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Todd Burch
08-24-2015, 3:39 PM
After you cut a board from a log, what are your steps to the eventual stickered stack?

As you cut, do you sticker immediately, or do you cut and put boards into a dead stack, and then when finished sawing, then sticker?

If you have a kiln do you pick up the stickered stack with some forks and set the whole shebang into the kiln? Or, perhaps you take your dead stack and sticker inside the kiln?

After kiln drying, do you store your wood in the kiln if you don't have any new boards to load into the kiln?

After kiln dying, do you sticker the boards outdoors or move them inside and perhaps dead or vertically stack them?

Cody Colston
08-24-2015, 5:17 PM
Todd, I'm no expert and don't sell lumber but here's how I generally do it.

I almost always air dry before going to the kiln. Off the saw, I sticker-stack the boards on some 4x4's and when the stack is built, I pick it up with the tractor forks and move it to a prepared base then cover with metal roofing. Before I use lumber for indoor projects, I'll move it into my solar kiln, stacking by hand because my kiln is narrower than my 42" air-drying stacks (I try to leave 8" of space in front and behind the kiln stacks). Once the lumber has dried to 7% MC, I move it into the shop and dead stack it. I usually begin working the lumber immediately after moving it to the shop. I have left lumber in the kiln for months when I didn't have anything to kiln dry or when I postponed a project for some reason because I just don't have that much storage capacity inside the shop. It doesn't seem to get below 6% MC no matter how long it stays in there.

If I am going directly from the saw to the kiln, I dead stack it directly onto the tractor forks move it to the kiln and hand-sticker it inside the kiln.

That process works for me because I saw only for my own use. If you were sawing a lot of lumber to sell, you would likely want to sticker-stack onto prepared bases that could either be placed outside to air dry or moved directly into the kiln using forks. The fewer times you have to handle the lumber the more efficient the process.

Danny Hamsley has a good method for handling his lumber as he sells it...or a lot of it. He's a pretty good furniture maker, too. Hopefully he will chime in here.

Todd Burch
08-24-2015, 6:59 PM
Thanks Cody. How deep is your kiln? If you had to build it over again, would you have made your kiln 42" + 8" + 8" deep inside? And why 42" deep? Pallet depth? Fork length? All the wood I've stacked before was usually 48" deep. Not sure why, but that's the dimension I picked.

Todd

Cody Colston
08-25-2015, 7:27 AM
The 42" width is due to the fork length. My kiln is sized to hold 300 bf. of 10' long lumber. When I built it I didn't have a mill but was occassionally taking logs to a local sawyer for milling and just didn't have a lot of lumber to dry. I now buck logs at 8.5' so a little less than 300 bf is the capacity.

48" is a good depth for the stack, as it is stable. 42" works for me but any narrower and the air-drying stacks can fall over in a high wind.

I just remembered something else. I also sized my kiln so that only one fan was needed.

Danny Hamsley
08-25-2015, 7:46 AM
Here is how I do it. Boards come off the sawmill onto a table. If it is a ring porous hardwood like oak, pecan, hickory, elm, etc., the boards have to be sprayed for PPB. The boards go onto the table in a single board stack as high as they can be stacked without falling. That way, all the edges on both sides of the boards can be sprayed at the same time. Once the sawing is done, the edges all get sprayed, then the boards are spread out on the table in a single layer, sprayed, flipped, sprayed on the other side. Then, another layer is laid down over the first, and the process is repeated. I can come in from either side of the table and remove most of the boards with the forks on the tractor. Then, the boards are stickered on a purpose-built pallet and placed under a drying shed to pre-dry.

If the boards do not need to be sprayed, i.e. diffuse porous hardwoods like maple, yellow poplar, or any of the pines, the boards come off the sawmill and are deadstacked onto the table in pack about 4' wide (length of tractor forks), and then picked up with the tractor and stickered directly off the tractor forks onto a drying pallet, and placed in a drying shed to pre-dry.

Each pallet holds 320 to 350 BF depending on length as that is about the capacity of my tractor to pick up a load. When it is time for the kiln (the kiln can hold up to 3 pallets), the pallet or pallets are placed into the kiln with the tractor. After drying, the pallet or pallets are removed with the tractor and taken to the planer room. They are taken unstickered off the pallet and skip planed, and placed into a dead stack on the other end of the planer room where the tractor can come in from that side and pick up the whole load.

The load is taken to an old house (the one that I grew up in, actually) and the boards are placed into cubbyhole racks that can hold several hundred BF each. The lumber room has a large dehumidifier to keep the humidity below 35%. Some boards are vertically stacked in another part of the house if all the racks are full. Racks are separated by species and thickness. Customers come to the house, and pick out what they want from the racks. I then grade and measure the boards to calculate the price. The kiln is loaded with what I need to replenish the racks from the air-dried stock under the drying sheds.

Here is a 3 pallet stack of 10' lumber. Pine on the top, and 2 pallets of maple on the bottom. This 3 pallet stack is the capacity of the kiln.


320174

Cody Colston
08-25-2015, 11:08 AM
The lumber room has a large dehumidifier to keep the humidity below 35%.

Danny, first let me apologize for calling you Danny Harvey in my first reply to Todd. I have a friend named Danny Harvey and just went brain dead while typing. I knew your name was HAMSLEY. Lol

Question; Do you have any idea of the cost to run the dehumidifier in your lumber room? Minimal, Moderate or Significant will work if you don't know in $/month.

Todd, I didn't note it in my replies but I also spray my hardwood lumber with Timbor when stacking.

Danny Hamsley
08-25-2015, 10:06 PM
I believe it to be minimal because it does not run very much at all.