Thread: To mill or not to mill - that is the question

Mill them straight away....the borers will wreck them otherwise....and so will the wet weather

Rapid drying is your greatest worry, wether its sawn or in log. We usually avoid sawing in summer as its our driest time. I have often dug a hole and buried logs until the following autumn. The wet season may be your friend.

Will the sawn timber fit in your shed once milled?
I'm an advocate for milling the logs you have, you never know how much you'll get and may find you have enough for yourself and then can 'sell off' log or timber to recoup expenses???

It will be a long road slicing the amount you seem to have using an alaskan mill - don't get me wrong it'd be do-able, but much easier with a mill - check out ya local guys, get some references from them, maybe even chat with Lucas about an operator in your area to get someone Lucas talk to and know how they treat the machine, or get someone in from out of the area, after all 'mobile' is the game

Using the Alaskan was not one of the options I was thinking of!!!!! It would take me weeks and months of time I don't have.

Guess if you talk 50 to 60% recovery I would still struggle to fit in the shed. Might have to sit outside covered in some way.

I had logs in a wet area of SE Qld for several years. The ones on the wet ground were badly affected by borer but many slabbed into interesting pieces. No good for framing or structural. Those with no bark or sitting on bedlogs generally seemed to fare better.
Basically if you still have bark on yours or they are sitting on the ground I woould be doing my best to cut them asap.

Gary

I live in vic, but I think the wet will help you so I would mill it asap rack it out in the open and cover it with plastic. This will keep it humid and slow the drying, not the most ideal but I think it would be 0k. Don't know about the borers though !

Mal

Sell some of the logs troppo. You'll be hard pressed to get half them cut up before they start to deteriorate. The borers are already at work given that the blow was months ago.
I would sell at least half the logs and then play with the rest.
It's not the best bang for your buck but it will give you some cash and you will be left with a manageable project.
regards
Steve

The Borers do,and will,wreck the logs very quickly....once the humidity rises...they arrive in droves....the wet season is not your friend when it comes to milling logs

Gonetroppo

I think the general concensus here is to mill the logs sooner rather than later even if you only select some of the logs and sell on the rest.

From your comments this obviously presents a storage problem, but you may be able to get around this by beginning the drying process with an air drying stack.

Before I get into too many principles I would invite others to comment as I am not familiar with your area and it's high humidity. However while you may not be able to reduce the moisture content by air drying as you would in other more arid regions, you will have started the process and provided somewhere to store the timber. It will also reduce the risk of degrade.

Fundamentally, you need some level ground (just makes things easier), corrugated iron or similar to cover your stacks, suitable material for bearers, stickers (the spacers to separate the boards and something to use as weight for the top of the stack.

This link will give you a basic start

- Agroforestry

A few fundamentals.

The stack should be a minimum of 450mm off the ground.
The bearers should be capable of supporting the stack (obviously )
Thinner stickers will reduce the increase the drying time and this may be desiereable. For hardwood 19mm thick perhaps?

Stickers must be placed meticulously over the top of each other in each layer or you will ruin the timber (In exaggeration the boards will look like a roller coaster

You do need weight on the top of the iron to keep pressure on the topmost boards.

In the link above they have used banding material instead of weight. I am not keen on that because you need to keep equal gaps between the boards on the horizontal plane to assist moisture drainage. Banding will pull all the boards together and defeat the object.

If you do a few more google searches on air drying timber there are many references. It has also been discussed on the forums too if you care to do a search.

This is another thread of stacking timber

https://www.woodworkforums.com/f132/w...1/#post1305696

Regards
Paul

Paul, good info, I tend to use straps to help reduce any pulling the boards may do. I also try to limit how wide my stacks are so the boards don't need horizontal gaps. I read somewhere that recommended horizontal gaps if the timber was stacked over 1m wide, dunno how good or bad this info is, regardless though, my vote is for mill asap

Thanks Paul for taking the trouble to explain that much appreciated

The message to mill NOW is coming through loud and clear. Although I have to say that as part of this project we have found some logs that came down in Larry in 2006.

