Tell me it ends

[PAmizerman]

Those who have been sawing for decades...will I ever be done making stickers?

[Magicman]

For me it will be when I stop making lumber. 

[Southside]

I still recall that first time I made stickers, stood there looking at what in all reality was a minuscule pile and foolishly said "that should be more than enough"....

[Jack jr]

You guys need a breast bench, making stickers becomes nearly fun.
Cheers Jack jr

[Magicman]

I actually prefer to grab a junker log before I start a saw job and saw it entirely into stickers.  That gives me a jump start when the lumber is being stickered as it is sawn. 

[Resonator]

One option is to buy stickers ready made. Or check with a huge commercial lumbermill, they may have some used ones they want to get rid of.

[Magicman]

I should have added that my situation is a bit different because I always saw for a customer.

[Bruno of NH]

I made 2 large racks full twice already this spring 
I looked over today and it's time already to make more 

[Old Greenhorn]

Well I haven't been sawing as long as most but the math is pretty elementary and linear. I worked up some calculations, but then thought about some variables, such as rot, mechanical damage, and general loss. SO I consulted with on old friend who work as a computer mathematician. He knows nothing of sawing, but is really good with the numbers. After explaining the various loss scenarios and replacement rates required he worked up an algorithm and plugged in the numbers I thought were reasonable. We also came up with high and low variations to create a spread. It was pretty conclusive.
The answer to your question is..... NO.
 Hope this helps.

[jpassardi]

Yeah, you sure can chew through them in a hurry... I pretty much don't go more than 18" O.C. 

[mudfarmer]

Running out of stickers? Good, you are making lumber!

Putting those stickers back in the pile? Good, you are (hopefully) making $$$! 

[Ianab]

I've got into the habit of always sawing some 1x1 sticks from the top of any reasonable log. Sure it takes a few minutes more than just slabbing off the top, but it makes a few spare stickers every log. 

[rusticretreater]

It only ends when you make/buy so many stickers that you can't use them all, or when your  sawing days are no more.  Take your pick.

[SawyerTed]

An avid fly fisherman finally passed.   He got to his place in the afterlife and it was a beautiful trout stream.  Next to the stream was a fisherman's cottage with all the amenities a man could need including a well equipped tackle room. 

The fisherman arrived mid afternoon and soon a ghillie came by and took him to the stream to fish.

They saw trout rising so the ghillie instructed the fisherman on where to cast.  He laid out the line and leader perfectly.  The bite came and the fisherman struck and fought the fish.  It was a very pretty 9" trout. 

As the fish were still rising, the fisherman continued casting and catching the prettiest trout one after another until nearly dark.  They were all 9" fish. 

The fisherman was escorted back to his cottage and the ghillie indicated he would be back at first light the next morning. 

So they fished again the next morning and as custom has it, they started in the same hole they fished the evening before.   

The results were the same, rising trout, perfect casts and lovely 9" trout. 

The fisherman started getting bored catching what appeared to be the same trout over and over asked the ghillie if they could move up or downstream.  The ghillie said, "Club rules require you to cast to rising fish in the hole you are in.  As long as fish are rising you must cast to them."

The fisherman said, " Seems like a restrictive rule for heaven."

The ghillie responded, "Nobody said anything about heaven!"

So the short answer is,  "There is no end to having to cut stickers." 

[longtime lurker]

With 16' boards figure 12 stickers to the course, 20 courses to the pack, 2 packs a day, at least 90 days air drying before it goes to kiln..... I haven't really got that many but be getting close.

Last year's decision to change pack width so I could stack packs higher safely was taken after much serious consideration. The deciding factor was that replacing every danG sticker was only going to become a bigger and bigger task the longer I left it.

Imma be cutting stickers forever.
You're going to be cutting stickers forever too.

