Stickers

[LeftFinger]

The village guy dropped off 3 50in pcs of cottonwood about 14" dia

So I made stickers Does anybody like making these? 
 I cut them 1" x 1"
I'll see what they dry to.




another 100 to go maybe

[Larry]

So I made stickers Does anybody like making these? 

I don't.

I used to have a farm where I raised tobacco which was dried in a large barn. The tobacco leaves were speared on sticks which usually were sawed from cottonwood as it was plentiful. Same size as lumber drying sticks. I sawed a bunch for tobacco and at the same time for drying lumber. For drying lumber cottonwood was not my first choice because it warped so bad. It did work and I still have some in use.

[LeftFinger]

my choices for local lumber are limited mostly Manchurian Elm or Boxwood

[beenthere]

Suggestion for good lumber drying using stickers is to place the stickers in a vertical line, one over the other all the way up from the ground support bolsters. 
Helps to balance the load stresses down through the stack and avoid some warp during drying. 

[Ianab]

I don't think anyone LIKES making stickers.    They are just a necessary chore (or expense). 

With the swing blade mill you are basically edging while the wood is still on the log. So while you are taking off the outside taper, you can cut a layer of shorter 1x1 sticks with the mill. It's easy as you can speed through 1" deep cuts, but it's still an up and back cycle, throw the stick aside for trimming, and repeat. If I don't have to make sticks, then the initial waste cuts can be deeper, and go in the firewood stack. 

Luckily the cedars / cypress that I usually cut is forgiving to dry and you can get away with green stickers. I save the dry ones for more fussy wood that's likely to stain. 

[YellowHammer]

Good stickers make good lumber.

It helps tremendously to put all the stickers one on top of each other in a line, and 16" to 20" is about normal spacing.  Otherwise they will cause the boards to "kink."

  

[SawyerTed]

Making stickers is like washing dishes.  If you want to eat, you have to wash the dishes, if not regularly, eventually.   

I used to think stickers were best cut from scrapy logs.   Nothing could be further from the truth.  Good stickers are cut from good logs.  Every evil thing a board can do, stickers can do worse and faster as they dry.

If a sticker is square, how do you know if it crooked or bowed? 

[Rhodemont]

All my dishes are dirty, gotta make stickers.

[longtime lurker]

Good stickers make good lumber.

It helps tremendously to put all the stickers one on top of each other in a line, and 16" to 20" is about normal spacing.  Otherwise they will cause the boards to "kink."

 

^^^ This!!!!

Stripping packs out properly is one of the most important tasks if you want quality product.

It's also something that drives me quietly insane because it's something we used to get right here and now we don't. I'm not quite sure why putting one stick on top of another stick on top of another stick is so hard but I struggle to find staff who can manage it at speed. I've gone from sawing at nominal to sawing fat to allow for the inevitable twist and cup that result from a bad stickering job and then having to work harder in the drymill to clean the mess up because of it.

Make good sticks, they get reused over and over so bad ones get to screw up multiple packs if you don't.

[jpassardi]

It does seem like you always need more stickers...
Never thought I'd say it but I'm actually freeing up stickers for once as I'm using thousands of BF of framing and siding lumber to build my barn.

[YellowHammer]

That's one of the great un-answered questions of the universe!  

[GAB]

I like my stickers parallel on two sides and flat so I saw 1" boards let them dry and then plane them to 3/4" and then saw them to 1" wide on the sawmill.  This helps to keep the sticker police of my case as far as flatness is concerned.  Now about spacing and on being placed on top of each other I use a large tolerance band.
GAB

[LeftFinger]

Don't think of them as sticker police

Rather as the design team for better stickers

[jpassardi]

Be careful: the Sticker Police have been known to seek arrest warrants for violations greater than 1 sticker width of offset...   

[YellowHammer]

Page 43, Section 12, Paragraph 19, line 23 in the Codified Laws of Sawmilling, clearly states:

Line 23: "Good stickers make good lumber."

Line 24: "Bad stickers ruin good lumber."

Line 25: "Kinked lumber cannot be rehabilitated."

My name is Sergeant Friday and I carry a badge!  Daah Da Dun Da! 

[Nebraska]

I saw my stickers on  9/8 on boards generally sawn 3/4 thick so they are not square and only go one way.  If they dry squirrely they become kindling. Usually they are cottonwood, ash or elm.

[doc henderson]

I often make my stickers from one of the boards, of a log I am sawing and will stack as a unit.  I cut them 7/6th or an inch, cut the board length the width of the stack and saw 3/4-inch stickers from that.  enough to tell the prober orientation, and the cuts are more parallel on the table saw.

save, saw, sweep, stack, sticker, secure, and dry one log at a time - Page 2

[WV Sawmiller]

   Since I mostly saw mobile the customer will not usually have stickers. I suggest we start with a short butt cut or such and saw it into stickers as the first log cut on the job because we need them before the first row of lumber gets stacked on whatever dunnage the customer has available. After that log I have nearly always been able to cut stickers ad part of the edging process.

[KWood255]

The last couple years I have sawn all my stickers from poplar logs. I will get 100+ per 8' log, they are cheap and don't stain the finished product. 

[doc henderson]

I tend to use the more unpopular logs!     

[Ianab]

I used to think stickers were best cut from scrapy logs.   Nothing could be further from the truth.  Good stickers are cut from good logs.  Every evil thing a board can do, stickers can do worse and faster as they dry.

If a sticker is square, how do you know if it crooked or bowed? 

I agree that a crappy log will make crappy stickers. Knots will cause them to break, and crazy grain will do crazy stuff. What you need is cheap (but good) logs or off-cuts. So a species that's less valuable, but can still make decent sticks. Or in my situation it's basically the jacket boards of the log I'm cutting, so usually the straightest knot free wood, but it's only going to make short boards because of the taper. 

Slightly different with a band mill as then you can take multiple 1" boards, clamp them upright and cut multiple sticks each pass. So processing a whole log can be done efficiently. With the swing mill, it's a sawing pass for each stick, so doing a whole log would get extra tedious. But cutting a batch of sticks as you open the log often gives enough to stack the rest of the log, or at least replace the dry sticks you use if it's fussy wood. 

I don't have a problem telling if a 1x1 is warped in some way, It just wont sit straight, same as a 3/4 x 1 1/4 wont sit straight. You just have to look down the length, and if it's too wonky toss it in the kindling pile. 

[customsawyer]

We go to the trouble and expense of making sure our mill and other equipment is the best it can be. The simplest/cheapest task (not easy), is proper stickers and placement. The quickest way to get an employee to quit messing up the stickers, is to let them fix them off of the clock. Explain that you have already paid them to do it right, so you shouldn't have to pay them to do it twice. Normally takes one pack and the problem is solved. 

[Ianab]

The simplest/cheapest task (not easy), is proper stickers and placement.

Local sawmill had pallets with a frame at the back where the sticks slotted into, Put a stick in each slot, lay down the boards, then next layer. Rinse and repeat. Forklift then picked up the whole stack, with the sticks in the right place and left the pallet for the next load.

If you can't push stick A into slot B, then you are more a liability than an asset