What It Costs to Mill Your Own Logs

A tree came down in your yard, and you would like to turn it into lumber instead of firewood. Here is how milling is priced at our shop, what else you will pay for before the wood is ready to use, and what to think through before you load the trailer.

Before you do anything else, run your logs through the checklist at the end of this article. Most of the problems we see could have been caught before the logs left the yard.

How milling is priced

We charge for the time your logs spend on the mill. We do not charge by the board foot.

• Standard mill: $150 an hour, for logs up to 30 inches across.
• Large-log mill: $200 an hour, for logs over 30 inches and up to 54.
• Minimum: one hour on each mill. The time for the whole job is added up and rounded up to the next half hour.
• Blade damage: $50 for each blade ruined by metal in a log, or $75 on the large-log mill.

Here is a yardstick. One straight log, 24 inches across and 10 feet long, cut into 2-inch live edge slabs, takes about an hour. That is $150 for roughly 250 board feet of lumber.

Any number you get before the job is an estimate. The bill is for the actual time on the mill, so it can come out a little higher or lower.

What your logs will yield

Lumber is measured in board feet. One board foot is a piece 12 inches wide, 12 inches long and 1 inch thick.

The width of the log matters far more than most people expect. A log 24 inches across holds about six times the lumber of a 12-inch log of the same length.

To size up your own logs, measure two things:

• Diameter: across the small end of the log, inside the bark.
• Length: the full length of the log in feet.

A close guess is fine. We use a standard log rule, the Doyle scale, to turn those two numbers into board feet. It runs a little low on small logs, and a crooked, hollow or rotten log will give less than the scale says.

What makes a job cost more or less

Two jobs with the same amount of wood can take very different amounts of time. These are the things that move the price:

• How thick you cut it. Thinner boards mean more passes through the log. Cutting a log into 1-inch boards takes about half again as much sawing as cutting it into 2-inch slabs.
• Live edge or square edge. Live edge slabs are the fastest cut we make. Dimensional lumber takes about 25% longer, because the log has to be turned and the boards edged.
• The size of the logs. Every log takes about 15 minutes to load and handle, however small it is. A few big logs mill faster than a pile of small ones.
• Logs over 30 inches. They go on the large-log mill, which costs more per hour and cuts more slowly.
• The shape of the logs. Crooked logs, crotches and odd shapes all take longer than a straight log.
• Two cuts from one log. We can cut part of a log one way and the rest another. The whole log is priced at the slower cut.

Here is what milling alone comes to on six jobs, with the lumber taken home afterward.

A single small log hits the one-hour minimum, so it costs the most per board foot. Good-sized logs cut into slabs come in well under a dollar.

The costs after milling

Fresh-sawn lumber is wet, and milling is often the smallest bill of the project. What comes next depends on what you are building.

• Construction and outdoor lumber (framing, fence posts, barns, trailer decks) can usually be used green or air dried. It does not need a kiln.
• Furniture, table tops and mantles need to be air dried and then kiln dried, whether we do it or someone else does. Our article Is Kiln Drying Your Lumber Worth It? explains why.

After milling you have three choices:

1. Take it home. There is no charge beyond the milling. If you want it stacked on stickers to take with you, that is $50 for every 500 board feet. You can air dry it on your own property and bring it back for kiln drying later. This is the cheapest route, because our storage space is limited and we have to charge for it.
2. Air dry it with us. Stacking and stickering is free when the lumber stays here. Storage is $75 a month for a stack up to 4 feet wide, 8 feet long and 4 feet tall. Longer lumber takes more floor and costs more in proportion.
3. Air dry, then kiln dry with us. You pick up lumber that is ready to build with. The kiln is priced by the space your lumber takes: $1,500 a week for a full kiln, with a $150 a week minimum.

The chart shows all three on the same job: three walnut logs, 20 inches across and 10 feet long, cut into 2-inch live edge slabs.

How long it takes

This is the part people most often do not expect. Milling takes a day. Drying takes months.

For furniture, plan on 6 to 12 months from the day the logs are milled to the day the lumber is ready to use. Mantles and beams take about 3 months. Thick slabs of dense wood like white oak are at the long end.

One more thing to know: we mill pine, but we do not kiln dry it. The sap and resin damage the kiln.

