stickers

[OH logger]

what is the best species of wood to use for stickers? hardwood or softwood? green or dry?
thanks :-\

[WDH]

Must be dry.  That is critical.  Otherwise, wet or green stickers can lead to sticker stain on your lumber, and that is not good, especially for furniture grade hardwood.  Species does not matter that much.

[OH logger]

thanks for the reply! what are the basic dimensions of them?
thanks

[WDH]

Minimum 3/4" thick.  Maximum 1 1/2" wide.  I personally like a 1" by 1" sticker.

[Ianab]

I just use 1 x 1, usually just edgings from whatever I'm sawing, but 3/4" planed wood is OK too. You want something reasonable quality, or the small size means they break at knots.

Some species you can get away with using green stockers, cedar and cypress for example, but others will stain for sure. Doesn't matter for construction grade material, but if appearance matters, make sure the stickers are dry. The staining can "shadow" quite a way into the board, so it won't always plane off.

Ian

[hackberry jake]

I have access to bundles of kiln dry stickers. They are the culls from a commercial dry kiln. Mostly red oak I believe. I think I am just going to start cutting my own though. They are from 2' to 9' long and usually either crooked or thin. They are however awesome kindling  8).

[WoodenHead]

At this time of year, dry, Eastern White Cedar works best for me.

Everyone will probably laugh, but my first few hundred stickers came from Home Depot.   ;D  I didn't have any dry wood to cut my own, so I bought a number of 14' SPF, 2 x 6 (supposedly kiln dried).  Finished dimensions are 5.5" x 1.5" so I sliced them into 1 x 1.5" stickers (3 to a 14' length).  It took me a while to sift through Home Depot's pile to find some reasonably straight lumber.  :

Now I cut stickers from dried boards (usually white pine or cedar) or use edgings.

[Dan_Shade]

my first stickers were furring strips

[tcsmpsi]

I use SYP stickers, mostly from the slab area of the log that that is non-resinous, with a bug hole or two.  I like mine 1  1/4"X1 1/4".

[davch00]

My first ones came from Lowe's. I usually just cut some out of edgings now but cottonwood and willow has recently become my favorite. 

[Ohio_Bill]

IMO  If you are  sticking framing lumber or low grade, green stickers from what you are sawing are just fine. If you are sticking grade lumber I would use dry stickers made from whatever hardwood you have available.

[haywire woodlot]

I normally just use green stickers when I cut fir or cedar, but yesterday, I fell and milled a western maple to make butcher block table for my wife. For this purpose I sacrificed an ugly old 6x6, to make dunage and stickers so not to stain the white clean maple. I'm of to drop it at the kiln now.

[terrifictimbersllc]

Dry, light colored wood.  3/4 to 1" thick if you are sawing them. I always recommend 8' 1x3's from Home Depot to customers, they're dry, light colored, and have only tiny knots.  I saw them down the center and cut them in half,  so the stickers are 3/4 x 1-1/4 x 48".   4 per 8' 1x3 for about 25 cents each.

[GeneWengert-WoodDoc]

Any species can be used, but the stronger species (like oak) will last longer.  As mentioned, commercial operations that stack 6' wide piles often have broken sticks that can be used for 4' and 5' piles and the price is good.

Almost all stickers are 3/4" thick.  Thinner sticks will result in poor air flow.  Thicker sticks will result in better air drying (but if air drying is done a few weeks earlier will you move the pile to the kiln early?  If not, then faster air drying is not a benefit.  Air dried wood that gets rained on can actually develop more defects.)  Thicker stickers will cut kiln capacity (but some kilns are under-powered, so less lumber means that the kiln works better.  If a sticker were 3/4 x 1, sometimes the sticker would get oriented wrong, adding to lumber warp.  So, stickers are either square (3/4 x 3/4 is really quite weak) or else the width is wide enough that the correct orientation is obvious--1-1/4 to 1-1/2" widths are common.

For any wood that will be an appearance wood, staining is a defect.  Therefore, stickers must be dry.

Stickers with a groove down the length on the top and bottom allow for air flow along the sticker and help reduce stain.  There are patented sticker designs where the grooves run at an angle.

