If near a stream, the logs are rolled or drawn to the water and floated to the mill, where they are examined and grouped according to fitness for special uses. A long immersion of the logs in water removes soluble substances in the sap-wood, but is said to injure the heart-wood by rendering it less elastic. Water, however, is the easiest and cheapest means of transporting logs. In the absence of an available stream, the logs are carried on wagons or sleds to a railway or directly to the mill.

The old-time mill, with its single upright saw and ancient water-wheel, is seldom seen nowadays; it has given way to gang and circular saws, and even to giant band-saws, run by turbine or steam. Frequently portable engines and saws are employed on the ground where the trees are cut, thus saving the transportation of the waste portions of the logs.

Logs are sawed into either timber, planks, or boards, and these constitute lumber. Timber includes all of the largest sizes, such as beams and joists. Planks are wide, of varying lengths, and over one inch in thickness. Boards are one inch or less in thickness, and of varying lengths and widths. Lumber may be resawed into the many smaller sizes which are to be found in the seasoning and storing yards.

The rough-sawed lumber may be planed at a mill, and is then called dressed lumber, of which there is a great variety, adapted to almost every purpose for which wood is used. Dressed planks and boards when free of all defects are called clear and their regular sizes are 5/8, 7/8, 1 1/8, 1 3/8, and 1 7/8 inches, which are one eighth of an inch less in thickness than sawed lumber. One-half-inch dressed is made by resawing one-and-a-quarter-inch lumber.