The cheapest way to buy lumber is green and rough cut from a sawmill in your area. However if you purchase the lumber while it is still fresh means it can't be used for a while. The only alternative will be by purchasing dried lumbers from home improvement shops , that is if you have a lot of money but personally I'd like mine rough cut and prepared by me.
After you have planned everything from the project to your desired materials it is now time to make a purchase. 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. Green lumbers shrink when it is dried up so you might want to get something that is a little bit over sized.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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After bringing the green lumber home you will then need to dry it. One of the ways to dry your green lumber is by piling the lumbers under the sun but making sure that it is protected from the rain you have to also make sure that every layer is 12"-24" apart 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. After a year you can bring the umber inside your shop to continue the process since it still has 12%-18% moisture.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.
The other method of drying is to build a solar kiln. Plans for solar kilns can be found on the internet. These kilns can be built for only a couple hundred dollars. You can place your green lumber inside the kiln to begin drying. To dry the lumbers you need to leave it inside the kiln for approximately 1-2 months for it to be ready for use. However it will often times depend on your location, the season and etc.
After your lumber is dried you can begin processing it. The very first thing you should do is joint one area of your plank. This can be accomplished manually with a hand plane or perhaps the quick method by using a jointer. It makes things a lot easier if you cut the board down to a length close to your final needed length. And in order for you to have a uniform thickness you may now run through a thickness planer. This process will make the board equal in thickness. As soon as you plane the plank down to the final dimension, afterwards you joint one edge perhaps by yourself or by way of a jointer. As soon as the board is planed you can now cut it to the final width. You can use any kind of saw to do this. To set your board to the desired width you can used the edge of the board as guide. You now have a board almost ready for your project, just cut the final length needed and build your project. Cutting your own board from scratch surely saves you a lot of money

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