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Board and Batten siding

Started by Don P, December 11, 2019, 07:21:37 PM

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Don P

We were talking about planing siding on another thread last night. This is off topic to that thread but I was over there today and got a couple of pics of how we did it.

We sawed these boards on the way to getting the timbers for the barn. They were stickered in a breezy (but dusty!) haybarn for almost 2 years while we did other things. Late summer we took them out and planed the boards flat and made the battens out of boards that were either narrow or had a defect that precluded using them for a wide board. With the barn being too tall to run the siding unbroken up the gable we picked a breakline, ran a horizontal beveled strip over the lower boards, set the upper boards out by the thickness of the lowers and went again. Not strictly necessary but I lined up the battens with the ones below, we were doing random widths. In a year or two it should grey with the rest of the barn.




This is closer up. I think the batts were 3"x3/4", I routed a radius edge, doesn't take long and gives a more finished appearance. By planing the battens lay flatter and the cup has been removed from the boards. We screwed the center area of the boards, no more than 5" apart and left a gap between boards. The battens are screwed to the girts through that gap, not through the boards. This is one way of doing it to let the boards move without trapping them by their wide edges and causing splitting. More pics of different ways of doing that would be good to see.





Here's a shot of that beveled strip at the bottom edge of siding, I usually use 15°. It seals the bug and wind gap and is usually not too obvious.



moodnacreek

Nice job. Just a slight disagreement, putting on the battens the way you did is not just one way , it is the only way.

Southside

Nice work!!! I can't remember which day did you say you would be over this way to work on my building?  :D
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Don P

 :D Might be a bit, we passed grading today and started hauling lumber out to a jobsite. We'll start framing tomorrow whenever it gets warm enough for old farts. When I got home a scholarship letter was in the email, looks like me and the other Don are gonna be going to truck driving school in Jan-Feb at the local community college. Our toys and loads keep getting bigger. Riding in a warm truck that time of year has its appeal too :).

@moodnacreek it'll be awhile before we get to siding the next one but I think I might try the way a couple of the other guys have posted about. Fasten one edge of the board and let the far edge float, then cap over the joint with the batten screwed through the gap. Then the only fasteners showing are in the battens and the board is still free to move.

moodnacreek

Don P., do you mean hiding the fastener under the batten? I always thought of that but I like 2" battens and doing that would require 3"+. Also consider not putting a [screw] in the middle of the board, just 2 screws each 1" from edge. I really like your starter along the bottom, that's the way I have seen real carpenters do it and I copied them 30 years ago when I did house. There are so many variations of b and b siding but it's the battens that many do wrong. At one time so did I.

wbrent

Nice looking job. I did the same thing but not nearly as good a job as you. And all my lumber was rough. Oh well its a barn. Anyway I notice you have a sliding door. I have the same . Wondering how thick of a ledger board you have on there where the track attaches. I had to shim mine because the door keeps hitting the battens. I should have bevelled the edges of the battens like you did. Might of alleviated this. Do you have the same problem? 

Don P

Yup, I've torn battens off a barn with the door before. We set the track far enough out for the door to clear at the top and screwed a strip across the bottom thicker than the battens that the bottom of the door rides along to keep it kicked out. As long as the door stays flat it will clear. There's also the door guides that you might be able to mount to the wall or floor to hold the door clear of the wall.

 I bent a flashing that runs behind the siding above the ledger, goes out over it and then down with a hem and little kickout to hopefully drop most water clear of the ledger. You can also get fancy and make a little roof over the track and extend it down over the door top to block wind and water.

bluthum

Nice. I could quibble some with the details but that job will last a long time likely. In my 40 odd years as a carpenter/woodworker doing wood siding jobs gave me some of my best satisfaction,  it's a highly under rated material/ technique, strangely here in the most rural of areas few see it's merits. Go figure.

alan gage

That looks very nice. I'm just finishing up my first board and batten job on my new wood shop. I'm happy with it but it doesn't look as nice as yours. I left myself room for improvement. Putting board and batten on the house next year so I'll get my chance to improve.

I had seen pictures of the beveled strip you use on the bottom and did copy that. I couldn't remember the angle you used so I went with 25*. One thing I was unsure of was if the boards should be butted tight into the bevel or if there should be a little gap. A little gap would let in bugs and wind but I was afraid no gap would hold and wick moisture. In the end I left a little gap.

Another thing I wasn't sure about was if I should leave a gap between the boards or not. Since they were already air dried I wasn't worried about shrinkage so to get some extra coverage I left 3/4" gaps between the boards. Hope that doesn't come back to bite me.

Alan
Timberking B-16, a few chainsaws from small to large, and a Bobcat 873 Skidloader.

Don P

I've gone round and round on whether to leave a gap, I don't but can see the reasoning. If any siding will be stained or painted I hit the end grain at the cutting bench, that is the worst place for wicking up moisture and starting to rot. At the flashing over the door ledger I did leave a ~1/4" gap. When I do siding over a roof, like on the back end of this barn I keep the siding up well off the roof, usually I lay a 2x down on the roof, side and then slip the 2x out.

The angle on the beveled board isn't important, just an angle to make it drain out.

On the barn we have varying gaps between boards, evening it out as much as possible, you can see by the time I got to the slider we were running out of wood.

@bluthum ,quibble on :D I'm too old to be insecure, there isn't that much time to learn new tricks :) "A wise man learns from the mistakes of others, a fool from his own"

Brad_bb

Looks like Oak.  I know I've talked about this before, but I did white pine on my new shop.  I wasn't familiar with carpenter bees as we don't have them where I'm from further north.  The shop was attacked and bees bored 1/2 inch holes in various locations.  They bore up to 4ft long tunnels and lay an egg.  This summer a woodpecker tore apart one of the 7ft long window sills trying to get at the bee larvae.  The bees seem to readily bore into softwood like pine or poplar, but not hard woods.  In a year or two, I'm going to be removing all the Board and batten siding and replacing with hardi board.
Anything someone can design, I can sure figure out how to fix!
If I say it\\\\\\\'s going to take so long, multiply that by at least 3!

