Someone in our woodworking club found out that M & G Sawmill in Huntsville, Texas was having a 1 year-website birthday party.  I visited their site and was surprised at how inexpensive their wood is; for example quarter-sawn red oak for $2.55 / board foot, which is less than half what I just paid for the stock for my mission dresser.  The only catch is it's 175 miles from Austin, which is a full tank of gas at $2.80 / gallon... so I wasn't sure I was going to go. At the last minute I decided to go and hit the road. It only took about 2.75 hours and I got to see a bit of the Texas countryside along the way.

Now on to the interesting stuff! The mill is a small, family owned operation. They have a WoodMizer portable sawmill and cut up logs that they buy from land owners or suppliers. Here are the pictures I took around the central building.  They keep the wood stacked under the overhangs and have a tablesaw, jointer and planer inside the building for preparing finished stock.

Here is the Wood-Mizer.  They fired it up and did a demo for us with a walnut log. I was impressed by the machine's ease of use and speed of completing a log.

The picture below is their kiln. You can see how they can roll a stack of wood in and out on the rails. The last picture shows what I decided to bring home. That's 50 board-feet of planed quarter-sawn oak, two planks of pecan and a plank of walnut.  At just over $200 I consider the trip a success.  And that doesn't include the free lunch the family put on for the 60 or so people who showed up.  They gave away 75 board-feet of maple for free and raffled off a Hitachi mitre saw.  I would have also bought a couple of planks of mesquite but they were completely sold out.  They plan to have more special days like this, perhaps each spring and fall.  They don't have an email list so keep checking their web site for updates.