Starting my new wood shop.

[Don K]

After 3 yrs of talking about it, I am finally pushing ahead on my wood working shop. I originally planned a 36 X 40 shop but decided to downsize to 20 X 24. I know it is small but I can expand later if necessary. This will be drawn out thread as I am still cutting for it but maybe ya'll can come along on the journey with me. Last week I cut all the sub flooring and roof truss material. This week after I cut down a couple more lighting strike pines I will cut the wall studs. I cut this lumber on my new LT 40 and the simple set sure makes cutting dimension lumber easy. Anyway here are a few pics to start off.

I stacked the lumber close to where it will be handy to the site.





These are 2 X 4's, 6's, and 8's. 8, 10, and 12 feet long.





For the heck of it, I will show my New LT40HDD35 I cut it with. For all of you that have seen pics of my old LT 15, you will recognize this shed. The mill sticks out a little on the end but I will extend it later. A lot of sawdust has been shoveled from under this shed.









I'll throw up a few pics later this week after I cut some trees down.

Don

[WildDog]

Looking good Don, wish our aussie hardwoods would stack that straight without strapping :(

[fishpharmer]

Don,
Great looking stack of lumber you have there.  The LT40 looks at home ;)

 

[SwampDonkey]

Nice looking lumber. Gotta like that new 40 and the saw shed it sits under.

Looks like nice weather down there for felling and sawing.  ;)

[LeeB]

Nice wack of boards there Don.

[metalspinner]

Do you mind if I live vicariously(sp?) through you on the shop build? :D

Details? Details? Details? ;D

[Dodgy Loner]

Can't wait to see some progress on the shop, Don!

Also, although I have stacked many thousands of feet of lumber over the years, I am no expert. That said, I have to ask: Have you ever experienced any trouble with warping or bowing from not aligning your stickers throughout the stacks? I see on a couple of layers, you only have two cross-beams for the entire length of the boards, and they are not aligned with the stickers below them. In my mind this would encourage sagging and warping, but maybe I am just being too careful. In any case, keep up the good work and keep us posted!

[WDH]

Don,

Now you won't be needing that log turning winch you built into the shed anymore  ;D. 

One thing to consider.......as you build the main body, shed roofs coming off the main structure are pretty cheap to build and will serve as a good place to air-dry or store lumber.  You may already have this figured in your design, or these can easily be added at a later point in time. 

I built my shop with 10' interior ceilings to allow the handling of plywood (on end) and it gives you good height to attach associated side sheds to fill up with stuff like lumber, equipment, or both  :D.

You need to plan for a Southern Chapter meeting of the Forum (AKA a shed-raisin').

[SwampDonkey]

Yes, give yourself lots of height. You'll kick yourself if you don't.  ;)

[stonebroke]

Are you going to build with green lumber or are you going to wait for it to air dry?

Stonebroke

[OneWithWood]

Looks like a very good start.  I will be following along as you progress.

Dodgy makes some good points on the stickering.  Straight boards are a lot easier to work with.

WDH has a good point about ceiling height.  12' ceilings (or to the bottom of the rafters- why stop at 10?) will allow you to flip long boards and such and will give you a bigger lean-to roof line to boot!

Of course that will require a lot of 12' studs but your new LT40 is more than up to the task  8)

[WDH]

Yes, 12' is even better!

[Don K]

I hear you on the supports. I was trying to get it out of my way and it will not be there long enough to warp. ;D I plan on building the subfloor in the next coupla weeks. I am waiting to get paid so I can buy some high priced PT 6X6's to make piers from.

The trees were standing dead with the bark slipping already. Some moisture left in it, but not like green SYP.

I am going with 8 ft studs and a gambrel style truss and that should give me almost 12 to 15 feet clearance over most of the floorplan. The tablesaw will be the center of the shop so it will have the most overhead clearance.

Don

[stonebroke]

The trees were standing dead with the bark slipping already. Some moisture left in it, but not like green SYP

Don

So you are having a outbreak of pine beetle in Al. also?

