The Lumber Mill

I get a lot of questions about what all this costs. Well, here is 260$ worth of custom milled African Mahogany, enough to do the cover boards and king plank plus a little extra.

I had a great experience picking this out. I went to my normal lumber yard down the road, Northwest Lumber, with a couple pictures. We went back and picked out a 12" wide, 17 ft, 1" thick rough cut piece of mahogany. Then they let me go back in the milling area and watch as they cut the 17' board to the 10.5' and 6.5' pieces I need for the coverboards. Next they, re-sawed the 1" thick boards with a 30 horsepower band saw that sits sideways with a conveyer that pulls the wood through the saw and refinished it to two 3/8" thick pieces. This way I can do both sides of the boats cover boards from the same piece of lumber. We then picked out a 7" wide, 8' long 1" thick rough mahogany board that best matched the cover boards for the center king plank. They put straight edges on, re-sawed and finished it to get a 3/8" piece as well. It was really neat to be able to see this happen and way cool that we were able to get all the cover boards from one piece of lumber. Normally, I would have to come back to pick up the order a day later but they were slow today so I got to watch the process and take my order home right away.

I guess I have plenty of work to do now, I'm just afraid of making a mistake with this lumber we took all that time to mill.