This article covers:

• • Ways to save money by acquiring cheap wood
  • Methods of getting free wood
  • How to form connections to get wood from peers and industry professionals

Sawyers, builders and acreage owners are often looking for new materials to build with, and while you can go to big box stores and purchase lumber, that's often not the cheapest option.

Whether you're planning to build a timberframe homestead, a little off-grid cabin or any other DIY projects, many people are on a budget and are looking for the leanest options on their wallet.

Thankfully portable sawmill owners have more options, able to transform timber into dimensional lumber, posts, slabs and more for whatever project they're working on. The ability to transform trees, from your property or elsewhere, into rough sawn lumber is a huge advantage for sawmill owners.

So what are some of the best places to acquire cheap wood? Here are just a few ideas:

One of the first places you can look for wood to mill up is at home, by assessing which trees on your property you can turn into cheap lumber.

Acreage owners often have a number of trees they can afford to transform into useful materials, whether there's some soft maples at the back of your lot, or white wood decorating the edge of your property.

Being able to transform this renewable resource into lumber is one of the key reasons why sawyers invest in portable sawmills.

But with that said, some are also hesitant to start clear cutting their property.

While trees are a renewable resource it can take many years for new trees to reach maturity, and many property owners are hesitant to clear out their own acreage. If you're already looking at clearing your land for other purposes, like if you're planning to use that space to build a new structure, then re-using that wood would can be a fantastic way to deal with that waste.

Look at trees that:

• • Are in an undesirable area that you plan on clearing
  • That are diseased and likely to need to be felled
  • Are in a packed forested area that would benefit from tree thinning
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Whether for aesthetic or ecological reasons, many sawyers might want to look for other ways to obtain lumber. So while the cheapest wood may be timber you already own, it may be wise to look elsewhere too.

Another technique to avoid paying the lumber yards is to find already felled lumber, or trees which are at risk of coming down anyway.

After a storm many sawyers are keen to salvage trees felled by the wind, since otherwise they would be left to rot. Oftentimes sawyers do their neighbors a favor by taking way fallen trees and they get to keep the lumber afterwards.

Reclaimed wood is one of the most important ways sawyers save money, by finding trees fallen on their property, the side of the road, on a neighbours acreage, and use their portable sawmill to turn that timber into useable wood.

Sometimes you can end up finding beautiful logs that way. One Woodland Mills Product Owners and Community member, who goes by Pineywoods Saywer online, says he loves finding cheap wood in unexpected places.

"I have a habit of taking junk. Nasty, moldy, 'laying in the trash for a year' kind of logs. I'd like to say it's because I have a sawyer's sixth sense and know something special when I see it," he said in a post in the Facebook community.

Sometimes you'll have a beautiful slab leftover from an ugly log, but even if you're unhappy with what the insides look like, you can always recycle it as rough sawn lumber instead.

To find cheap wood that's already fallen, try:

• • Asking friends and neighbors if they have any fallen trees
  • Keep an eye out in your area for anyone doing tree clearing
  • Regularly check your woodlot or forested land after a storm
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Utilizing junk lumber helps bypass buying lumber mill wood, and is often good for cleaning up after devastating storms. Just make sure you have permission from the land owner before taking anything that might not belong to you. Someone else could be planning to use that as reclaimed wood too.

Another tip for finding cheap wood is to forge connections with tree service professionals in your area.

Tim says that's another way he gets cheap wood, dropped off at his door by tree care companies which would otherwise have to pay to drop it off at the dump.

In fact, many sawyers in the Woodland Mills Facebook community say they make friends with tree care companies in their area, and those connections have allowed them to get tons of free or cheap wood that might have otherwise gone to waste.

It's possible this may even net you more exotic woods like black walnut, since tree services are often taking down yard trees and other ornamental species.

You can also return the gesture by offering to mill up wood for the people who do you favors, turning you into a local lumber mill, opening up more opportunities in your area. Be polite, establish a relationship and give them reasons to hand the wood over to you as opposed to throwing it in the dump, oftentimes it's cheaper to sell it or give it away to a local sawyer than pay to dispose of it.

Though you may want to be careful with wood salvaged from peoples' yards. Oftentimes yard trees can have nails, chain link fence or sometimes even bullets buried in them which can wreak havoc on your blades if you don't notice them ahead of time.