Author Topic: Making battens (Read 1371 times)

Qweaver · « **on:** March 18, 2014, 07:11:55 PM »

I fired up the sawmills last Friday for the first time in many weeks. Sawed 2"x10" blanks out of a 38" poplar with the Peterson, loaded them on the LT28 and made a hundred 3/4" battens for the new garage. The snow was all gone and it was warm enough to work in a shirt. The Woodmizer and Peterson sure make a great team. It felt really good to be making sawdust again. I may have a hard time giving up these saws.

The only flaw was that the drive motor on the Woodmizer was fussy again but worked OK after I pecked on it a few times. PITA

Small Slick · « **Reply #1 on:** March 18, 2014, 07:40:57 PM »

I am very interested in your project. I also plan on using poplar for board and batten siding on my cabin. Why did you choose poplar and how wide will the boards and battens be?

What kind of finish will you put on and will they be rough sawn. Or sent through the planer?

Small Slick

red oaks lumber · « **Reply #2 on:** March 18, 2014, 08:16:58 PM »

john
their poplar is differant than our popple. you can use yellow popple which will behave nicely but, if you use white popple all bets are off , that stuff will give you more fits than you mother in law

Small Slick · « **Reply #3 on:** March 18, 2014, 10:57:28 PM »

Do you know my in laws? Its more my father in law than her; don't get me started. There could be a whole forum just on my in laws!

Any way I'm clearly not very smart I thought popple and poplar was just a linguistic difference in regional dialects. Ok. What is the difference between yellow a d white popple?

John

Ron Wenrich · « **Reply #4 on:** March 19, 2014, 06:57:42 AM »

In the east, we have yellow tulip poplar - Liriodendron tulipifera. Its actually in the magnolia family. The same as the cucumber tree.

What you have in your area is aspen. There are mainly big tooth aspen - Populus grandidentata and quaking aspen - Populus tremuloides. Its in the poplar family. We don't get a whole lot of it in our area and a lot of it rots before it get to sawtimber size.

Tulip poplar has a green heartwood. It is also more dense than aspen. Both would be considered a soft hardwood. We get some big poplar in our area. The biggest I've put on a circle mill was 42". The widest I can cut on the mill is 21". Yellow poplar is fairly stable, even at the wide widths.

I don't have much experience with aspen, but I imagine it would work as for siding as any other softer wood. They usually are prone to rot if you don't have a good eave or good gutter system to keep water from splashing or laying against it.

Qweaver · « **Reply #5 on:** March 19, 2014, 08:46:28 AM »

All of our house/cabin and most of our other sheds and garages have been build using the locally abundant yellow poplar. I saw mainly 8" & 10" widths. I only plane what is going to be used for paneling and trim. All of my beams, framing and siding are rough cut and stained with Flood CWF/UV stain that also treats against fungus.

richhiway · « **Reply #6 on:** March 19, 2014, 04:53:52 PM »

What is the benefit of sawing the cants on the swingmill? Are the logs just to big to fit on the woodmizer. Like to see some pictures?

Qweaver · « **Reply #7 on:** March 20, 2014, 07:09:06 PM »

Quote from: richhiway on March 19, 2014, 04:53:52 PM

What is the benefit of sawing the cants on the swingmill? Are the logs just to big to fit on the woodmizer. Like to see some pictures?

I can't easily saw a 38" dia. log on the band saw. And there is far less kerf loss on the band saw when making 3/4" cuts.

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