How To Stack Lumber Like A PRO!

[Music] [Music] so welcome back everybody today we need to do a project that has really been waiting around much much too long if you see this wood right here these are some pine boards these are the pine boards that we cut down and milled i guess it was three weeks ago something like that i'm not sure i got a couple of videos about it failing and milling pine trees parts one and two but it's high time to get these stacked and i've been waiting so i can have time to make a video out of it and they need to be in a stack before they start mildewing and molding and getting that blue stain on there like i really don't like so we're gonna go ahead and do that today so what i'm gonna do is show you how to stack boards properly so that they'll air dry properly and what we're gonna do is go ahead and measure these so we can figure out what kind of area that we need and then we'll get to it so we'll go ahead and measure these boards real quick first and that'll give us an idea of exactly how many pieces of foundation material that we need all right so we're looking at 153 inches almost 13 feet so i think what we'll do is we'll put them in this spot right here you need to find yourself a reasonably level area in your yard to do this the foundation is the second most important aspect of stacking lumber properly and i'll show you why it's the second most important aspect later on in the video but right now we're going to get the tractor and we're going to try to level this out a little bit better doesn't have to be dead level in fact it would be helpful if it's on a very slight slant so when you put your cover on top of it i usually use old roofing tin if you when you put your cover on top of it it'll be on a slight angle just to shed that water so anyway let's go and get the tractor and get this leveled out and we'll go from there do [Music] [Applause] [Music] so i mentioned earlier this part doesn't have to be absolutely perfect it just really needs to be close we'll put our foundation down here in just a minute and then we'll be able to level it out even better with the foundation so right now we've got we've got enough space here this is 150 163 from right there to right here so we have got more space than we need we should be okay with this let's make some timbers to go up under this stack and then we'll go from there [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh so there's a lot of different things that you can use as your foundation to put these stacks on top of you can use fence posts pressure treated fence posts work pretty good you just got to chalk them with something so they don't roll um four by fours work okay you could probably get away with two by fours if you're not in really not in a very damp area but what i'm going to use is this old log we're going to cut it up into four by fours or three by threes i'm not really sure which basically what i'm doing is i'm just making a sacrificial timber to contact the ground to stack this stack on top of to get the stack off of the ground so we don't get a lot of moisture coming up from the ground termites are really not a factor because these are only going to be stacked for you for six months to a year so it's really not a huge deal let's go ahead and get started this log has been laying out on the ground for a year to a year and a half and i haven't done anything with it so this is um seems like a pretty good pretty good use for it so let's get started so so so so [Applause] [Music] [Music] so so [Music] all right so i was able to squeeze out six of the ugliest four by fours that you'll ever see out of that log but these do not have to be any kind of perfect because they're just going to be sacrificial boards that go on the ground so that's exactly what we needed there's four here there's two on the ground and these will work absolutely perfect for what we need so let's get rid of these scraps and we'll get going on making our foundation for the stack [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so so i think the rule of thumb is something like you need a board you need a sticker every two feet for support you can actually get away with a little bit more than that i think the ones i'm doing here gonna end up being something like two feet and six inches apart but what i've done here is i've laid out one of our boards this one's just slightly shorter than the one we measured earlier and i'm just going to kind of space these timbers reasonably yeah they don't have to be perfect just kind of reasonably even so that we get a very even support base for this stack and like i said it doesn't have to be perfect these boards have a fair amount of structural integrity to them so they're going to support themselves fairly well so now what we're going to do is we're going to take this board excuse me cricket you're a big help can i have my board oh thank you so now what we're going to do is we're going to take this board and use it as a straight edge to see how even our foundation is and it is pretty good if you see down there i don't know how well you can see it but that timber down there really needs some help the rest of them seem to be okay so i'm gonna get a shovel and i'm gonna put a little bit of dirt up under that in timber and i think that's really all that we're going to have to do as far as adjustment goes it worked out pretty well so i mentioned something just now that i need to i guess i need to kind of clarify i said that these boards have a fair amount of structural integrity in and of themselves well what i meant by that is that the space between these timbers does not have to be exactly even because up to a certain point you're just going to have you know enough structural integrity in the board that the board is not going to sag now if you have too much space between these timbers yeah your board is going to sag and you're going to ruin your stack but if you you know if it's not too far off you'll be okay but ultimately the foundation does have to be solid it's just like life you got to have a good foundation let's check that and see what we got and there we go that's going to be just right i'm going to kind of go along here and tamp these down just a little bit so i was noticing up here on this timber that we got a little bit of wobble going on here and that's causing this one to not be quite right so i'm