I would have sworn that were gone, but on cutting it open was found to be sound. Some water rot in the sapwood mainly on the top part of the log but fine and useable apart from that.

Building stacks and covering them looks like the best option.
What do you think about using thick builders black plastic sheet first so as to give some coverage to the sides and then putting iron on the top.

I'm thinking I might build another shed say 12m x 12m then I can just move the stacks in there when it's finished (sounds like another project in the making here don't you just love it when one thing leads to another

Changing the subject slightly what $$$ should I be looking to pay for someone to mill this stuff. Perhaps best if some of you could PM me with some guidelines so I have something to go on when I talk to some of the local blokes.

As always all the advice I get here is hugely appreciated

Gonetroppo

Air drying, and kiln drying for that matter, is all about even circulation of air around all sides of the timber and drainage. This is one of the reasons to make the timber stack a nice regular shape.

While I think of it, remember to paint all end grain well. You can use any old paint, but probably several coats to obtain a thick cover or their are propriety products available too. However, most of us have a few old tins of paint lying around that serve a similar purpose.

The 12 x 12 shed sounds great as you will not have the problem of placing iron over the top of your stack, or probably in your case stacks, BUT..... Will you reasonably get a shed up in time particularly bearing in mind you are already on a tight time frame for the milling ? By your own admission the wet season is looming.

Black plastic will, I think, defeat the object of circulating air around the timber. Although there are timber products you can purchase that are shrink wrapped, they are normally kiln dried materials. As your timber is green I think it would be more likely to promote mildew and rot.

You should ideally take care to orientate the stack to take advantage of prevailing winds. They shouldn't blow on the ends. The purpose of the iron is to keep rain and sun off the top. Ideally the iron should give some shade to the sides too, but I have found in practice this is pretty difficult to achieve with the make-shift set up we are considering here. Following basic guidlines will still give very acceptable results.

I can't emphasise the importance of the stickers too much. Ideally they should be dry hardwood, but others on the forum have used seasoned softwood and that is probably ok if your stack is not too high. Again, in this improvised situation, I would shy away from anything too high. Perhaps limit the stack size to what your FEL or tractor can pick up with forks to assist handling at a later date.

If I was drying 100 x 100 material, I would choose thin stickers (down to 15mm). For 25mm boards I might have stickers 25mm thick. Thick material is more difficult to dry because the outside of the material wants to dry faster than the centre. Consequently we have to slow the process.Remember to use double width stickers at the end of the boards (or twonarrow stickers) as this also slows down the drying at the board ends.

You will be surprised at just how many stickers you need and needless to say they need to be capable of protruding through the stack 500 to 100mm each side.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Sigidi

I tend to use straps to help reduce any pulling the boards may do. I also try to limit how wide my stacks are so the boards don't need horizontal gaps. I read somewhere that recommended horizontal gaps if the timber was stacked over 1m wide, dunno how good or bad this info is, regardless though, my vote is for mill asap

Allan

I am not sure about butting boards together as I feel it prevents moisture getting away. It would certainly become more of a problem with a wide stack. I have considered placing verticlal stickers to separate the boards and then they could be banded, but this is difficult as the stickers want to fall over.

In then end I have used whatever is handy weight wise. The stack I have at the moment uses old car and truck tyres (some with rims on and some without). In the past I have used old concrete slabs from a footpath.

This as you can imagine is very improvised and not particularly convenient. I can understand why you would prefer to band the boards.

Regards
Paul

I also strap them edge to edge, I am quite new to drying timber so not a lot of experience. So let me know if I am doing it wrong.

What I noticed though is that the boards with exposed edges have more problems with cracking then the ones locked in between others. The ones in the middle of the stack always turn out the best. I figured that if a board only has the two faces to dry from, it dries more evenly, reducing stress. If a board has more faces it dries slower in the middle of the board then on the edges, as you often see on the sides of the stacks.

Also I keep my stacks higher rather then wider, to have more weight per board.