[Cedarman]

Most of the cedar flitches we run through the edger have an edging strip that we put in a X  jig.
We cut them 42 to 44" long as that is how wide our lumber stacks are.  Non usable wood goes on a belt out to the hog.  When jig is full we cut and put in a stick holder.  We have an unending supply of stickers.  We use them over again if they are good.  Some break or whatever. Customers want some, no big deal.
Cedar stickers do not stain when drying cedar.
I feel for you guys sawing hardwood.
We use 4 stickers per 8' or about 30" between.
Cedar is very forgiving.

[Ron Wenrich]

We didn't do much stickering, since our lumber was sold green and was shipped when the load was finished.  But,  we did have to sticker lumber that was going to sit for a couple of weeks, during hot weather.  We also stuck white pine when we sawed it.

We reused the stickers and put them in a 4x8x4' box.  We had a couple of them.  We reused the stickers and never cut any.  They were always dry. 

[Rhodemont]

Hit the jackpot!  I was sawing stickers this afternoon when I remembered that my mill was down on the other end of the property several years ago and I had sawn a huge pile of oak stickers and put them in an old shed.  Jumped in the Gator and rode over. A couple hundred stacked and dry!

[Peter Drouin]

Mine are 2' apart So 16' will take 9. I make grade stakes 1"x1" the ones that don't make it for that are stickers. All hardwood.

[SawyerTed]

In our area people still have tobacco sticks.  Tobacco leaves 24" or longer were tied or sewn to hang over a stick about 48" long.  Then a stick with green tobacco leaves is hung across poles (tier poles) in a purpose built  and heat was applied to cure the leaves.  Early on the heat came from wood burned in a sort of hearth and routed through the barn with large flues.  Thus our type of tobacco is called "flue cured". Later fuel oil and propane supplied the heat. 

So often I have customers who have thousands of tobacco sticks that may have been on the farm a hundred years.   Many on our farm are easily that old.  Customers want to use tobacco sticks as stickers. 

A tobacco stick is about 48" long and approximately a 1x1, usually hardwood and mostly oak.  Flimsy and crooked tobacco got culled.   

The problems with the tobacco sticks include dirt that's been ground in for a hundred years and uniformly.  Tobacco when green has "sap" or "gum" that sticks to everything.  When combined with the very fine red clay particles of dirt, it cakes on anything with regular contact with the leaves, including sticks.

Newer tobacco sticks were sawn and often sawn from flitches or cut from edgings much like our stickers.  Thickness varied, strength was more important.  What's a 1/4" here or there? 

The oldest (or most financially challenged farms) would make split tobacco sticks using a mallet and froe.  We still have split sticks in our barns - thousands of them.

You talk about a sawyer's nightmare!  Just imagine barrels of dirty, irregular sticks coming out to stack and sticker a load of beautiful lumber you are sawing.   And imagine the sticker stain - dirt and tobacco gum! 

[caveman]

We've been sawing a good bit of 1" boards lately.  The edgings are put into an accumulator that I recently made.  Yesterday evening, I used it for the first time to cut stickers.  It worked better than I could have imagined.

The strips are bundled together and cut with a chainsaw every 44".  

[longtime lurker]

That's a better way of doing it than my system. Thanks for sharing, I'll set up something similar next week.

[Brad_bb]

I pretty much sawed stickers as I sawed lumber, getting most from good edgings, which is not really the best way to do it.  I think it only worked because it was all standing dead Ash, so it was pretty dry already. I was lucky because of that, I had very little if any sticker stain.

If I had it to do over again, I'd purchase the dry spiral stickers that have very little point contact with the wood. That would be the way to avoid sticker stain.

[SawyerTed]

Here at home I'm finally getting a supply of dry stickers built up.  

On every portable job I have to cut stickers.   

I've posted before about my method.   I stack boards or flitches on the mill as for edging.  Then I measure and make vertical cuts for my sticker length.  Each pass with the sawmill cuts a batch of stickers.  

[Sixacresand]

I make mine like Postonwidehead,  but i don't use a fence , thus have to pick them up off the ground.