[mikeb1079]

i have enough home projects that i just keep all the short 2x scraps and throw em in a pile then resaw on bandsaw to around 3/4 by 1 1/2".  it's been working for me..... 8)

[drobertson]

I am with Ianab, I cut strips when making boards and stack the good ones to the side, then cut to 42". Knots are a pain, 1-1/8 is what I use, and they dry pretty quick.

[Tree Feller]

I workeded at a sawmill one summer during high school and one of the jobs I was given was making stickers. They had a saw specifically for them. A board was fed into one side by an operator and it came out the other side, along with the sticker that was ripped off. The second operator removed the sticker with one hand while re-inserting the board with the othetr. A common practice was to whack the sticker on the concrete floor to make sure it wouldn't break before stacking it. I wasn't coordinated enough to be good at the job but the women working there made it look easy.

I cut my stickers 3/4 x 3/4, just because that's the dimension I started with when I didn't really know any better. I should probably go to 3/4 x 1 1/4 for the added strength and I could still use the ones I have now.

One thing I have learned...one can never have too many stickers.   ;)

[WDH]

I have some of the commercial stickers that came from a large pine sawmill.  These were rejects that had been broken.  They are 3/4 x 1 1/4" and made from an Indonesian hardwood.  I use these for oak, red and white.  For pecan and maple, I use the 1" x 1" to get a little better air flow to help reduce gray stain.

[tcsmpsi]

I like the 1 1/4" since I only air dry.  I cut mine from older pine from the outer area that is dryer and has usually a borer or two, or 97.  When it catches my eye, good and solid, yet a bit more porous, no knots, and they're my logs, I cut a few.  Borer hole here or there only helps airflow.   :D

[wwsjr]

I cut stickers 1"X1"X42". I stack 40" wide due to the length of my FEL forks. Most of mine are pine or cypress because that is the majority of wood I saw. After I run flitches on edger, I screw a block on edger guide (Minimum width on edger 3") then run all the edger strips back on edger, stack and cut to length with chainsaw. I "sticker" the stickers on a pallet to dry. Most of my stickers leave with the lumber and I never see them again. I place stickers on all wood as I take off mill, I never flat stack. Most of my regular customers return the stickers. I usually have a junk log around to cut 3"X3"X48" to use a blocking between stacks.

[5quarter]

OHlogger...When I first started sawing, I used reclaimed framing lumber, mostly tight grained douglas fir. All mine are cut to 48"L x 1½"W. Like WDH, I use 1" thick stickers for pine and a few hardwoods and ¾" for everything else. I still use nearly all the DF stickers I cut years ago...they've held up pretty good. since then, I've cut stickers from almost anything you can imagine, but I think the white oak stickers are top shelf. once dry, they remain straight and flat regardless of how they're treated. The sad thing about stickers is that they should be cut from the best logs to give the best service. I always have an eye out for short (5-6') but clear oak logs for just that purpose. Also, in an effort to maintain exact uniformity, I plane all my stickers.
   Ditto what someone said about never having enough stickers... ;)

[redbeard]

I built a sticker shack to keep my sizes in order I like 7/8 x 7/8 x 42" . Saves on your shins n ankles getting scraped when you walk by your stickered lumber piles.   

 

[red oaks lumber]

the 2 most important things with stickers
1) have all stickers the same thickness,  not close but the same thickness
2) sticker your lumber very careful. keep each row going straight up on top of your bottom  support.
i'll use any material for stickers with the exception of pine. all my sticks are planed 3/4 thick by 1 1/4 wide 42'' long with no bark!
yes you can have to many stickers :D  now with the shift in the economy i dont have as much wood on sticks, i have approx. enough for 80,000 b.f. so i'm culling very hard only keeping the very best. 

[trapper]

I store my stickers verticaly in barrels.

[Al_Smith]

I went around to a couple of lumber yards and got a bunch of dunnage boards and ripped them on the table saw.They are an item they have no use for, freebies

Lawdy I had about a  half a pick up load and when I got the job done a couple of barrels full of stickers and a couple wheelbarrows full of saw dust .They were 3/4" by 3/4" most 4 feet long .