Thread: Milling Raintree questions

Hi,

Thanks everyone for your valued input. To date nothing has happened with the logs as life got in the road, shooting off to Melbourne family matter, ordering two new blades, forklift at Palmerston Mens Shed hydraulics failed and has now just been fixed and now to find the available time. There is a lot of time involved to mill this timber.

At this stage I have a miller who is going to slab the biggest logs as the onsite mill only has a throat of 760mm so we are a little restricted. We are also setting up stands 300 - 400 high at our shed for the cut timbers. Initially we will have two stacks more to come.

I still has a zillion questions and I'm sure more when I screw up lol.

Q1 - stackers I'm trying to organise this however not real sure what to make them out of.
1. Making the stackers 30 x 20 in size.
2. Material, we have plenty of pine (rough sawn pine) but feel this will bleed as it's stored on stacks undercover outside and not exactly dry. I also have other pine but this is really shi%.
3. I was considering cutting some of the smaller logs into stacker strips however feel these will shrink and move all over the place and cause more issues that its worth. Not sure about bleeding guess it will as well.

Suggestions?

Q2
1. I was also looking at cutting some of the logs quartersawn and take the pith out. I feel if I cut these into 25 /30 mm widths and about 2 - 4 meters long these will suit making small boxes, material be a bit more stable as well IE bandsaw and scroll saw boxes?

Q3
1. As for borers not sure what to do about them. Termites, the stacks will be on bitumen and have 300 - 400 visual barrier under. To date all our timber outside is on bitumen and have not suffered termites as yet, that 4 years. On the ground that's a matter of days.

Our method for sanding maybe not perfect however very little sanding is now done inside our shed, all our sanders are mobile units and moved outside if going to be used, all have their own extraction system as well. Maybe not perfect, but much better outside than inside. Small sanding jobs are still inside (pity) however working on a mobile table and then hand sanding will also be outside. Masks to be worn, mind you the latter is harder to manage but getting there.

Fun and games getting closer just intime for the wet season and humidity --- OH THEY JOY.

Thanks for your input looking forward to getting into it.

Brian

Best if stickers are dry from the start, otherwise you are forming a verticle unseasoned column the height of your pack at every sticker interval. I have been using dried Radiata for many years with no staining problems.

Originally Posted by rustynail

Best if stickers are dry from the start, otherwise you are forming a verticle unseasoned column the height of your pack at every sticker interval. I have been using dried Radiata for many years with no staining problems.

I kind of figured I would have to look at buying dried timber and cut into stickers - was trying not to spend money - guess it's best to spend a few $$$ now than screw up good timber. Finding dry timbers might be an issue, guess I best start searching. Thanks for the reply.

Originally Posted by rustynail

Best if stickers are dry from the start, otherwise you are forming a verticle unseasoned column the height of your pack at every sticker interval. I have been using dried Radiata for many years with no staining problems.

Me, too.

I have also had similar results with MDF and Tas oak stickers. Have almost standardised on MDF as its cheap and little variance in thickness.

My stickers have come from cutting up old hardwood pallets, but softwood pallets would have done equally well. It is not like we hobbyists are going to have wood stacks 6m+ high where the lower planks may well be subject to a degree of compression..

I can see that MDF would be both stable and consistently sized. The only caveat there is if the stack is prone to getting wet (HMR would be better in that instance.)

The answer to the sticker question becomes, whatever is stable, easily dimensioned and, most importantly from our point of view, cheap.

Regards
Paul