Stacking/stickering

[Typhoon]

Do any of you use pallets to stack your wood on? I have access to unlimited, nice new pallets and it seems to me they would work great to stack lumber to dry on. Also, for those of you with bandsaw mills, how many blades do you keep on hand? On average? I have a Norwood Lumbermate and as of right now I have 11 blades. I also have a cat claw sharpener. Thanks!

 

[valekbrothers]

Pallets will not work for stacking lumber on to fry unless you place stickers on top of the Pallets.

The boards on the pallets are too wide to allow even drying of the lumber. Stickers should be 1" max. I prefer 3/4".

 

[BobL]

Pallets will not work for stacking lumber on to fry unless you place stickers on top of the Pallets.

The boards on the pallets are too wide to allow even drying of the lumber. Stickers should be 1" max. I prefer 3/4".

I scavenge and dismantle pallets for stickers and I rip the pallet boards usually in half on my table saw.

 

[BobL]

Pallets will not work for stacking lumber on to fry unless you place stickers on top of the Pallets.

The boards on the pallets are too wide to allow even drying of the lumber. Stickers should be 1" max. I prefer 3/4".

I scavenge and dismantle pallets for stickers and I rip the pallet boards usually in half on my table saw.

 

[redprospector]

Do any of you use pallets to stack your wood on? I have access to unlimited, nice new pallets and it seems to me they would work great to stack lumber to dry on. Also, for those of you with bandsaw mills, how many blades do you keep on hand? On average? I have a Norwood Lumbermate and as of right now I have 11 blades. I also have a cat claw sharpener. Thanks!

I prefer to stack lumber on 4x4's, I find it's easier to get them straight and pretty level with each other, than pallet's.
As far as how many blades to keep on hand, it depends on how much milling you're doing, and if you can wait a few day's for new blades to be delivered.
If I'm milling for my own use, or just messing around then I don't mind getting down to 4 or 5 blades. If I'm using the mill as part of my income then I want at least 25 blades on hand.
Everyone dose it a little different, so you'll get a lot of different opinion's. This is what I do, and therefore my opinion.
Your part will be to sort through our differing opinions, try some and figure out what works best for you.

Good luck

Andy

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I like my lumber piles UP off the ground, and i don't like putting something down that will rot... So, i buy used but "solid" railroad tyes for around $7 ea. and put 4 of them down with a cement block under each end, and level it all up.

The tyes are 7"x9"x101", so there's plenty of room to have a stack 8' wide... That alows me to have two 4' stacks and work from either side, so i can have two different size stacks on each set of tyes...

I don't keep a lot of lumber around though, as i prefer to saw it out as i need it...

As for bands: I buy bands when i get a "deal" and just leave them in the box until i need them, so i always have some new bands ahead. Generally, i have one box of ten that i'm sawing out of, and another batch of ten that i'm setting and sharpening. I just keep rotateing the batches untill i need more, and then i start another batch of ten. It's just an easy way for me to keep the bands in batches of the same amount of sharpenings...

I'm really just a part time sawyer, so my bands last a fairly long time...

Rob