The TRUTH about buying from a SAWMILL

i'm here to find some lumber for an upcoming project and help you navigate the complicated and sometimes confusing world of buying wood oh you might be wondering who this is meet my buddy matt morgan the owner and operator of m2 lumber in lauren south carolina located on his personal property there are two separate kilns a fully outfitted wood chop lots of lumber a sawmill to cut said lumber and a big ass tractor that he's going to let me drive not a chance before we take a look at what matt has in stock let's talk about one of the biggest concerns you should have when purchasing from a smaller operation and that's being sold wood that hasn't been properly dried there are two main reasons why we kill dried wood one should be obvious and that's to get it dry wet wood aka green wood is full of moisture a tree is often times over 50 percent moisture when it's harvested and this means that a 5 000 pound law can have about a ton of water trapped inside when the moisture leaves the wood cells shrink causing movement and you don't want this to happen after you build something second reason why we kill and dry wood and often overlooked is bugs all trees have insects living inside them even if you can't see them some of them are really small and when we cut down their home some will find a new place to live and others will move in the real estate market is very fierce right now for bugs sure is so the only way to evict those little boogers is to crank up the heat generally about 135 degrees steady state temperature for one hour that does the trick so the most common mistake that we see people make when they're sourcing wood from a local sawmill is not making sure that it's been properly kiln dried now as the sawmill and the provider of lumber myself it's my responsibility to make sure i can convince you of that so don't be afraid to ask for moisture content and even ask them to prove it in front of you wood moisture leaves from the surface of the wood and the end grain as you can see in these graphs behind me most readily so if someone has a cheap moisture meter like this one which only has quarter inch deep probes on it and they're checking the moisture close to the surface you're going to get a very good reading same as if you do it from the end grain however there is moisture still trapped down inside so this here is our dome horst j2000 moisture meter hey that thing got a hammy it has species and temperature compensation and most importantly as you can see we have two inch thick probes in here which measure down to the center of the wood when i check the moisture with this i have a 14 reading now determining how much is too much moisture is really going to depend on the environment that you live in generally emc or equilibrium moisture content isn't going to be over 12 for most of the united states so you want to be below that however if you live in a very dry environment like in the desert arizona you're gonna be much lower closer to five or six percent so keep that in mind when buying your wood now there are instances when you don't have any choice but to buy green wood and there are chemicals you can spray on the surface of your lumber that do a decent job of killing bugs however the major downside for green wood is the time it takes something to air dry versus kiln dry the general rule is one year per one inch of thickness if you've seen my table building video that was all purchased as green lumber i fell in love with those boards and it's not an easy species to find so i was willing to wait almost two years for them to dry so make sure you're factoring dry time and having a place to properly sticker and stack your lumber that's right and speaking of sticking and stacking make sure if you go somewhere that your boards are stickered properly like we have here it allows for proper airflow and you got to think of wet wood like a giant spaghetti noodle any surface you laid on any imperfection that's the form it's going to take so stickering your wood is very important all right i got to know i've always wanted this why is it called a sticker i have no idea there you go it's critical you understand how and why lumber is priced especially when you're visiting a smaller operation that might not be giving you the best deal all dimensional lumber is sold by a measurement known as board feet it sounds intimidating but it's actually very easy think of board feet as a measure of volume length times width times thickness if you've never purchased hardwood the vernacular used to denote a board's thickness can also throw you for a loop everything is done in quarters of an inch so a one inch board is never referred to as one inch it's known as four quarter and the most common sizes that you'll find at a sawmill are four quarter six quarter which is an inch and a half and eight quarter which is two inches board foot pricing on lumber will vary due to a couple of factors first is the species of the wood the higher the demand and the lower the supply the more expensive the boar foot price could be second is the thickness of the lumber eight quarter lumber takes two to three times longer to dry than four quarter lumber and drying cost is the most expensive part of the lumber production process lastly it's the type of cut some sawmills will apply a surcharge for special cuts of lumber either quarter-sawn or rifson and we'll talk more about that later now a lot of smaller startup operations only have a sawmill and no kiln they're generally a dime a dozen on facebook marketplace if you take a look if their prices for green lumber are nearly the same as kiln-dried lumber prices in your area sorry but you're getting ripped off hi john from the future here i realized we missed an important point on this topic you