submerging beams under water to preserve for frame raising.

[Orthman]

I will be felling my trees and alaska chain saw cutting my logs into beams this winter.  Can I cut all my joints and stack my beams under water in the spring to avoid checking screwing up my perfect joints from pre-mature drying?  I assume I can raise my frame in the summer with no problems.  Am I dreaming or correct? 

[GeneWengert-WoodDoc]

Wood cracks and splits mainly because it is drying.  Fast drying makes things worse.  Submerging stops drying.  If you stack them now outside, they will shrink slowly due to cold winter temperatures.  On the other hand, if you submerge and then you pull up the submerged beams in spring, they will shrink fast and crack worse than the ones that were drying slowly in the winter.  

I suggest you cut the joints after some drying has occurred and not before any drying.

[Orthman]

Oh, ok.  So I can essentially fell the trees (mostly eastern white pine except for the corner posts), saw out the cants and do the jointery and stack to dry?  Should be ok by early summer to rise the structure? 

[barbender]

I think he meant saw, dry, and then cut the joints.

[GeneWengert-WoodDoc]

Indeed...saw, dry and joinery.  You do not need to fully dry to raise the structure...that is, it can dry in place, which was common practice for centuries.

[Hilltop366]

Welcome Orthman

If you are going to saw before hand and dry before cutting joinery and raising it may prove prudent to saw over size to be able to resaw to final size before cutting joints, this may require a guide rail to re straighten the beams with a CSM.

The less time in-between cutting joints and raising the better for some species of wood.

[Dave Shepard]

For white pine,  fell, saw, and cut joinery asap. Raise next summer, or the summer after that. There will be some shrinkage and splitting, but unless the log was really junk, nothing catastrophic. You don't say what you are using for corner posts. I would use Ancorseal on all joints to slow drying of the exposed parts of the timber. 

[longtime lurker]

I have a bit of a marine backgound so that tempers my response.

Put wood in water and it swells, which means your nice tight joints take up and exclude water... and sometimes you dont want your joints that nice and tight to allow for this as joints too tight can be a problem. Thats all part of building wooden boats right?

In your case of jointing the wood and putting it in water to remove again for assembly later.... the swelling will probably mean that you cant get your jointing together as the swelling will mean they wont fit.

Theres a whole whack of reasons to season construction wood under water, ranging from preservative effects and tension reduction to general workability and the dilution of any sap/gum/pitch in the timber. Thing being is that where that process is done you would cut your beams and drown them for a year or several, then pull them out and let them air dry. It does give a superior product, but the timeframe makes it impractical in most general applications. And dont forget that (EPA and other restrictions not withstanding) ponding of logs is still regarded as the best way to hold log timber in good order pre sawing. Logs can actually lose MC while stored in water, go figure.

[mike_belben]

Definitely make a track setup with a simple clamp and backstop and a carriage for your chainsaw.  I can see making one or two beams with an alaskan mill but youll be sick of squaring that stupid ladder in short order.  

I can make 10x more posts with my junkpile built chainsaw track cutter in the time it took to do one with my diy alaskan mill.  Theyre much better at live edge slabs than any other thing.  Forget resawing with a chainsaw though.  Id build a planer head to go down the track.