Portable lumber racks?

[Nealm66]

I'm trying to figure out a better system for somewhat temporary stacking/stickering all the different lengths and sizes of lumber. Currently I just level out some 8' beams on the ground and it's hard to sticker when start mixing beams into the  pile. I was thinking about building some portable lumber racks I could load onto the flatbed or dump trailer for quick setup and be more organized but struggling with design and looking for suggestions. There's got to be a better way than what I've been doing 

[doc henderson]

have you searched pallet/skid?  What do you mean by rack.  I am picturing a tall structure with arms or shelves.

Pallet dimensions and design in Drying and Processing (forestryforum.com)

and some have made platforms with the spacing they want to stack on.  
@firefighter ontheside .

the key is to not have to handle and or restack the lumber.

[Ron Wenrich]

At most mills, I've seen 3x4s used to put down to stack lumber.  Usually 4' and bundles are made 42" wide.  Put down as many as you need to support the product you're stacking.  We separated all of our products.  If done by length, it is a lot easier to do the stickers.  Longest logs first, and work your way down by length to the shortest.

If you're doing portable milling, you can just leave them at the site without too much expense or added cost to the client.  We cut our 3x4s from low grade log hearts that weren't good enough for pallet stock.  Highly portable and lots of uses.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I am confused also. If you are mixing sizes you are going to have to restack. I use stacking skids as Doc describes above with the first row of stickers already nailed to them as a go-by. I only use them in the long term storage location because I don't have adequate MHE to move them. When sawing I throw the waste slabs on the forks of my undersized FEL and stage the boards on 2 sawhorses. When I am finished sawing I go pick up the lumber on my forks and take it to the waiting storage skid.

  If I had bigger MHE with more capacity I'd place the skids next to my mill and stack directly on them then haul them off to a permanent storage/drying area. When sawing mobile I often have the customer make several such stacks of stickered or flat stacked lumber just so it is easier to tally at the end of the job. If I were moving sticked stacks on my property I'd have to rachet them into tight bundles before moving them because of the slope and rocks I'm driving over. If I were a lumber yards I'd want the drive smoother and more level but I am a sawmill operation and prefer to custom cut lumber on demand.

[Nealm66]

I was thinking about something like this but smaller. Like maybe 2' wide and just build multiple ones for different lengths. I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out a to stack and sticker all the different lengths and size's more efficiently than I'm doing now in non permanent type of settings. 

[Crusarius]

How portable do you want? I have had a design in my head for portable modular firewood racks for a long time. The idea could easily be adapted for boards and beams. It would be a steel frame with receiver hitches both ends. One end would get a tongue inserted into it and the other would get a set of wheels. then you could lift the front with tractor 3 point hitch and it becomes a lumber trailer you drag to where you want and either set it then remove the wheels to go to the next rack or unload.

I had planned on building a bunch and offering them for sale for firewood but I didn't think anyone would want to pay the true cost for one of the racks. In my opinion it would be great cause you could stack your firewood on it anywhere and when heating season came you could drag one rack to the house or into the garage at a time.

[Nealm66]

Well, I was thinking of building them similar to picture out of 2x4's, a couple ft wide. No roof or walls and spacing them apart as needed. I could use the tractor or crane to load/unload a bunch of them. But it's probably just a bad idea and I'll just end up adding more spots with leveled up beams. 8' 4x4's work fine. Again, just trying to figure out a better way 

[doc henderson]

what is the actual goal of these racks?  I would not want to have to restack a stack that is already stickered.  so you have a tractor with a crane that can lift a whole stack?
by portable do you mean mobile over the road, or just movable around you place?  
Were you thinking welded up metal so it can be lifted by a single point, or wood that forks can get under.

