Mill Your Own Trees Into Lumber

Set Expectations First

Milling your own trees is not free lumber. You trade a truck and a tipping fee for sawing time, stacking time and a year or more of patience while the wood dries. Done right, you end up with boards nobody else has, cut from the lot your house sits on.

Done wrong, you end up with a pile of grey, twisted boards behind the shed. The difference is mostly in picking the logs and stacking the lumber, not in the sawing.

Which Logs Are Worth Milling

The NNRG Portable Milling Reference Guide puts the floor at about 8 inches: logs smaller than that usually are not worth milling unless the species is valuable. It also says logs shorter than 8 feet take much longer to saw for what you get. That matches our experience.

The Metal Problem in Yard Trees

Trees grow around everything. Woodland Mills lists fence wire, nails, fence posts, barbed wire, bullets and even horseshoes pulled out of logs, often with no sign on the outside. One nail can strip the teeth off a new blade.

NNRG recommends checking urban and salvaged logs with a proper metal detector and rejecting logs riddled with metal. Steel also leaves black stain in the wood. On a rural lot, the trees along old fence lines and the big tree by the original farmhouse are the usual suspects.

1. Tell us about any old fences, clotheslines, tree stands or signs on the lot.
2. We look and check the log before it goes on the mill.
3. Butt logs from fence-line trees may get cut off and set aside.
4. If we hit metal, we stop, dig it out, and you get a good story for the mantel.

What You Can Build With It

One caution on structure. Lumber that holds up a roof or a floor normally has to be graded. NNRG notes structural lumber must be graded by an approved agency or meet local rules. In Ontario, ask your building department before you plan to frame with ungraded boards off your own mill. Decorative beams, siding and trim are a different story.

How Long the Lumber Needs to Dry

The old rule of thumb is one year of air drying per inch of thickness. Use it as a minimum, not a promise. Lost Art Press points out that drying time grows faster than thickness, so a 2 inch board takes much more than twice as long as a 1 inch board. Big beams are often put up green and allowed to check and move in place.

NNRG’s stacking advice is worth following to the letter:

1. Stack hardwoods within days of milling, not weeks. Some species start to stain and rot fast.
2. Put stickers 12 to 18 inches apart, all lined up vertically, all the same thickness.
3. Keep the pile off the ground, covered on top, with air moving through the sides.
4. Seal the board ends soon after sawing to slow end checking.
5. Check moisture with a meter before the wood goes inside. NNRG puts air-dried lumber at 12 to 18 percent, which is fine for a shed and too wet for fine trim in a heated house.

That timeline is why milling works best when you plan it at the clearing stage. Logs cut the winter you clear can be dry trim by the time the house needs it.

What It Saves Versus Hauling

Every log that goes on the mill is a log that does not go on a truck, and it does not have to be chipped, tipped or burned. On a heavily treed lot, that is a real chunk of the clearing cost staying on your property as lumber instead.

We do not publish a per-board-foot rate. Milling is priced per job, based on how many logs, how big, how they are sorted, and whether we are already on site clearing. The best value is milling a sorted log pile during the same visit as the clearing.

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