Green T&G siding

[Aeneas61]

Hello all,

Has anyone had experience laying up vertical T&G or ship lapped siding green off the mill?

If so, how did it turn out after drying? What species was used?

Thanks!
Josh

[barbender]

     Board and batten is the method that is preferable with green wood. A 1x6 can shrink almost 1/2" from green, that is more than the width of the tongue of most patterns. I have some vertical t&g pine on my house that was put up dry, and that still shrunk enough to expose quite a bit of the tongue.

[GeneWengert-WoodDoc]

I agree with barbender and add that the fastening system must accommodate the anticipated shrinkage.  Nail at one edge only for boards and let the batten hold the other edge.

When it rains, the pieces will swell.  When the sun comes out, the shrink.  So movement is frequent.

[OneWithWood]

I put up green tulip poplar shiplap on my barn addition butting the boards tight.  After a year the boards shrank as expected but the 5/8" lap seems to be enough to keep it weather tight.  The biggest problem I have with putting up siding green is twist developing in some of the boards.  Should the gaps open too much in the coming years it will be a simple matter to put on battens.

[barbender]

     That looks right sharp, OWW ;)

[thechknhwk]

Not necessarily green, but not totally dry either.  The trees were dead at least a year, then the logs sat a couple months.  Then I stickered it inside with fans on it for a few weeks.  The results were pretty good so far.  It's 99% ash.

[kelLOGg]

Not necessarily green, but not totally dry either.  The trees were dead at least a year, then the logs sat a couple months.  Then I stickered it inside with fans on it for a few weeks.  The results were pretty good so far.  It's 99% ash.

That is beautiful! (At first glance I thought you had it balanced on a burn barrel  )
Bob

[WDH]

Have you sprayed the ash for PPB's?

They love ash.

[YellowHammer]

Tulip poplar is common for outbuildings here, we put board and batten up green off the mill for our barn and it works great.  Bugs won't touch it, especially carpenter bees, and after a year or two, we put some screws in the boards that weren't behaving. 

[Aeneas61]

Yellow hammer,
interesting, most fresh sawn Tulip Poplar here gets attacked by tiny beetles with fat bulbous heads till it dries out some, they also attack maple, oak, pine, well darn near everything...you can see their little butts sticking up as they burrow down into the wood, but seem to stop after a while, maybe when it dries they don't find it so good?

[YellowHammer]

Yellow hammer,
interesting, most fresh sawn Tulip Poplar here gets attacked by tiny beetles with fat bulbous heads till it dries out some, they also attack maple, oak, pine, well darn near everything...you can see their little butts sticking up as they burrow down into the wood, but seem to stop after a while, maybe when it dries they don't find it so good?

Sounds like ambrosia beetles but I've not noticed them in poplar.  Around here, in north Alabama, many of the hundred year old log cabins are made from poplar.  Some of the poplar walls of our barn have direct ground contact, and the termites won't eat it. The picture of the barn wall below is poplar that we put up a week after sawing about 15 years ago.
 
About the only other wood that seems as bug proof is walnut, but I don't think I'd build a barn out of it.  I once stacked some walnut on top of a poplar pallet and put some dead stacked pine on top of it, and left it on the ground for a looong time.  The termites built tunnels over the poplar and walnut to get to the pine.  You could see where they had tried to munch the poplar, but they just didn't like it.
 

[Aeneas61]

interesting, guess we have tougher beetles :laugh: Nice barn, did you treat the wood with anything or is that natural weathering color?

[YellowHammer]

I don't ever put anything on it, no need if used in the correct application.  It will last a very long time, even if it gets wet, as long as it has a chance to dry and not develop mold and fungus.  I took these pictures today, just after it stopped raining, to show that the wood will hold up even when it gets wet in the splash line.  Poplar are great siding trees, as they produce a lot of lumber.  That entire side of the 48 foot barn was cut from one huge poplar tree off out farm, except I came up 1 board short.
As far as the weathered look, I got some great ideas from WDH at the Project on bluing pine and I'm wondering if I can do something similar to poplar.  I have a lot of requests for weathered barn wood, but can't figure out how to make a few thousand weathered, uniformly gray Bdft on command.  I've thought about spraying, or dead stacking green, or even trying to induce an enzymatic or moisture caused full board sticker stain like appearance, using the kiln. 
Any ideas?

[WDH]

The sun.  You could build a long rack and stack the boards edge to edge at a 45 degree angle facing the aspect of the sun.  The angle will allow rain to run off, and the sun should weather the boards.  I would be very interested in following along with this experiment. 

[OneWithWood]

Danny has the solution as usual.  Stacking as he says shouldl produce weathered boards in a few months.  For any volume it would need to be a fairly long rack.

[GeneWengert-WoodDoc]

In case someone misses a key point...with green, soaking wet poplar or any green lumber, if installed green, it will not swell when wetted by rain, sprinklers, Etc. but it will shrink maybe 5% in width as it dries. When installing dry wood, we have to allow for expansion, so we need a gap between pieces

Finally, with t&g, the tongue must be very long so that when the pieces shrink, the tongue will not pull completely out of the groove.  I have seen dry t&g applied as siding without enuf room for swelling, so it buckle and came off.  I have also seen short tongues; this was with cypress