Building shit is expensive!

[mrtr33]

Find a sawmill who'll cut it up for you. Or you can invest in an alaskan saw.
This will tell you if its dry enough, but plan on it sittin green for about a year (unless you have a solar dryer or something to accelerate)

Drying big logs can take a long time IIRC. There was a show on about milling your own lumber once. You strip the bark and then let it sit on a dry level surface for up to a year depending on the wood and conditions. Then, you mill it and let the rough boards dry some more. Then, you plane the boards.

I guess I should have been more specific. Sorry for hijacking this thread, Kenyth.

The log had been cut up in order to be thrown away easily. I just went by and picked them up when they were sitting on the side of the road. I got three of them. One is really wide, but maybe only a foot/foot and a half high. The other two are a bit narrower, but probably 2 feet high each. I don't want to plane them down. I want to carve them. They were heavier than all hell.

The wide one I want to make a salad bowl out of. I carve wooden spoons and forks that are about 16-18" long. They are meant to be for salad serving purposes. I usually carve those out of oak, sand the hell out of them (start with 80 grit down to #0000 steel wool) then use mineral oil to finish them. I was hoping to carve a bowl out of the wide one.

I don't mind waiting. I guess my biggest concern is that the wood will crack, flushing my bowl idea down the toilet.

On the untreated lumber: without going too much into detail, the frame on the truck was a temporary thing. Sometimes I needed a frame to carry extra big crap, or contain something, or carry something where I didn't want to purchase a huge truck cover. So, I just built a quickie frame, thinking that one day I would buy the treated lumber, get a custom canvas top, and do it right. Something to sleep under when camping. I've just never gotten that far, that's all. I bet the frame didn't cost $20, but more than half of that was for hardware.