OldJarheads Milling Thread...

[4x4American]

What's up with the height and width?  Are you using 2x6's for stickers or are you saying the pile is 2' x 6'  ???


Suposta not stack wider than 4' so that the inside of the pile dries evenly and without mold...you can go wider, but need to leave gaps next to your boards...

[OlJarhead]

Of the l umber.

So if stacking 2x6's 8 feet long on a 42" pallet system -- I'll make that more clear ;)

[coppolajc10]

Would you mind explaining your stickers chart more, please?  What is the "per row" column representing?  How did you figure your number of layers?  Thank you.

[4x4American]

So the 2 is the thickness not the height?

[OlJarhead]

Thickness yet -- I've corrected and made the chart more readable.....and included more here:


Took the length, 'thickness' and width, added a quick formula to get board feet per board and boards per 1000 board feet (simply divided the bf of each into 1000), then divided 42" of pallet with by the thickness of the board plus 1/2" air gap between them (and rounded) then divided the number of boards in a 'layer' (in this case 6) by the total number of boards in 1000 board feet which gives me 19 rows.  Since I lay down a row of stickers first then a row of boards this means I'll have the same number of rows for both.

Make sense?

[OlJarhead]

 
To be clear I'm calling a 'row' 6 2x6s laying on a pallet.  A layer is each row.  Each layer needs stickers at about every 18" so divide the length of the board by 18" and add 1 for the end.

[Jim_Rogers]

I would like to suggest another idea about sticking or stacking lumber.
I use a 1" thick sticker, some times an oak one that is 1 1/2" wide. Some times an air dried white pine sticker that is 2" wide as when I edge boards I drop by 2" and this kind of automatically makes sticker stock.

I believe I read in the kiln drier's handbook that the spacing should be 2' on center not 18".
I use 2' on center as 18" doesn't divide up evenly with the length of the lumber I cut. For example 96" / 18" = 5.33, 120" / 18" = 6.67, 144" x 18" = 8, 168" / 18" = 9.33, and 192" / 18" = 10.67

When you stick or stack lumber on stickers it was recommended that the sticker be very close to the end of the lumber so that the drying crack would only split the piece back to the first sticker.
So when I stack and stick lumber I inspect the ends. If I have a nice end on one end and a bad end on the other I put the good end right close to the sticker. And let the bad end over hang the sticker a bit as most of my lumber is cut with 6" of trim. Sometimes only 4" but usually longer then the even foot mark.

If I have two good ends I pick one end and make that end close to the end sticker.

If I have two bad ends I place it so that there is an even amount of overhang on both ends.

I make my sticker 48" long, but actually cut them at 49" just to make sure that they are long enough for my lumber stacks.

Next, I stack my lumber with some spaces between the boards to allow the air to flow and hopefully dry out the lumber with out creating any blue stain by having wet lumber touch wet lumber.
So in a stack of 1x4's I put 11 pieces in a row. In a stack of 6" wide boards I put 7 pieces per row. In a stack of 1x8's I put 5 pieces per row. In a stack of 1x10's I put four per row. And in a stack of 1x12's I put three. Some may say my 1x12 pile could take 4 but I put three.
Next, my lumber yard isn't big enough to have a lot of piles of lumber. So I stack the same length lumber on one base and put each size on a different pallet made for that length lumber.

So with a spacing of 2' on center I use 5 stickers per row on 8' lumber, 6 stickers per row on a 10' stack. 7 on a 12' stack, 8 on a 14' stack and 9 on a 16' stack.

You can do the math and figure out how many bdft per row if you wish.

Here is a drawing of my lumber stack:



 

The above picture is of a stack of 8' lumber. Widest on the bottom.

This is just my way of doing things.

Here is a drawing of a lumber base:



 

This is so you have good support all the way down to the 4x4 cross blocks and high enough to allow good air flow under the stack during winter months when there maybe snow on the ground (if you have snow in your area).

Here is a drawing of a stack cover:



 

This will hold down the top row of lumber and shed the rain water from entering the pile.
Both the lumber base and the lumber cover shown are for a pile of 16' lumber. I make shorter ones for the actual length of the lumber being stacked.

Here is a picture of a lumber pallet:



 

My forks are only 42" long so I needed to have a support board there to catch then end of the fork so I use five 1x4's for the pallet deck. And 2x4's for the base so that I have enough room to get the forks in between pallets when stacked up.

In the above picture the sticker is nailed to the top of the pallet and is an kiln dried oak sticker.

Again just my method of doing things.

Jim Rogers

[coppolajc10]

OlJarhead thanks for taking time to explain.  Still confused over the stickers "Per Row" column.  maybe your formulas are running upside down in that column?  8' lumber should have few stickers per row than 20' lumber.  I'm probably looking at things wrong here, sorry if I am, just trying to understand. 

Jim, nice post.

[Darrel]

Maybe I'm having  a bit of CF because I am confused.

Why does an 8' stack of 19 layers get 135 stickers and a 20' stack only get 108 stickers?  :P

[Ljohnsaw]

Maybe I'm having  a bit of CF because I am confused.

Why does an 8' stack of 19 layers get 135 stickers and a 20' stack only get 108 stickers?  :P

Note the note at the bottom.  Pallets are loaded with 1,000 bf of the specified lumber.  So, you need more layers of 8' then you do with 20' boards.  I'm presuming that 1,000 bf is the max your tractor can lift?

OlJarhead thanks for taking time to explain.  Still confused over the stickers "Per Row" column.  Maybe your formulas are running upside down in that column? 8' lumber should have few stickers per row than 20' lumber.  I'm probably looking at things wrong here, sorry if I am, just trying to understand. 

