Long term lumber storage?

[dustytools]

Im curious as to how some of you guys store your lumber after its dry enough to remove from the sticker stacks. Im wanting to build a small barn this fall for storing multiple items in such as mowers, ATVs and so on. Im gonna dedicate a portion of it to lumber storage and was wondering 1-How to stack it and such (with or without stickers). 2- Does the storage area have to be vented to allow air movement throughout the lumber. Woodshop I know that you are stockpiling for your retirement activities and although Im not quite as close as you are, I want to stock up as much wood as possible while the milling bug is still eating at my bones (not that it will stop anytime soon). Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[IndyIan]

I think stickering makes your lumber stack more disaster proof. A bit of water or insects won't hurt stickered lumber nearly as much as dead stacked. Of course it takes twice the space.
If your super confident that your roof will never leak and your humidity is too low for bugs to get started then you can dead stack dry lumber.

 

[aggiewoodbutchr]

Good point about the bugs, Indy. For example, I've seen many bundles of tightly stacked lumber turned into swiss cheese by carpenter ants while avoiding even the slightest bit of daylight.

But...

Protected space is usually at a premium for me so I stack without stickers. Just keep them it the ground and check once in a while.

 

[Nikko]

Good point about the bugs, Indy. For example, I've seen many bundles of tightly stacked lumber turned into swiss cheese by carpenter ants while avoiding even the slightest bit of daylight.

But...

Protected space is usually at a premium for me so I stack without stickers. Just keep them it the ground and check once in a while.

I've got about 600 bd ft of home milled KD maple and birch in the family room right now. If it was stickered, my wife would say bigger words than she did when she saw the pile there in the first place.

Nikko

 

[carvinmark]

I've got about 600 bd ft of home milled KD maple and birch in the family room right now. If it was stickered, my wife would say bigger words than she did when she saw the pile there in the first place.

Nikko


Lol, I have piles in my house too.
Make sure tou have a flat area for your wood storage. A friend of mine stacks his outside under tin (pole barn siding) with stickers, and he had some on uneven ground where he had a large stack, the whole stack was twisted.

 

[woodshop]

Good point about the bugs, Indy. For example, I've seen many bundles of tightly stacked lumber turned into swiss cheese by carpenter ants while avoiding even the slightest bit of daylight.

But...

Protected space is usually at a premium for me so I stack without stickers. Just keep them it the ground and check once in a while.

That about sums it up for me too... protected space is a serious premium in my case, so dead stacked is my only option now that I'm literally thousands of bd ft into this. I have a 20x16ft 2 story shed packed solid, and another 3000 ft stacked in 9 ft high stacks in the garage. My Dad has a farm about 75 miles away and I plan to take much of it there for storage in the future for as long as he has the farm. I built an 8x16 platform there already, and plan on dead stacking on that with 2x4 frame covered with tarp. Important to let air through it though, and of course most important is to keep checking your stash. That doesn't mean just have a quick look, it means once in a while tear apart a pile or two and make sure its not full of bugs.

Bottom line is, unless you have a huge shed with lots of space in it, once you get up in the thousands of bd ft you really need to get creative. It's definitely an investment in time just keeping your stash bug and rot free. Nature of the beast... I consider it part of the whole milling/wood procurement experience. Slicing up logs is only the first step. Stacks of lumber are big, awkward and heavy and they do take lots of space. A 9 ft high stack of 12 inch wide 8ft long ROUGH lumber is around 700 bd ft of S4S ready to work. One thing I find difficult is storing large thick slabs because they are rarely symmetrical, come in all shapes and sizes and thus just don't stack well. Other odd shaped pieces like crotch slabs or unique carving stumps are another hard to store item.

The more I mill and get into this, the more I try and keep things as uniform as I can. Uniform board thicknesses, widths and lengths are so much easier to store and stack. My problem is I still have a hard time turning down non uniform stuff that still has potential. So... I keep it even though it turns out to be more of a storage headache.

 

[lumberinspector]

This time of year with the heat etc. make sure you are stickering your lumber or you will end up throwing it. Deadstacked in this heat with cause mold,stain etc. in no time...ecspeically in the white woods...Basswood,Hard and Soft Maple etc. Use soft maple stickers...they wick up the moisture right away helping to greatly reduce sticker stain. Use bricks or something heavy on the top layer of the pack to help reduce/eliminate any cupping or twisting.

There is a lot of good information on this on other sites from guys who are doing this full time etc. Such as the portable mill guys etc.

We dead stack our packs only in the grading building...once we fill up a pack...it is taking outside where the kiln guys will come over and grab it right away and take it to the sticking machine. Only stuff we don't worry about is the low grade pallet stock.

Thickness/Layers High
4/4 30
5/4 25
6/4 20
8/4 16
9/4 14
10/4 13

Thats how high we deadstack.

Also maybe something of interest too...Weight of 1 board foot of lumber for each spieces:

W.Oak=5.2lbs
Basswood=3.5
Cherry=3.8
Elm=4.6
Hickory=5.3
H.Maple=4.6
S.Maple=3.9
R.Oak=5.2
Walnut=5.8

 

[woodshop]

Thanks for that info woody... glad to see somebody posting here that is actually in the business of stickering and storing lumber. btw... those weights you give for various wood in your post, are you are talking about dry wood? For example my red oak around here (north east coast US) is a little over 5lb bd ft wet right off the log, but usually between 3 and 4 lbs once it's dry.

 

[lumberinspector]

Those are green (wet) weights. There are very considerable variables but on average that would be what each spieces weight is.

Obviously sapwood vs. heartwood, genitics, loacation etc. all play a role also.

Your Welcome

 

[aggiewoodbutchr]

This time of year with the heat etc. make sure you are stickering your lumber or you will end up throwing it. Deadstacked in this heat with cause mold,stain etc. in no time...

A bit of personal experience with mold...

I month or two back, I slabbed out one of the big water oaks. Long story short, I had to quit sooner than I had planed to and had to leave a few slabs dead stacked (I had also run out of stickers) for a couple of days. When I came back to sticker them, mold had grown in between the slabs so much that it "glued" them together. I had to use felling wedges and a sledge hammer to separate them.

 

[woodshop]

A bit of personal experience with mold...

I month or two back, I slabbed out one of the big water oaks. Long story short, I had to quit sooner than I had planed to and had to leave a few slabs dead stacked (I had also run out of stickers) for a couple of days. When I came back to sticker them, mold had grown in between the slabs so much that it "glued" them together. I had to use felling wedges and a sledge hammer to separate them.

Yup... same thing happened to me when I came back from a day milling, unloaded my wet boards deadstacking them onto the driveway to be stickered ASAP. Well... it rained for several days etc etc etc... didn't get it stickered for almost a week, and sure enough by that time couple of them were "mold glued" together and had to be pryed a part with a crowbar, just like aggie. Scraped off the mold, stickered them and they were fine as soon as they started to dry.