Toward Ecosophy

You need a table saw and a router table for this, plus some basic carpentry skill, but if you have them, you can turn cheap 2x lumber into tongue and groove siding or decking by ripping each board to make two 1x boards and then routering a tongue on one side and a reciprocal groove on the other for each board. If you use nice boards it goes quickly (both the making and the installing); cull lumber is slower and results not as predictable, but we calculated that our hourly “wage” in savings was in the hundreds of dollars once we got our equipment calibrated and hit our stride (compared to prices for t&g at our local lumberyard). You can do the same for lap joints without the router table, and it’s faster, too, if you don’t need the tightness of the tongue and groove.