😊

I worked for a home builder in high school.....His Brothers were in the lumber business in Wadley. He got all his pine lumber from them and we built our own trusses. There's plenty of info. regarding spans, design,etc. We built a jig for each size truss and used 1/2" plywood for gusset plates. Took an air nailer and went to town.

Yes sir gotta keep my bald head in the shade !

Good deal. I've heard nothing but good from the guys I've talked to that own branson tractors.

Sure wish I had a saw mill. Got around 50 pines I need take down. Would be nice to convert to lumber vs burning.

It’s damn shame when working folk are talking about milling their own lumber while welfare folk are cashing checks and laying on their ass.

We’re in the middle of building our house right now. I sent out my building material list for quotes to like 4 different places. One came back having everything I wanted so I settled on getting it all from that one place. 2 weeks later I got a re-qoute and it went from $51k to $66k. I had everyone re-quote it again and took the best prices from each place and busted my order up and had it delivered immediately. Fortunately it worked out pretty good as it ended up just a tick over $53k. Besides stupid prices for OSB and such getting your hands on LVLs and I-Joist is crazy right now too. I’m glad we’ve moved past that part and on to other headaches.

Out of curiosity, if you mill your own ... how long do you have to dry it out before you can use for framing, etc.?

Check local codes. Some don't allow sawmill lumber in structural applications.

why would that be? Lumber is lumber, no?

There’s probably industrial standards for kiln drying. Green wood shrinkage can be significant. I wouldn’t want to build a structure with wood I wasn’t sure was dry.

Good deal. I finally started milling this week after having my mill for 9 months. Got real busy with other higher priority stuff.

A heads up on a couple of things on the LX55.

My thickness gauge is not accurate. Off by 1/4 inch. This becomes important when you get down to a 1 inch board at the bed because your blade will hit the short log stop and ruin the blade. It looks like the slots for the adjustment on the gauge do not allow the carriage bolt to go down far enough. I will drill them out a little before we mill again.

Pay attention to how the cables wrap as you raise and lower the head. I had them overlap once, and it threw off the measurement.

Other than those 2 things, it has worked well so far.

Jeremy

If they enforce/follow IBC code, all structural lumber has to be kiln dried and graded. I asked about that, and am still on hold for now on building because of the price.