This post is intended as the start of a series to post to mill wood in various ways. Many farmers, woodworkers, DIY, builders have trouble with the prices and quality for lumber in the west.
You can find almost anywhere wood even in the suburbs of a big city. It can be done by hand with cheaps tools. Common tools are chainsaws, table saw, horizontal bandsaws, chainsaws with guide, ax & other hand tools,
**What I do:**
I go to the forest and cut almost exclusively pine trees with a chainsaw. As I live in Poland. Those trees tend to be quite straight and not too thick or heavy. Perfect for a solid old table saw with a thick sawblade. The Thick sawblade is needed as you push a round unstable log through the blade. A thin blade will bent.
This saw table has 14 horsepower and a blade of 50cm. This homemade machine costs me only 250 euros. The biggest issue with a sawblade is that you can only use half of it and thus the max cut is 25cm. Perfect for pine.
**Step 2:**
I welded a guide so your first cut will be 2.5cm thick. Mostly bark and gets thrown away. You do this for each side and you end up with a beam like on the picture. They are only ''eyeball'' straight.
**Step 3:**
The rough beams now go over a homemade jointer that is designed to make 1 side flat and 90 degrees square with the next side. A jointer is basically a spinning knives that sticks out 1 mm above a steel plate. Imagine a banana sliding over this table it will only be cut on the beginning and the end.
Repeat the process and you get a straight but short banana.
The Final result is below its not 100% square, but you can perfectly build a house or a garage with it.
**Examples of what you can build with the wood this way;**