might be asking yourself how do i even know what a fair price is it's a difficult question to answer because like matt said my price for walnut in the southeast where it's plentiful will be much cheaper than in the southwest where it doesn't even grow but a good place to start for a baseline dollar amount is your local hardwood dealer if you don't have one nearby check out facebook woodworking groups or even reddit to find out what people are paying in your area for kiln-dried lumber if the sawmill you're visiting is charging 15 to 20 more than what you found from asking around that's your insanity i'm out and since i know we're going to be asked in the comments section if you're wondering where you can find these awesome t-shirts that we're wearing there's a link in the description below to my etsy and all of matt's social media but if you want to choose one shirt or the other please go with mine great news for your viewing enjoyment matt has agreed to let me mill up this beautiful white oak log bad news is i've never used a sawmill before so probably not the safest thing in the world what's the worst thing that could happen i'll tell you what is the safest thing in the world the sponsor of today's video surfsharkvpn when i decided to start taking sponsors i told myself i'd only talk about products i believe in so why vpns are more specifically surf shark because they protect all of your privacy online control your personal data and as a cherry on top allow access to websites or movie catalogs that might have been blocked in your location i travel a lot for my actual job and i'm generally on a plane two to three times a month that means i'm on a lot of public wi-fi the history and future of lincoln street woodworks lives on this computer and i would actually lose sleep at night worrying about keeping all that safe but since i started using surfshark all my devices including my iphone and ipad are protected sur shark is able to encrypt all my data and keep me safe by utilizing 3200 different servers from 65 countries like i said earlier being able to access additional movies on netflix live streams or even cheaper deals on travel that would have otherwise been blocked make surf shark that much better if you want the same peace of mind i have use the qr code on the screen or follow the link in the description and use promo code lincoln when you purchase a 24 month plan surfshark is offering three months free and antivirus protection seriously it's a great deal and having all of your personal data stolen is way worse than getting ripped off buying wood when you're getting started or visiting a sawmill for the first time you generally are proficient in particular wood species and when to use one versus the other in fact matt told me while we were prepping for this video the most common question he and his staff get more than all the other questions combined is what type of wood should i use for my project now covering all the wood species you can buy and the pros and cons of each could be an entire video series on its own if you are interested in that let us know in the comments below but in the spirit of education here are the three things you need to consider before taking a trip to the mill so the three things that i ask a customer when they walk in is what are you building what's its intended use and what environment will it be in for example if you're going to be building an outdoor project and you want something that's going to be naturally resistant to fungal infections and insects cedar is a great choice the downside to cedar of course is that it's not very strong so i wouldn't want to use it for example for a cutting board and if you need an indoor project like a table a box actually really anything if you want to fit in on instagram walnut is a great choice now the problem with walnut is it is a horrible wood for outdoor use and because it's so popular it is really really expensive dude shut up it's my number one seller sorry alternatively if you have an outdoor project and you need something stronger than cedar white oak is a good example you could use it because it's very dense very hard and it is very naturally resistant again to fungus and insects since this is a youtube video we would be remiss if we didn't acknowledge our epoxy river table brother it's about damn time someone asked for my opinion to complete your plastic persuasion you first need to start with a slab and in my experience local sawmills are a much better resource compared to commercial hardwood dealers that primarily focus on dimensional lumber but buying a slab has its own set of nuances you need to be aware of the majority of slabs that we sell are for larger projects like table tops and bar tops when you start to get into really wide pieces it's good to pay attention to grain big slabs typically come from the center of a log and they'll have pith or close to pith grain a slab with pith or partial pith will most likely already have some cracks and this is pretty common and natural it happens when the wood shrinks and there's nothing you can do about it it's physics sorry it's not a big deal but you do need to realize that there are some steps you may need to take to stabilize it with bow ties c-channel or epoxy depending on its use other factors that can impact the price of a slab are the overall size most mills will up charge for anything more than 16 inches wide and this is for a couple different reasons logs that size are heavier harder to move and haul and cut and they're rarer to find but also they're in higher demand we also look for different growths of highly figured grains such as burl curl and spalting spalting is really pretty and it happens often in urban lumber and small sawmills larger meals can serve as a defect and typically throw