Stonebroke

[Burlkraft]

Good luck Don   

It'll be fun to see your shop come together  ;)  ;)

[stonebroke]

Do you have  a pine beetle outbreak in Al.?

Stonebroke

[Don K]

The north has the ash borer, we have the pine beetle. No infestation, but they can take out large patches of pine in a hurry. Danny or Dodgy would probably be a more expert source of info. These trees were struck by lightning and the beetles moved in for a free snack. If a tree suffers some type of bark damage whether from logging incidents such as equipment bumps or dragging the bark off standing trees with passing loads that makes a good candidate for beetles. Seems the smell of fresh sap rings a dinner bell. They bore up through the sap wood and exit out which causes the telltale sign of sap balls on the tree. The tree is a goner by then. I have seen young plantations where the only way to stop the advance is the cut a area around the outside the infestation and lay down every tree. We stop a batch on our place years ago that way. Seems the county was clearing the right of ways and scattered them all up and down the county road. Every place we found them on the 20 acres we cut a 50 foot ring around the patch and layed em all down. Seems they move airborne over short distances or so I've been told. Any way we stopped them.

Don

[DWM II]

Don, those are the prettiest stacks of lumber I ever saw! I know a man that takes that much pride in his lumber stack will build one heck of a wood workin shop.

[Don K]

Donnie, if you want to see a good looking stack of lumber, look at Terry's stacking job on the lumber I sawed for him when I got the new mill.





I've seen some other good stacking jobs on here too.

Don

[Radar67]

Aw Don, you done made me blush. Thanks for the good comment. You have a pretty nice stack yourself. Let me know when you get ready to start building and I'll see what I can do about getting over there to give you a hand.

[Don K]

Well Friday I cut down a pine that yielded six 8' 6" logs. I was able to saw 82 2 x 4's and some random 1x stuff from it. It was not a overly large tree. I guessing 16 to 18 inches on the small end of the first log. That went a long way to furnishing me with my wall studs. I've got to get outside and set a rack to stack on as the other stack is at the height limit of my FEL. This bundle will be about all I can lift anyway. I'll throw in a few pics later.

By the way, we are having some of the coldest, sustained weather here we have had in years. It has been in the mid to upper teens at daybreak for the last few days. I know that is not all that cold to you northern folks but we have to make adjustments down here. I had to add some windshield washer fluid to my H2O jug and have been keeping it in the house along with a 5 gal. bucket already made up. My county has been on a water shortage due to some mechanical issues first of last week and the other day we caught up plenty of fresh water in case. My wife made the remark that we had our priorities in order. We had drinking water and plenty of sawmill water.  :D ;)

Don

[Norm]

Don let me assure you from the great white north I consider those temps to be cold!

Will you trim the studs before use or do you cut a bit over to compensate for shrinkage?

I'm always envious of you folks with trees that yield dimensional lumber. All we have are hardwoods with an occasional crappy softwood here and there. Nothing that would make a decent 2X4.

[Mooseherder]

Looks like Don, Donnie and Terry are all gonna be busy for the next few months.   I sure wish we were living closer to you guys.

[Don K]

Norm, I don't usually cut over for trimming. In the scheme of things the pine I normally saw for myself doesn't shrink alot and doesn't cause any big problems. I may trim my floor joists to ensure I have a really flat floor as I will be using 3/4 T&G plywood for a finished floor. Screwed of course. ;D

Don

[Don K]

Here are a few pics of what I was up to today. I cut two trees off my Dad's place and worked them up for the mill.The first pic is not the trees I cut, even though that shot taken now would be minus one tree.





This what I cut for my projects. Lightning and beetles got these two.




Dragging in a tree length log.




My cousins 81 horse tractor. This thing pulls like a skidder. Make my 47 horse seem toy like.




Three 17 footers in this log.








This is the second one. Looks like a snake. It's got lumber in it though.




Measuring off the first log.

Maybe this is not to bad on you guys with dial-up. I know how much everybody likes pics.

Don