Getting your own lumber milled on the cheap

A few months ago a very large sugar maple tree on the border of my brothers backyard lost one of its major limbs, and being the good guy that he is he gave me a call to see if I wanted it.  The limb was very large and we cut it in two to move it to the mill.  Sugar maple wood is very hard and makes great furniture especially table tops and the like.  I personally love working with it, it has great character and as you will see from the pictures these logs were particularly lively on the inside.

I am sure that lots of people have had trees or parts of trees come down naturally, or by human intervention, that they would have loved to had milled up and used.  The big issue is how?   Believe it or not its can be fairly easy to find a place in your area that would most likely be happy to mill them up for you and the cost is usually very reasonable.  I took my logs to Native Lumber in Belchertown MA because I have worked with them before and like the quality of their work, and they are the only small operation I know of that has a machine that could handle these beasts.  Native lumber charges $60 an hour so the pair of logs that I took them this time around ended up costing $90 and netted me 18 beautiful slabs some upwards of 24 inches wide a,d if I was to buy comparable slabs they would be at least $250-$500 a piece! so I saved a few grand at least.  There are a few ways to find a mill in your area, best way might be to google lumber mills in your area or do a search in craigslist, both should give you some options.  Also you might want to check the phone book, if you still have one, or ask a lumber yard especially if that yard carries rough cut lumber.  I know of a guy in a town near me that has a traveling mill and will come to your land and cut the logs up for you on sight and only charges $30 an hour.  If his mill was a little bigger I probably would have used him this time but I wanted the largest lumber possible so good people of Native Lumber got my business once again.  Thankfully my brother had a bobcat to load the logs up on the trailer for me otherwise I would have been forced to use one of the traveling mills instead. 

Here is one of the logs before milling:

And here are a few shots of rough cut lumber:

And a video:

 Now What?  Well I stacked and stickered the slabs in the garage and now I have to wait at least a year until they are dry enough to work with....  That is a total drag but I have lots of other projects to work on in the mean time.