeks, and sterilizes it, for about $50 per load.

There is nothing wrong with air drying lumber. People have been doing it for thousands of years. There are plenty of publications on how and where to set up drying racks. Air drying doesn't take as long as most people think, at least not in the NE. 4/4 lumber will be AD where I am in 3 to 4 months if I cut it in the Spring. I just cut some 5/4 cherry in mid September. I checked it earlier this week and it was 20% MC, using the oven dry method. It's now in my kiln for final drying.

John

[Zachary Hoyt]

I stack lumber on 45" stickers, and 98% of the 4/4 I cut is 8' long, so I figure about 30 board feet per layer if it's square cut and tightly stacked. I don't leave any gap between boards on one layer, I just stack it like it was one very wide board and it seems to do just fine. I can only go about 5 feet high before bumping into the bottom of the rafters at the lower edges of the loft, so I can get up to about 30 layers, with stickers. Thus in theory I can get 900 board feet on one stack, but it's usually less since there's some live edge pieces here and there, and some layers have gaps depending on the board widths.

[Mark Bolton]

A kiln is simple. a cargo container painted black with some venting.Leave it in the full sun for a few weeks when it predicted to be 110 degrees or more outside. Throw some blankets on it at sundown. It should be over 160 degrees inside for hours each day.
Bill D

Lol... thats a good one. Heh... good recipe for basically nothing more than air dried wood. The material wil never reach the kill zone and will basically be nothing more than very air-dried. The bonus will be relieving the case hardening every evening and cloudy days as the container cools and moisture condenses back on the surface of the material but it will never be "dry".

[Mark Bolton]

Lots of good advice here! We get a few 100 degree days, but never 110, and just the way my property is situated, no one spot gets more than a few hours of sun. I'm basically on top of a mountain, nothing but steep slope all around me. Which leads to.....I have a few options for where to stack this stuff:


Lean-to on the side of my shop. Plenty of room, tall and wide. Doesn't get one minute of sun all year long, moss had replaced the grass near by. Roof hangs over the "frame" by 2 feet on all 3 sides.
Under my second story deck. 100% dry, won't ever see a rain drop even during a windy thunderstorm. Problem is will get 2-4 hours of "morning" sun on the side of the stack facing east.
Built a shed/stacky thingy on the west side of my driveway. 2 hours of mid-day sun per day, again, only on one side of stack, but the best air flow location.
Car port attached to cabin. 3-5 hours of mid-day sun on tin roof, but not direct sun, cherry and maple tree kinda in the way. But I have to find where to store the firewood.....


My thoughts are with the existing lean to next to shop, because there's no sun excessively heating one side of the stack. Humidity in my neck of the woods is pretty bad in the summer, soon as I open the shop doors I'm drenched. Thanks for all the replies, at this time, a kiln of any type just isn't feasible.


All the math is out there and phenomenal points already in the post... Key overview to me would be:

1. Even with your free time you will not save any money over purchasing material though you will undoubtedly be left with some juicy bits and pieces.
2. You will have massive amounts of degrade and had better take care with regards to end coating and your stacking/drying.
3. The 1 year/inch is bunk with regards to 4/4 material. It will likely lose all the moisture its ever going to lose stickered outdoors for 6-8 months. Beyond that (with normal lightly covered stickering) your fighting for tenths of a percent.
4. Shipping the material to a kiln as opposed to building your own make the most sense. Building a kiln (with heat source to hit sustained kill temps) is a waste of time.
5. Your best bet is to have at the juiciest material in the lot. Red Oak to me is junk. I can buy green for $400/MBF green and not much more KD FAS (perhaps $1000/MBF). There will be more work in the Red Oak than its worth unless its all quarter sawn. Similar with the White Oak but rift is in the mix. Go after your highest dollar grades. No flat sawn (other than Walnut and Cherry). Dump all the Cherry that isnt big, or gnarly. You need large logs in Cherry and Walnut to get any yield but chop up the small walnut and dry it slowly and sell it for turning blanks. Small Walnut logs (ton's of sap) have little value flat sawn in 4/4. More work than its worth.
6. Dont get carried away and take a bunch you can use for a few years and dont try to capitalize on the whole lot because again, other than any figured/funky stuff you land on your going to be into some spendy wood by the time your done handling, processing, dealing with all the waste and degrade..

Just my 0.02

[Mark Bolton]

There is nothing wrong with air drying lumber. People have been doing it for thousands of years.

Thats true other than for the fact that for the thousands of years it was done effectively the material went from an open air/unconditioned workshop into an open air/unconditioned final destination (home) so pretty much the manufacture and final destination were at equilibrium by default. Thats not the case any longer with modern HVAC, windows, doors, and the like.

[Justin Rapp]

I dry wood all the time. Not to that mass of quantity but I dry it pretty often. I typically stick and stack it in my basement and fan it. If I had more room i'd build a 'kiln' but i just don't have the space for it.

[Frank Pratt]

A kiln is simple. a cargo container painted black with some venting.Leave it in the full sun for a few weeks when it predicted to be 110 degrees or more outside. Throw some blankets on it at sundown. It should be over 160 degrees inside for hours each day.
Bill D

I've heard of some off the wall ideas, but this one really takes the cake. I can just imagine how fun it would be to cover/uncover a sea-can twice a day for months on end. I don't know a lot about drying wood, but it's my understanding that for kiln drying, wild swings in temperature are not desirable. Even with the nicest, fluffiest down filled quilts, there will be drastic temperature changes.

[John TenEyck]

Thats true other than for the fact that for the thousands of years it was done effectively the material went from an open air/unconditioned workshop into an open air/unconditioned final destination (home) so pretty much the manufacture and final destination were at equilibrium by default. Thats not the case any longer with modern HVAC, windows, doors, and the like.

