Full track and band sawmills, brand comparisons, and buying guides.
This table lines up the published specs of 45 portable band sawmills and 15 chainsaw mills from 14 brands, so you can compare them in one place instead of opening a dozen tabs. Pick a brand, type in the biggest log you need to cut, or tap any column to sort by it. Every number ... Read more
How to season, measure, price, and sell firewood made from sawmill slabs and scraps, plus the equipment that makes it easier and where to find buyers.
If you just milled a slab with a chainsaw mill or a portable sawmill, it is not flat, no matter how careful the cut was. Chain deflection, bar flex, and the wood's own internal stress all pull a freshly cut slab slightly out of true, and drying pulls it further out of true after that. ... Read more
Spalted wood is lumber a fungus got into before you did, and that's exactly why it sells for two to five dollars a board foot (a lumber volume unit: 12 by 12 by 1 inch) instead of the price of firewood. The dark zone lines and pale blotches are a fungal signature, not a flaw, ... Read more
Quarter sawn vs plain sawn vs rift sawn from the sawyer side: USDA movement numbers, where quarter sawn grain hides in every log, and three ways to saw it.
Cut a log and the clock starts. End grain loses moisture many times faster than the rest of the log, and within hours that uneven drying begins pulling the wood apart from the outside in. An end grain sealer for logs slows that moisture loss at the cut ends so the whole log dries at ... Read more
Powder post beetles in lumber usually show up the same way: you walk out to a stack of oak you sawed last spring and find little piles of flour-fine dust on the boards below. Each pile sits under a hole about the size of a pencil lead. The larvae have been eating the sapwood from ... Read more
Lumber statistics tend to fall into two camps: market numbers that go stale fast, and drying rules of thumb with no source behind them. Price headlines from 2021 still circulate, and so does the idea that lumber air dries at one year per inch. This page collects the lumber, sawmill and wood drying numbers that ... Read more
If you mill your own lumber, air drying (letting lumber dry slowly outdoors in a stacked pile) gets you most of the way to usable wood, but it has a ceiling. A DIY lumber kiln closes the gap between air-dried lumber sitting at 15 to 20 percent moisture content (how much water is in the ... Read more
Fresh off the mill, a stack of green lumber is heavier, wetter, and less predictable than anything you buy at a lumberyard. Lean it against a wall or pile it on the shop floor and it cups, twists, and picks up moisture unevenly as it dries. The best lumber storage rack for milled lumber fixes ... Read more