Drying lumber help

[breese]

Here's the situation:

I have a pile of about 2500 bdft red oak pulled out of the woods last weekend.  The ultimate use for the lumber will be flooring for a house I'm building.  I plan on having the oak sawn by a portable mill, stacking in my pole barn, then hauling boards to a mill to kiln dry and mill into flooring. 

I'm looking for advice on pile height and width, sticker type and placment, etc.  Done this before a couple of times, but always looking for better ideas .

Also any recommendations on the best way to have the logs sawn.

Thanks for any help, really enjoy the forum. 

[Brad_S.]

Welcome to the Forestry Forum, Breese. Always nice to have another NYer on board. 8)

IMO the best way to saw is to quarter saw if the logs have the size and quality. It makes a stunning floor. Second best is to grade saw, but you can lose a lot to edging when making flooring. Sawing through and through or sawing to a specific size gives more defects (if you consider a knot a defect, some don't) but will probably give you the highest yield for flooring purposes.

I like to keep my stacks in the 4' wide area (my fork length) and stack them as high as I can to let the weight of the lumber keep itself flat. I use dry hardwood stickers that I've planed to a consistent 3/4" thick every 16"-18". I'm sure you know a level, sturdy base is a must. I also stack inside a pole barn, I run parallel to the wall, about 2 feet out from it, and stack to the rafters. This allows airflow, but not too much as oak needs to go nice and easy.

[breese]

Thanks for the reply.  So tell me a little about quartersawing. 
Logs are in the 20-24" range, 10' long, straight and clear.

I will probably have to provide a lot of direction to whoever does the sawing, there seem to be a lot of portable bandsaw operators around and I've had better luck with some than others.   

I've certainly seen a lot of quartersawn oak, don't know much about sawing technique to get it.

[Brad_S.]

There have been a number of discussions on the Sawmilling forum that you can do a search on.
I have shamelessly linked to Urbanlogger's site to show you his page on quartersawing. (Hope you don't mind, Scott) I personally use a method similar to 2 for quality logs and method 1 for marginal logs.
http://www.scottbanbury.com/quartersawing.html
If you choose to go the QS, find a sawyer who already knows how to do it, don't break one in on your logs. QS will cost you more, but I think the extra cost is worth it.

[WkndCutter]

Brad,

Nice link on the quarter sawing.  I use method #1 myself.  For the drying thread I would just get the boards out of the weather.  4/4 quarter sawing and sticker stack as mentioned by previous post.

Andy