First is a photo of some of the raw lumber. This is probably 3/4 of what I bought. The other quarter I have posted below after cleaning it up some. The lumber was apparently sitting covered for about 10+ years. It is pretty ugly as you can see. I pulled the stuff that is the most warped aside to use first, as you can see, some are pretty bad and I don’t have a jointer )-: (Note: there are 2 small pieces of cherry, 1 of padauk, and 1 of lacewood on top. I forgot to move this before the picture, but they are so covered in walnut dust anyway, maybe you wouldn’t have noticed)

As you can see, the outside is pretty bad. The inside wasn’t too bad overall and was actually really nice in some spots. To get to it, I needed to plane of the top. I don’t have a handplane, plus it would be a lot of work, so I will use my power planer. All the dirt on the lumber probably would have killed my blades, so I shaved off the top layer with the badsaw. I also took off the sides with the circular saw. HEre are some scraps.

After cutting off the really bad stuff, I sent it through the planer. I ended up with a lot of shavings, especially considering I cut off so much bad stuff. I ended up with almost a full trash bad of shavings. I feel bad throwing it in the trash, but I can’t really think of another good use for it since I can’ compost it. I also think I’m going to need some new blades soon. I’ve been cutting a lot of material and they are definitely not what they used to be. This is the best I could get the boards to this weekend though. Not too bad in my opinion.

I’m planning to build a sanding supply cabinet with these boards. I’ll have a lot more milling to do to get a consistent thickness to build the walls and front door frames. The doors will be made with cherry plywood.

One last note:
Thanks to everyone that posts their blogs. They have been so helpful to me. After doing this, I’ve learned they are fun, but they do take some extra thought to be snapping some pictures and to prepare the write-up. It is apprecaited.