Turn Reclaimed Wood Into Lumber!

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Intro: Turn Reclaimed Wood Into Lumber!

Hello! Friendly reclaimed furniture man back for round two!

I am not sure if Instructables read my last post and decided to start a "Trash to Treasure" contest to sucker me into milling more of the fence posts I used in my first post on making a Mid-Century Modern Desk. Regardless, they succeeded in getting my to write my second instructable detailing a little more on how I turned those weather worn posts into furniture.

So, without further ado, let me teach you how you can also turn reclaimed wood, whether it be firewood in your backyard or fence posts (like me) into beautiful S4S lumber! All with tools that are found in most home wood shops.

STEP 1: Evaluating Your Wood

Reclaimed wood can run the gambit of being everything from a nail studded 2x4 that more resembles a porcupine than lumber to fairly clean pieces of former framing studs.

For myself, I came across these fence posts from the 1800's via a Craigslist posting. That's original old growth redwood we're talking about! Being fence posts, that meant they were out in the weather for 5 generations and also riddled with fence staples and nails.

If your wood is reclaimed, know that you might need to spend hours pulling and chiseling out nails. If it's painted and pre-1970's, beware of lead as well!

Make sure that the value of the wood is worth the effort required to rehabilitate it. I.e. NOT pallet wood (kidding, not kidding).

STEP 2: Prepare the Wood

As I mentioned, my fence posts were riddled with old nails, rusted barbed wire, and other metal. The first step in getting them ready for processing is ol' fashion elbow grease and a metal detector.

A metal detector isn't 100% necessary, but if you are dealing with wood that is particularly thick, it definitely saved me from ruining a couple $30 saw blades.

If you are one of the few lumberjacks reading this to learn how to mill logs/firewood into lumber, I would recommend that you split a little off to create some flat surfaces as shown in the photo.

STEP 3: Jointer Jig (Table Saw)

There are many great and better documented videos on how to make jointer jigs. I am a simple man, and a novice woodworker. I prefer simple things. So while there are super customizable designs that allow you to taper legs, I found this video to the be most straight forward.

The idea is simple. You take the manufactured edge of a piece of plywood and use that as a "guaranteed" straight edge for rip cuts on your table saw. Glue/screw down another piece on top, attach some clamps, and now you can rip cut straight edges to remove curves in your wood. This is because your rip fence will be following the straight line of your plywood rather than the bumpy surface of your irregular lumber.

Note: If you are trying to cut logs into lumber, you might need to modify things depending on height. The easiest solution I have seen is to surround the log and have a spot where you can drive a screw into it to hold it steady.

STEP 4: Jointer Jig (Bandsaw)

After milling FAR too many fence posts on the table saw, I decided to purchase a bandsaw. Least this way I could make one cut instead of two on the thicker sides of the post.

For this, I decided to go with a much simpler design. I simply cut a piece of plywood 1/2" shorter than the width left of my saw blade and screwed a backboard on that baby! This design is less durable, but considering I don't plan on becoming a 1-person lumber mill, it would get me through the project.

STEP 5: Milling/Jointing

Milling is the process of making logs into lumber. Jointing is giving wood a straight, flat, edge. By using these jigs, you technically are accomplishing both! #twoinone

If you are using a table saw:

  1. Shim your piece to eliminate movement with cutting
  2. Align your piece to trim off undesired sections
  3. Cut!

If you are using a band saw:

  1. Screw piece onto sled to eliminate movement
  2. Attach/clamp fence if your saw lacks one
  3. Cut!

If you have a thicker piece and using a table saw, a square can help you align your two cuts. This is where you see having a bandsaw could be handy! As otherwise you have to spend a lot of time trying to be square and doing double the cutting!

STEP 6: Rinse and Repeat

After you make cut two edges of the lumber, you can then use those as reference edges for the third and fourth. Since they are already flat/straight, this means you don't have to use the jig's anymore!

After which, your lumber should go from that dirty post on the left to some clean S4S lumber on the right!

STEP 7: Build Some Things!

Now that you know how to clean up wood, go out there and create! Maybe look at some of my other posts. Like some endtables for an easier project or my mid century modern computer desk plans? Not that I would ever self promote or anything...

16 Comments

I kinda liked the look of those old posts. They had an almost otherworldly/tolkien vibe to them. That being said they were definitetly unusable in that condition and you turned them into usable lumber.
Thanks! Yah, they do look cool. I think it might be nice to use them as furniture legs. Though I would need to sterilize them! I had several bugs crawl out in the midst of cutting them. I kept some of the thin cut-offs maybe as a "veneer" for picture frames.
Thank you for all the advices.
Very nice outcome from all that very horrible looking wood. You mentioned about buying a bandsaw to make life easier? personally an even easier way is buy a Thickness Planer but make 100% sure there is no metal at all in the wood, or else you have to buy new blades.
Then just feed the wood through bit by bit and eventually you will get nice looking wood.
Thanks Barry! I think that is a great idea that I (hilariously) didn't consider! I even have a planer that I used for later steps. I think one problem for myself was that some of these pieces were very irregular and thick. Maybe I'll do a quick "good enough" pass with the bandsaw to lop off the high spots and then get a flat surface with the planer.
If you (hilariously) didn't consider it then you should have mentioned that in you instructable!!!!!
There are plenty of videos on YouTube that explains how to plane an uneven board using wedges and hot glue on a sacrificial board, maybe you can check them out.
Folks, Do NOT attempt this without a metal detector. I think they ARE 100% necessary. They are cheap and they work. A missed nail or piece of nail thrown by a saw can cause serious injury to you or someone nearby. I've seen it. It was not pretty.

Besides that, this is an excellent way to use an overlooked resource! Nice article.
I think Adrian is very apt here. There were many pieces of metal I missed using just my eyes. I was glad to have the metal detector! Even then I missed a couple, but luckily they were so far buried in the wood that it insulated it from being shot out.
Great idea and your re-use of good/workable stock, but for those of us without a table saw..... I’ll just have to watch from afar.
Sorry to hear that! Of course, many of the same or similar principle can be applied to with other tools. You could screw the lumber into a piece of plywood and run a circular saw down the edge. Or even prop/clamp a piece and hand cut it all the way down!
Very impressive. I think I will stick with your first recommendations on the supplies list even though this does fit in with my wife’s theory that I just like to make sawdust. How well would this work with old fence posts made of cedar or mesquite? Both are commonly used for posts where I live.
Dennis. Ha, I think our wives are aligned! I think this method would work well with any type. I am from NM where cedar was what my grandfather used to use for many of his posts on the ranch. I think the one difficulty I see is that those posts are more typically circular. You might need to drill a screw in to keep it stable while processing.
Thanks, sincerely, for posting this. I'm as guilty as the next person for over looking what's right in front me sometimes.
Very nice! I'm guilty of doing the same thing with some old oak beams I found. So much work, but it is somewhat-to-fairly satisfying in the end! ; )
It is! I don't think I would do a table top of something again. But maybe a 4x4 bench made out of the trimmed posts!