it away spalting is a fungal infection of the wood which is safe and beautiful once properly kiln dried but it often has a much lower density and it will require treatment with an epoxy total total total buff baby before you put a typical oil urethane on top and finally you have the option of my personal favorite book match slabs book matching is anytime we refer to two slabs of wood that have very symmetrical grain in them you can see this more often at a smaller sawmill because we can hand select the wood and manage it through the entire process so as we're milling a log and we have two pieces that are right on top of each other within that log we can keep them together throughout the whole process we call it book matching because it looks like you've opened up a log like a book a lot of places will charge a premium for this because it is in higher demand it looks cooler and it's harder to manage so next think about getting it flat now we offer to flatten any and all slabs and tabletops in-house for an added fee but you can also try this yourself with a flattening jig just be sure to check how much warp or twist your piece has before you bring it home remember the longer and the thicker your slab is the more material you might potentially need to remove to get it flat so slabs that are 10 feet long and three inches thick are not going to stay that size after milling now all that sounds lovely but i'm not cool enough for slabs i'm on the hunt for dimensional lumber and this is where things can get a little crazy because not all boards are the same and prices can vary depending on how they're sawn from the log quarter sawn riffs on flat song what does this mean and why does it matter the terms quarter-sawn versus flat and rift are referring to the orientation of the log on the sawmill when it's cut in the corresponding grain and direction pattern that each cut yields respectively quarter-sawn boards for example yield grain which is perfectly parallel to the surface of the board the term quarter sawn comes from the fact that typically to get this yield of a log it's first cut into quarters and then milled into smaller boards the process creates more waste than flat and plain salt lumber but the grain orientation improves stability limiting the direction of movement parallel to the surface rift-sawn lumber is essentially quarter-sawn to the max quarter-sawn will typically have some grain that has slight curvature to it and riffs on should be 100 parallel to the surface it's also very labor-intensive and very wasteful making it the most expensive generally aside from sporting a local business one of the benefits i found at small sawmills is the ability to purchase multiple boards that come from one tree for a project now that might not sound like a big deal but when you're getting into building higher quality pieces consistent color and grain patterns can really up the final product all this hickory was sawn from one single tree and i don't need to worry about one piece of wood being substantially lighter or darker other considerations i'm making are the width of my boards i'm selecting my jointer is only eight inches wide so anything that measures more than eight inches is going to have a decent amount of waste fortunately matte stickers and stacks but i'm double checking for any twisted or warped boards too while i keep digging matt is going to explain the business model and how it benefits you as the end consumer so a bigger commercial hardwood dealer is essentially just a warehouse to store the final product while they wait for you to come buy it the process start to finish to get the lumber to the store is as follows a logger logs the logs a sawmill solves the logs sometimes even a kiln service will dry the lumber and then a broker buys and sells it for you to purchase because we handle the majority of those services in-house the biggest benefit to our business model is that there is less shipping and freight costs and there's no middleman all the savings get passed on to you the customer the only drawback to the lumber business model of milling local lumber is the fact that we can only mill local lumber so no there's no purple heart in the upstate of south carolina sadly but even some of the most common species we discussed earlier like ash alder cypress walnut pecan and cedar are all regional hardwoods there's not much walnut maple and ash down along the coastline just three hours away so lumber yard's main advantage is that they can have a large variety and quantity of lumber in one location also small sawmills are typically able to use more wood than larger sawmills that have extremely high operating costs and are focused on large production numbers often we can take lower grade logs that big saw mills won't take and still make them into beautiful usable lumber most large sawmills don't want to take urban lumber which makes up for billions of board feet of lumber each year which typically goes to a landfill this is why our motto is save the trees eighty percent of the logs that we mill are urban trees that would otherwise go to waste so here's the deal after coming through what matt has in stock i'm not gonna have enough of what i need for the build i'm planning i've made plenty of trips throughout the years to various mills and left empty-handed if they don't have what you need for a project don't feel obligated to buy wood is expensive wait you're not buying anything no should let me drop the tractor

Channel: Lincoln St. Woodworks

Views: 958,644

Keywords: The TRUTH about buying from a SAWMILL, sawmills, sawmill, wood buying, lumber, buying lumber, buying wood, sawmill operation, woodworking, diy, lumber prices

Id: hwlSapNkqFI

Length: 14min 13sec (853 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 22 2022