… well, approximately, more or less.
Yesterday in the afternoon, we went to a local Amish sawmill. We intend to build our own tables, entertainment center, computer desk, and maybe our bedroom set. So we went to the mill to see what they had and what it cost and how long it’d be until we could work it.
Our first thought was poplar - it’s easy to work and it’s a neutral enough color that it takes stains beautifully. I’ve never done any real furniture making, so I didn’t want to risk ruining good hardwood, and poplar is softer, tho not as soft as pine. Well, they didn’t have furniture grade poplar - they just had rough planks for barns.
We asked about cherry, but we were second in line, and the first guy bought all the cherry they had in the pile. Oh well. So Melvin took us to one of the other sheds and showed us a stack of black walnut. It had been sitting for a year, so it was pretty much ready to use. (We’ll get a moisture meter just to be sure.) It was more expensive than cherry, but our piano is walnut, and it’s beautiful, so I figured we’d be spending about $900 on walnut.
Today, we went back with our trailer to get 500 board feet of walnut. Melvin was busy, but he sent Aaron to help us out. Melvin also had said the if we take run of the mill rather than picking and choosing our boards, he’d give us a deal. So we agreed. After grabbing a few walnut boards and loading them on the trailer, my husband and Aaron noticed that the balance of the stack was cherry - and beautiful cherry at that! So they loaded all of that on the trailer - about 300 board feet by Aaron’s reckoning. They finished loading for a total of 200 board feet of walnut, and we went to pay.
Final tab - $1/ft for cherry and $1.50/ft for walnut. Total, including tax - $630! Woohoo!
We brought it home and stacked it in the garage where my van goes. We need to get a bunch of sticks and clear out the end of the garage so we can stack our wood properly so it gets air. That’ll probably happen over the course of the week. Then, after my sweetie is all recovered from his surgery, provided the wood is properly dry (it’s been sitting for a year, so I expect it’s good) we’ll start making our furniture. He wants to make a tall, narrow chest of drawers for our bedroom to sit between the closets. I want a coffee table for the family room. We shall see what is done first.
After all these years of watching Norm on the New Yankee Workshop, I’ll finally make some chips! We’ve got a planer, a jointer, a band saw, a table saw, a floor drill press, plus a table top drill press that’s going to become our mortiser, and tomorrow, we’re going to get a radial arm saw that used to be my dad’s - my sister offered it to us since it’s in their way. We’ve also got a dove tail jig, a bunch of clamps, an air compressor to run our brad nailer and pneumatic tools, and tons of other stuff. According to my husband, we’ll have enough as soon as Norm comes to borrow tools from us. 
So, who thinks a woman covered in sawdust is hot?? 