Jim, nice post.

I think that column is upside down as well.

[OlJarhead]

Oops!  I think I flipped that because I started with 20 feet....I'll fix that when I get home!

[OlJarhead]

 

 
Fixed

[OlJarhead]

Hi All!  I'm starting to come out of hibernation! :D  8)

Supposed to head 107 miles north to mill in Medical Lake tomorrow but snow might push that off a couple weeks and then I have a booking for the 25th of March for a half day job....and finally, just got off the phone with a customer in Mallot that has 118 oversided logs from the local plywood mill (means they are all 24+ inches) that he wants milled up by April!  Oh boy I better get cracking!

[Peter Drouin]

 

[OlJarhead]

Hmmm......118 Logs though some of them are around 45" and he may want to do something else with them.  My thought it slab them down a little with the chainsaw and go for it   Probably worth it in the end.

However, BOTH grease zirts came out of the elbow on the claw / log turner!  Ok, one came out (pulled right out) and one was broken off.  I was working through my 'post winter' lube and service and came across the first zirt.  It just pulled out and was clearly stripped.  Next I looked at the second and it was broken off.  Hmmm.....I tried the old trick of sticking a small screw driver in the broken zirt body and it pushed the zirt to the bottom.  No matter what I did.  it was like there were no threads at all!  I ran a small screw driver down the inside of the hole and NO THREADS.

What gives?  I have a tap and die set and will have to run to the hardware store for some new zirts but I'm a little po'd over this one.

And....I'm pretty much kicking myself silly.  I didn't cover the mill this winter  :( >:( but did brush ATF over everything.  The mill was covered in snow and the rails rusted.  I was not happy, having not moved or used the mill in 3 months, to have to be out there with a wire brush busting rust all afternoon.  I'm wondering if straight grease over the rails would work better when it sits for a long span in wet weather?  I can tarp it next year (and WILL) but that won't stop moisture from getting to exposed metal.

Anyhow, I have 19 logs to do tomorrow, 30 to do in the next few weeks, 50-118 to do in the next week or two and a few more jobs on the go...I'm liking it and the mill should be paid off by April  8)

[OlJarhead]

 

 
I think I am going to suggest he pulls out the logs with sweep and any oversized logs and set them aside in one deck for consideration.  Then have all of the good saw logs in the main deck.  I can mill the best up until either we get what he needs out of them, or we run out of logs, then we can look at the oversized stuff and work on that leaving the logs with sweep until the end where he can decide if he wants to mill them or cut them into firewood (which he suggested on the big stuff).

My thought is that I may get all he needs in a hurry because this is all oversized logs from the plywood mill which means they are all at least 24" at the butt end (they can't mount them on the big lathes that peel the logs if they are over 24" but I think that's the butt end of an 18 footer vs the small end).

And as mentioned they are all 18' long he tells me.  So we're talking a LOT of 400-500bf logs here :D

[Magicman]

The factory grease zerks are pressed in.  You can tap the hole and use replacement screw types.

Good decision on the big logs.  I would tackle the rest of those 118 logs in a heartbeat if the customer has log moving equipment and help available.   8)

[OlJarhead]

He says he has log moving equipment (which in my mind is a must due to the height of the log decks) so it should be no problem to redeck the logs.  I plan to chat with him today.

[OlJarhead]

The factory grease zerks are pressed in.  You can tap the hole and use replacement screw types.

Hmmm pressed in?  That explains the lack of threads but why would they do this?  In my case, not knowing it I tried to drive screw driver into one so I could back it out (and old trick)....which resulted in the remaining portion being driven further in -- and how do you get them out once they break off?  I suppose you can drive one in on top of the other and eventually they will stop going down but that doesn't sound like good policy and I don't want to have to remove the darn log turner just to get a piece or zerk (I see I spelled it wrong -- to me they were always 'zirts' or 'zerts' funny that).

[pineywoods]

Them pressed in zerks are a pain if they get broken off. Next to impossible to drill out, usually can't drive them out with out dis-assembling everything. I have resorted to drilling and tapping a new hole.

[Kbeitz]

If your lucky you can screw an easy-out into the broken part to
extract it. Sometimes there is a hole deep enough to get one started
in it to pull it out. There is also a very small ball bearing in the very end
of the zerk. Make sure that little ball wont get into something that might
cause you more problems later. Watch when buying a new one that they
now also come in metric sizes.

[Bruno of NH]

I just got these new tools for the mill and other equipment
The small tool has an easy out,tap and wrench for the fittings


  

  

 
Bruno

[Gearbox]

Just slip a 1/4 inch socket over it and tap in a new one . try threading a steel roofing sheet metal screw in the other one . then pull it out . you want to use the screw with the rubber washer as they are hard as heck .

[Magicman]

Google removing broken Zerk

[OlJarhead]

\
So I had the mill at the local machine shop to install my new umbrella support and decided to just have them clean out the holes, tap and install new zerks.  Wasn't expensive though admittedly would have been cheaper if I did it but it was easy enough to have them do it too ;)


The new support isn't much different than what I had done with PVC but it's stronger and puts the umbrella over me instead ;)


They did nice work and the support is fully removable

Now when it rains I will have a place to stand that will be a little drier though the umbrella is a little high perhaps.  I can, however, cut about 6" off the umbrella pole to bring it down lower if I want.

For now this will work and if I find one with an elbow this should be good.

I was headed to my first customer of the year when he sent me this pic and advised me his logs were frozen solid together   he will have to wait two weeks now.


Going to a muddy one but I'll do it anyway