Planning the cut for your project

Make sure there is enough wood. A dining table top takes about 50 board feet of finished lumber, and you should start with about double that to allow for drying, trimming and defects. Logs under 18 inches across make narrow boards, so the top becomes a lot of pieces glued together.

Make sure the logs are long enough. You lose at least 12 inches of length from every log. A 6-foot table needs logs 7 to 8 feet long.

Cut it thick enough for its width. Wide, thin boards cup and crack as they dry. This is the widest board or slab we recommend at each thickness:

For table tops we recommend at least 1¼ inches rough, and 2 inches for a table longer than 6 feet.

Cut it bigger than you need. Rough lumber shrinks as it dries and gets smaller again when it is planed flat. Ask for up to 10% over your finished size. A board cut 1¼ inches by 6 inches can easily finish at 1 inch by 5½.

Some cuts need a custom quote. Tree cookies, stumps, quarter sawing, thin veneers and timbers over 8 inches thick take more setup, so we price those one at a time.

Is it worth it?

Add up the whole project, then compare it with buying the same wood ready to use.

Take the three walnut logs from the chart above. They give about 480 board feet of 2-inch slabs.

Milling alone is $375, or 78 cents a board foot. With six months of air drying here it comes to $939. With kiln drying as well it is $1,894, or $3.95 a board foot.

At the time of writing, kiln-dried 2-inch walnut on our rack is $13.75 a board foot. Even after you allow for the boards that crack or warp, milling your own walnut is a clear win.

Now run the same job with poplar. Kiln-dried 2-inch poplar sells for about $4 a board foot, and the full service comes to about the same. You would do all that waiting to break even.

Small jobs are where the cost surprises people. Two logs 14 inches across and 8 feet long give about 100 board feet. Cut into 1¼-inch boards, the milling is the one-hour minimum, $150. Add four months of storage and a kiln run, and both of those hit their minimums too. The total is about $750, or $7.50 a board foot.

A few ways to keep the cost down:

• Bring several logs at once, so the minimums are spread over more lumber.
• Air dry the lumber at home and bring it back for the kiln.
• Choose thicker cuts and live edge slabs where the project allows it.
• Leave out logs that are small, crooked or already going soft.

Remember that the wood is only free if you do not count getting the tree down, hauling the logs and waiting most of a year.

When the tree means something

Sometimes the math is not the point. If the tree came from your family's land, no lumber yard sells that wood. That is a good reason to mill one or two ordinary logs. Go in knowing the full number, and decide what the wood is worth to you.

Before you book: is your log worth milling?

These are the problems we see most often. Check every log against this list before you load the trailer.

1. Is it big enough? A log has to be at least 12 inches across at the small end and at least 4 feet long, or we cannot hold it safely on the mill. For furniture, bigger is better. Small logs give narrow boards and very little lumber.

2. Is it straight? Curved, twisted and forked logs are hard to saw and do not make good lumber for furniture. The boards come out short and uneven, and they are more likely to warp.

3. Is it still sound? Logs left on the ground for six months or more are often soft and rotten. Get them milled soon after the tree comes down. If the wood at the ends is already soft, the log is probably too far gone.

4. Could there be metal in it? Yard and fence-line trees often hide nails, wire, hooks and old hardware, and you cannot always tell. In some species, a black stain on the end of the log is a sign of metal inside. We can check with a metal detector, but it only reads about 2 inches into the wood. It will not find metal buried deep in a large log.

Hidden metal is a risk you take on when you have a log milled. Every blade it ruins is added to your bill. In the worst case, we cannot cut through it and the log cannot be used.

5. Is it the right wood for the project? Pine, cedar, cypress and poplar are soft. They dent and ding easily, so we do not recommend them for a dining table or any top that gets daily use. They are a good fit for construction lumber, shelving and rustic pieces.

Next steps

When your logs pass the checklist, go to our sawmilling services page and fill out the step-by-step guide. It asks what you want to build and how big your logs are, gives you an estimate, and then lets you book a time to drop them off.

Questions first? Call us at 864-468-9663.

Keep reading:

• Is Kiln Drying Your Lumber Worth It?
• From Tree to Table: How M2 Furniture Transforms Local Trees