Mark, you took that out of context. I said there's nothing wrong with air drying wood after which I put it in my kiln where it dries to 8% mc and then gets sterilized. It's not hard to do, and at low cost and with good control.

John

[John TenEyck]

All the math is out there and phenomenal points already in the post... Key overview to me would be:

1. Even with your free time you will not save any money over purchasing material though you will undoubtedly be left with some juicy bits and pieces.
2. You will have massive amounts of degrade and had better take care with regards to end coating and your stacking/drying.
3. The 1 year/inch is bunk with regards to 4/4 material. It will likely lose all the moisture its ever going to lose stickered outdoors for 6-8 months. Beyond that (with normal lightly covered stickering) your fighting for tenths of a percent.
4. Shipping the material to a kiln as opposed to building your own make the most sense. Building a kiln (with heat source to hit sustained kill temps) is a waste of time.
5. Your best bet is to have at the juiciest material in the lot. Red Oak to me is junk. I can buy green for $400/MBF green and not much more KD FAS (perhaps $1000/MBF). There will be more work in the Red Oak than its worth unless its all quarter sawn. Similar with the White Oak but rift is in the mix. Go after your highest dollar grades. No flat sawn (other than Walnut and Cherry). Dump all the Cherry that isnt big, or gnarly. You need large logs in Cherry and Walnut to get any yield but chop up the small walnut and dry it slowly and sell it for turning blanks. Small Walnut logs (ton's of sap) have little value flat sawn in 4/4. More work than its worth.
6. Dont get carried away and take a bunch you can use for a few years and dont try to capitalize on the whole lot because again, other than any figured/funky stuff you land on your going to be into some spendy wood by the time your done handling, processing, dealing with all the waste and degrade..

Just my 0.02

That is not true. I modified my solar drier for Winter use and it easily dries partially AD wood to 6 - 8% MC with excellent control and at low cost. You could build the same type of insulated box I have anywhere, the solar kiln isn't needed. For less than $500 investment I can dry 500 BF of hardwood at 25% MC in 2 weeks for less than $50 in power. At the end of the drying cycle I raise the temp. from 130 to 140F for 24 hours to sterilize it. The kiln uses simple, low cost equipment, with digital controllers, and requires less than 1000 W of power. Good insulation is the key It wasn't hard to build and it works. See the link for further details.


https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?286955-Extending-the-Season-of-my-Solar-Kiln

My friend uses an insulated refrigeration trailer with an electric mobile home furnace and dehumidifier to dry 1500 BF per load. It's all very doable at low cost and with good control.

John

[Mark Bolton]

That is not true.John

Concede to your point absolutely that its possible. The conversation then moves to is it "profitable" (which undoubtedly includes a rough calculation for the cost of your time).

As you know, I come from a past of owning a large lot of timber (115 acres with miles more adjacent to pull from as if it were my own) and owning a small manual mill and kiln.

"Profitability" in these context's are tough to land on. Sounds like the OP is looking at processing far more material than they would personally use which means the viability of the endeavor is left to the local demand on the open market which was my point of quantify the true cost. If you have access to a local bunch that will pay the rate of the small production thats a no brainer which was why I said focus on the prime grade. Flat sawn material is a market your never going to hold water in.

I cant turn the key on a 4wd tractor, chains, chainsaw, skidding out a saw log at a time, sawing, cleaning up slabs, stickering, moving to a small kiln, edging, planing, for what I can buy material for UNLESS its primo/oddball material.

That was the point.

[John TenEyck]

From a commercial standpoint you are right. Volume almost always wins. But I interpreted the OP's questions to relate to being a hobbiest, as am I, mostly, and when you don't put a $ value on your time sawing and drying your own wood is a huge cost savings (basically don't buy lumber anymore) and can even pay off your investment in mill and kiln if you sell some. Paradoxically, slabs with knots and defects easily sell for more than all but the best cuts/species of domestic lumber, and those logs are easy to come by. What I used to think of as firewood now has value. I still get some near veneer quality logs now and then, and I mill those for me and my friends.

John

[Alex Zeller]

My neighbor who does woodworking for a living buys wood by the truckload, I don't. He has more than a 1000 bf of hardwood just laying around from jobs that he's finished. Most of my spare wood is stuff that came from my property (cherry and maple) that has only seen air drying. It's probably 10 years since it was milled and the moisture is right about 10%. For the first year it was outside where I had to make sure to kill anything that wanted to bore holes into it. After that I moved it into a barn out of the way. At $.12 a board foot it's by far and away the cheapest wood (other than free stuff given to me) I have ever bought. Of course I had to cut the trees down, move them down to a landing where the mill was, get them into a position where the mill could load them, take the boards off the mill, stack them onto a trailer so I could move them to where they would dry, stack and sticker them, move them a second time, and stack them again. If I added up all my time, I probably came out ahead. But I'm not trying to make money, I'm trying to enjoy a hobby. Part of that enjoyment is going from a tree to lumber to a finished project. It's much easier to just walk into a store, pick out a board that meets your requirement, and plunk down the cash.

[Jim Matthews]

Late to the party, forgive me if I repeat something mentioned above.

Getting stash from the local slash pile keeps usable lumber out of the landfill (or open burn).

Getting a local sawyer to cut your lumber means you may specify Quartersawn, for greatest stability and maximize potential figure in Oak.

Quartersawn lumber tolerates mishandling from the inexperienced. It still needs proper support and stickering to avoid twist.

Your real challenge will be keeping the pile low enough to shift by hand. Anything higher than your chest, you should have assistance. No sense trading hospital bills for lumberyard fees.

Who cares if it's cost effective?

That's the lowest motivation most of us have for pursuit of this hobby. Have at it, keep us posted and send us pictures.