Don P

I'll be doing white pine B&B on the charity house we're working on. It'll probably be painted which has worked for me in keeping the little devils out, or Sikkens, which is probably a tough enough film. We're beyond a shoestring, I've been curious if sho sugi ban would deter them.

PRC

I was always taught to nail the boards, screw the batten.  Was I taught wrong? Work looks great!
I have no idea what I'm doing, but if I keep reading and making mistakes, I just might get somewhere.

Don P

Not at all. Screws weren't used at all until pretty recently. They have better withdrawal resistance and a nail, especially a smaller diameter one like a Maze splitless would let the siding move around more without splitting.

Sedgehammer

What about using 1" RC SYP CCA vs hemlock? That will also eliminate any carpenter bees from doing any damage.
Necessity is the engine of drive

Don P

That's what I thought when we built this house. I used CCA for the fascias, didn't slow them down. They don't ingest the wood so the poison doesn't get them, they are just burrowing nesting tunnels. If you're in carpenter bee country the best thing is to have something hard enough they can't bite into it, a hardwood or heavy film finish. I've got some Drione dust but to be honest I don't have the time to chase them around with that. They don't attack eastern hemlock nearly as bad as eastern white pine, we just don't have much hemlock left.

Sedgehammer

Are you sure it's CCA? Supposedly allegedly CCA can no longer be used for anything house, so nearly every lumber store carries ACQ or C-A (CBA) and not CCA. 
Necessity is the engine of drive

Don P

Yes I'm positive it's CCA, the house predates the common availability of the others.
@alan gage, you were asking about the gap and I was thinking today about another variant of this style of siding, "board and board". Usually its 10" on the wall with 6" spacers between and 8" boards over those, lapping the 10's by 1" on each side so the look is 2 levels of 8". It could be done with other widths but that is the most common I've seen.

Bruno of NH

Brad bb
Think long and hard about the hardi plank
I put it on my house 15 years ago. 
It will come off when I can afford the time and labor.
It will be replaced with a wood product from the mill.
It's not what they say it is.
Bruno
Lt 40 wide with 38hp gas and command controls , F350 4x4 dump and lot of contracting tools

Ljohnsaw

Quote from: Bruno of NH on December 19, 2019, 08:00:53 AMThink long and hard about the hardi plank

I used HardiPlank on some horse shelters because the ranch owner wanted something that would stand up to water and splashed mud, over and over.  This was install on L shaped stick built walls erected on poured concrete stem walls.  I've used it on some small project and like the durability that I've seen so far.  For my cabin, I plan on using Hardi because my neighbors up there have been plagued with woodpeckers totally destroying siding as they build nest holes.  They are not looking for food, just building a shelter.  Short of making a metal cabin, I see Hardi as the only logical solution.

If you've had some bad experience(s) with concrete board siding, please elaborate.
John Sawicky

Just North-East of Sacramento...

SkyTrak 9038, Ford 545D FEL, Davis Little Monster backhoe, Case 16+4 Trencher, Home Built 42" capacity/36" cut Bandmill up to 54' long - using it all to build a timber frame cabin.

Bruno of NH

It doesn't hold the finish as well as they claim.
I paid big bucks for a guaranteed wood look finish.
Started pealing off after the first year.No one would warranty it they all passed the buck.
Installed to the tee by me.
Any thing 2ft off the ground or over the roof is degrading the top layer off it.
Been told that's a problem for everyone.
I wanted wood shingles but the wife didn't like the look.
White pine claps or b and b or wood with metal siding mixed would have been much wiser choice.
After that I never recommend or installed anymore synthetic exterior products to any of my customers.
I used South American hemlock on my deck and porch , I'm glad.
Lt 40 wide with 38hp gas and command controls , F350 4x4 dump and lot of contracting tools

alan gage

Has anyone been using LP Smartside? We've used it on a few of my dad's rentals. It's nice to work with, just like cutting wood. Has held up very well so far but the oldest stuff is only 5 years or so.

The local lumber yard had a sample of it in a container where it had been submersed for over a month. Still seemed fine.

It comes both pre-painted or primed. We've used both. A couple years ago my dad bought enough to do a couple houses for pennies on the dollar when the local yard had an auction. The colors were all mismatched but it painted up nicely.

I think most of the local contractors that had been installing cement board have switched to Smartside.

Alan
Timberking B-16, a few chainsaws from small to large, and a Bobcat 873 Skidloader.

Al_Smith

My aunt has a small barn on her property that is likely near or over 100 years old .White oak board and batten .It was painted periodically with well head crude oil and has a slate roof . It might be there yet in another 100 years .

samandothers

I looked at some siding material at a building supply place.  Hardie, LP, Boral products.  I liked the idea of the Boral but it did not come in a lap siding.  The LP looked a lot like a pressed wood.  The person that was helping me was not favorable toward it.  He leaned toward the Hardie board.  This could be because his company did more business with them, don't know.  @Don P do you have some thoughts on pros and cons of man made siding products?

Don P

I prefer wood but it isn't without issues. Smartside had some problems with edge swelling early on, I think they have taken care of it but it sounded too much like the Masonite problems for me. Hardi holds paint very well, I've had no problems but know of some. They seem to usually relate to wetter areas and especially if it can absorb moisture and then freeze.

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