[Nealm66]

The goal is something quicker to setup than leveling out a bunch of 4x4's ( or similar) to stack on. I'm milling 8-16' anything from 1x4's to 6x6's depending on the log and the lumber could sit a month or 2 before I get it moved. I have a tractor with forks and grapples and a flatbed knuckle boom truck and a gooseneck flatbed. My milling is slow being a manual but I really hope to eventually be able to afford a hydraulic mill but really need to get the handling time down. I've got the slab wood dialed in good but the lumber part is a disaster lol

[Crusarius]

As much as I hate double handling the wood I found that when I am sawing I take the boards off the mill and put them on my 5x8 utility trailer on edge. when I am done sawing I drag the trailer to the area I want to stack then stack it. I found trying to stack and sticker during sawing leaves the sawmill idling more than it needs to. It also allows me to thoroughly sort the boards and stack them accordingly.

[Don P]

That gives time to borate as well. If there are 3 of us it can all happen at the same time efficiently.

I like to use a couple of junk 8x8s the length of the lumber. Shim them on the ground and sight them in plane with one another. Now you are not trying to level each bunk, just the 2 tracks. Then 3x3 bunks at 2' centers across those "tracks". Sticker on top of the 3x3's and go. If you use pallets then just drop a pallet on the 8x8's.

I need to build some pallets with tin on them to lift onto the top. If I had a dime for every sheet I've chased down.

[caveman]

 

 

This is what we came up with for a portable wood rack.  It is similar to the permanent racks that we built.  This one's posts sit on pavers on top of the ground.  The permanent ones have posts which go into the ground.  We've never moved this one after getting it leveled.

[Brad_bb]

It sounds like how we all started out.  We didn't know how to be organized/the best way to do it.  What most of use have come to in the end is using lumber pallets, that is assuming you have a machine to move pallets?  They are super handy became you can have a spot that you've already prepared/leveled for pallets and move pallets around as you need to.  

First you need to standardize the lengths you are cutting.  I use 3 pallet lengths for the most part, 4ft, 6ft, and 8ft.  I also have some 10ft pallets but that was for an odd situation.  Unless you're doing trim, which is preferred to have longer lengths, stick with the 4,6,and 8.  Make your boards 3 to 6" longer than the pallets for trim.  I screw my first set of stickers to the pallet, then just stack and sticker after that.  I make my pallets 46" wide so that 2 can fit across an 8ft trailer bed.  Lastly, if you have 7ft or 5ft boards that you can't bear to trim, you cam mix them in the 8 and 6 foot pallets respectively.  You just will have some air spaces in the pallet and if you have them kiln dried, the straight calculation for BF will be slightly more than is actually on the pallet.

As far as thickness differences, you just need to make the same thickness for a given layer, and the next layer can be different.  The down side to this is that if you then want to Kiln Dry, different thicknesses will dry at different rates and it's preferable to dry the same thickness material in a kiln drying cycle.  If it's material that will only be air dried, then it's fine to mix thicknesses in a given stack on a layer basis.

When you're done milling for the day, you can do your best to complete a layer so you can stack maybe another pack of material on top of the one your working on for weight.  Then when you go to mill again another day, uncover it and continue adding layers.


 

 

 

I've had a lot of these 12 foot long material pallets that hardie board or other material has been delivered on, so I cut them down to 8' and add more stringers for more support, then screw stickers to the top above the stringers.  I've built my own pallets before, but this is by far the easiest.  If you can find where building materials are being delivered  on these most people want to get rid of them.

[Andries]

Bur oak flitches for planks and the wind hasn't moved the rain cap yet.

[Joe Hillmann]

As much as I hate double handling the wood I found that when I am sawing I take the boards off the mill and put them on my 5x8 utility trailer on edge. when I am done sawing I drag the trailer to the area I want to stack then stack it. I found trying to stack and sticker during sawing leaves the sawmill idling more than it needs to. It also allows me to thoroughly sort the boards and stack them accordingly.

Double handling sucks but if you are rough with the wood the more times you handle it the more the sawdust falls off.

