Originally Posted by
Ryan Baker
Making and drying boards for one tree is not very feasible (economically or otherwise) unless you own a sawmill yourself (and not really even then). The best thing you could do with it is sell it to turners. Take your profits from that and buy kiln dried walnut boards if that is what you want. You will come out ahead in the long run.
Ryan, I have to disagree with your theory. Last summer, I had the opportunity to have a walnut tree milled into lumber. It was actually two trees that had been cut down on the school grounds where my wife worked in the business office. It cost me a total of around $400 to get the trees from log form to lumber form. That is including the sawyer fee, some supplies for stacking and end waxing and paying two helpers for the process. After calculating how much board feet I had, I ended up with Around $1,400.00 worth of nice walnut lumber. A nice $1,000.00 difference. I would say that that is significant.
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