gonna go ahead and fix this i won't show all that on camera because it's kind of getting boring and uh i'll go ahead and get all the rest of this leveled up and we'll come back and start stacking so guys i've got it where i like it really what you need to do like i said it does not have to be perfect but it really needs to be as close to perfect as you can possibly get it and i'll show you the reason for that later but we've got these how i want them they're not exactly even this way in that way but that's not quite as important i've got plenty of area here to stack my boards they are about two feet and eight inches spaced apart somewhere along in there and that is totally sufficient for what we're doing i wouldn't go a whole lot wider than that you may be able to get away with three i've got some here that are three and they're doing okay but i wouldn't i would try not to go a whole lot wider than that because you're going to end up getting sag if you go too far but let's go ahead and put our first stickers on this and we'll get the stack started and also before we start i want to mention if you have really soft ground this ground is relatively hard but if you have soft ground you might want to tamp it or run over it with the tractor a whole bunch of times or your pickup truck or your car whatever you got just try to get the ground a little bit harder so you don't end up having any any dips or sinks in this stuff right here just make sure your ground is as hard as you can get it of course the optimum thing to do is put this on a concrete slab but that is very rarely an option if you've got a concrete slab you're not going to use it to stack lumber on that's just kind of not really a waste of space but there's more beneficial things to do with good concrete slabs i guess let's go ahead and get started all right guys so i mentioned earlier that your foundation is the second most important part of doing this i don't say that to minimize the time you take on the foundation that's incredibly important but i think this is the most important part of doing this what you need to do is make sure that your stickers are absolutely dead on top of one another and it's really helpful to leave some gaps in these stacks right here between these boards and that helps with airflow and it also helps you to be able to see the sticker below it so you make sure that you have got this sticker positioned directly above it and i'll take you to another stack of wood and i'll show you why this is so important so here's the reason that you really need to spend a lot of time getting your stickers straight if you can see this stack this is some stacking that i did before i really understood how important it was to get these straight if you see this sticker right here and this sticker right here they're about two and a half inches apart and really what that causes is the weight from the stack on top pushes down right here and there's nothing to support it so basically what you have to have is a direct weight transfer from the stack to the ground and that only happens through stickers that are straight if they're not the weight is going to be transferred through the board and really i've seen pictures of boards of stacks that were not stacked properly that looked like bacon that were cooking in a pan they were so wavy so this is the part that you really need to spend your time on [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] so [Applause] hmm so you so [Music] so all right guys that was a lot of work all right so what i'm going to do now and this is really not something necessary that you have to do it'll just make it look a little bit a little bit nicer and i don't always do this but i'm going to do it this time i'm going to take my little saw here and i'm just going to cut these stickers off kind of make it a little more even and nicer looking [Applause] so these little scrap pieces won't go to waste i'll just pick them up and put them up here and i'll use them to um now right before i put the roofing tin on so that the roof and tin won't be laying directly on top of the boards we need air flow even between the ten and the uh and the boards [Applause] [Applause] so guys that is pretty well going to do it for this project i'll declare it a success i think it went really well and if i had a gym membership i would not go today because i think i have done my exercise for the day so really the main thing that you have to remember is two main things good foundation just like life and also make sure these stickers are straight up and down if these stickers are not straight i mean yeah you can be off by a little bit but if they're not really straight up and down you're going to end up with bacon boards they're going to be wavy and they're going to be pretty much useless if you want some really nice boards but this turned out great and we've got it dried in and it should be fine i'll just get some weight so that it won't blow off blow away in the wind i know i'm going to get some comments about the solar kiln i have people asking about the solar kiln every now and then and i have not done an update on the solar kiln because i don't use it anymore and the reason that i don't use it anymore is because it dries it dries lumber it actually does a really good job drying lumber but the way that i built it it has a massive design flaw and it's it's because of the doors the way that i built the doors the doors are in this uh on each side on the ends instead of in the back so it is a back buster trying to get boards in there and get them out and it's just really not worth it so i'm just kind of doing air drying now and it works fine these boards are destined to go inside of the house so i will have to figure out something to do to get these down to a good temperature i'm not a good temperature a good moisture level so they can be used for inside use but anyway that's going to do it guys i really appreciate you all watching this video hope it was helpful and i will see y'all on the next one

Channel: Fall Line Ridge

Views: 52,465

Rating: 4.957356 out of 5

Keywords: fall line ridge, lumber, sawmill, woodmizer, drying lumber, stacking lumber, PRO, how to stack lumber like a pro, how to, homesteading, homestead, wood, timber, DIY, do it yourself

Id: 8Q8gQMOpBDw

Length: 28min 54sec (1734 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021