My (kind of) solution to the OP's problem is a running gear with two long beams on it and no deck.  I park it about 4 feet from the side of the mill.  I stack wood across the beams on it perpendicular to the mill.  I try and keep the lumber sorted by length, width and thickness.  At the end of the day or the beginning of the next I pull it to each lumber pile and stack what needs stacking than on to the next pile.  It is far from ideal but it works and it allows me to have as many as 8 or 9 different stacks on the wagon at any time.

I also connect a snatch block to one of the beams on the running gear to load logs on the mill.  I usually keep the logging winch on my tractor and connect the running gear to the hitch on the winch.  The cable runs to the snatch block, turns 90 degrees, goes over the sawmill, around the log and connects to the center of a chain that is connected at both ends to the mill.  That way the tractor never has to get disconnected from the wagon and I can still use it to load logs.

[Nealm66]

I'll do some thinking on it. Really appreciate all the advice/ideas. I was testing my new removable log bunks today 

 

[Brad_bb]

But you didn't answer the question... Do you have a machine with forks that you can move lumber pallets/packs with?

[Nealm66]

I do. I can see where pallets would work. Just not sure as I do a lot of 16' stuff. I have leveled up a couple long beams in parallel and put 4x4's every 4 feet. It's actually what I'm using now. Just need to make 3 or 4 or 7 more for the different sorts I guess . Would be nice to have a few portable lumber racks about 8' tall that would support multiple different sorts of the same length that are easily leveled. Would take up a lot less room. Just have to tinker and make some failures to see if it's even feasible

[doc henderson]

they make cantilever racks for mounting back-to-back or against a wall. might give you some ideas.  @tomthesawyer had some 14 feet tall so not portable on the road.  set on concrete but gave him room for some variability.  so, you do not want to drive down the road but exchange different ones for in your yard?  Use the limit of your ability to lift, both weight and height, to arrive at width and length of a pallet.  With what you have said, I see a rack that can hold various pallets and stack them to add to later with your different lengths of boards.  Still trying to understand your goals.

[doc henderson]

If you make skids with uniform distance between runners, then they can all stack on top of one another with alignment of the runners.  you can stack and unstack to get to different length packs.  then all you need is a flat concrete slab to station pack for air drying.

[Nealm66]

Thanks again everyone. Doc, my goal is to improve my process for somewhat temporary lumber stacking. It can take me a couple months before I get a chance to move the lumber home. I  think the idea of stacking the parallel boards would be like making pallets? I like the cantilever idea simply because of the space saving but not sure how to build in a mobile setup. I like caveman's idea but would need multiples for the different sorts and would take up a lot of room 

[Nealm66]

Even if a guy had to do some assembly of a rack type system I think it would save a lot of time in the long run. I'm trying to figure out how to build with lumber instead of all steel to save money. Also a design that could be leveled quickly on uneven ground. The ground I do most of my milling is all glacier run boulders with a sprinkle of top soil so good winter job but can't blade a flat spot. I keep going back to caveman's temporary idea as well but modified taller and adjustable somehow? 

[chep]

You could use scaffolding adjustable feet as corners. Adjust easy as needed

[doc henderson]

the cantilever stuff needs a firm attachment to something.  if back-to-back, more like a T then you need to balance the load.  go to a big box store and look at their stuff for pallets.  they make standard that the shelf/arm either lock into or bolt onto.  with wood, I would make it a broad base (not cantilever) more like a shelf or rack.  someone had pics, but it was loaded from the end, by hand.  not sure you could lift the whole thing.  so yes, over the road?  good luck and keep us posted.

[moodnacreek]

After ruining lumber and handling it too much I learned : you need a forklift. Saw all the same items from the same lengths [and thickness]. Sticker and bundle in a standard width for all bundles. Thick stock, squares etc. do not mix with boards and if stacked with said bundles go on the bottom. These bundles you make are the platform for more until you can't go any higher.  If custom sawing for someone who needs odd sizes then they have to deal with it, leave that stuff loose.