Lap Siding

[Randy]

I have a customer that wants to lap side his cabin with 8" wide boards. What should I reccomend the thickness be? I don't have a lap-sider. He is going to let the boards air dry for a few months, use them straight off the pile and drill every nail hole when installing. I was thinking of cutting them on 3/4 minus the saw blade thickness. They will probably dry to app 5/8's. Is this to thin? He has yellow pine and poplar, Which do you think will be the best for lapsiding?? He is going to leave it natural, maybe some waterseal or do you reccomend something else to spray it with. Oh, how do you feel about a lap-sider, should I buy one? Do you charge more to cut lap siding with this attachment?  How do you air stack angle boards that are cut on a lap-sider? I think I must have eat Question Soup for dinner . As always---THANKS!!  Randy

[Ohio_Bill]

Randy

I cut some lap sideing  out of white pine it was 8" wide and I droped the blade 3/4 " which ended up about   5/8   . We put it up wright off the mill , with great results .

[Andy Mack]

I'm presuming lap siding is like our weatherboard in principle.

The boards can go up green, they might shrink but there is sufficient overlap to allow for it.  Not that I'm an expert

[sigidi]

Randy, i'm not sure if it's applicable to you over there - but timber is timber.

Round here ya put weatherboards/siding up green, if ya wait around it'll warp and cup on ya then you just haf ta cut it again!!! ours generally are 5mm thin side and 20-25mm thick side, but I just slapped up a whole bunch all 17mm thick for our "bathshed" and they have performed great, also they where 6" not 8" Admittedly some of the m should never have been used regardless of green, dry or tapered, just not good timber - so I've had to carefully replace them, but otherwise they are doing great.

[Tobacco Plug]

Randy,
I have used the lap sider to cut weatherboards.  I think that if you aren't going to use one, the thickness you describe (3/4 less kerf) would work fine.  As for species, I used both on my house and have had good results.  A few pieces have split, but they should have never been used as they had a crack in them to begin with.  Bad judgement on my part when culling materials.  I dried my weatherboards by stacking them in pairs, thinking that they would be thin enough and that I would use them soon enough that mold wouldn't develop.  However, I did my drying in a tobacco barn with some heat put to it.  The lap sider is a lot of work, as you must first square up your cants before cutting siding, but it does make a nice product.  When I have cut for a customer, I have charged an hourly rate both to cut the cants and to make the siding with the attachments.  I used a loader on my tractor to move the large cants.  I have only sawn weatherboards like that for one cusomer but he was satisfied.  By the way, we cut poplar at his place.  Good luck.
 

[Andy Mack]

While thinking of weatherboards. 

   http://www.radialtimber.com/start.htm

[ARKANSAWYER]

   I make alot of siding and I do lab siding out of regular boards and tapered boards.  Most like the tapered boards as they lay flat to the building and keep more weather and bugs out.  I saw the lumber 1 1/8 thick and air dry for a few weeks.  Then I split the boards on an angle with my ARKY re-saw and put a 1/4 by 3/4 groove in the bottom edge so that they over lap tight and have room to expand.  I put one nail in at each stud about 1/2 inch above the groove.  That allows it to expand with out cracking.

 

[Randy]

Arkansawyer--------- I like the looks of your lap-siding and the Arky Re-saw. What are you doing the 1/4x3/4 grove with? I don't have electricity out in the field to run a shaper or router.

[Arthur]

We cut weatherboard off the log and use it that day. 

If you have the labour and cut next to the wall you should be able to keep up with log to wall in one movement.  Most of the labour will be wall side.


arthur

[Hammy]

Well from a Peterson perspective on about a 7" drop, our lap siding attachment will cut a board with 3.0mm at the top end & 20mm at the bottom end. This is about 1/8 on the thin end & just over 3/4 in imperial. Captain will probably correct me if I got those conversions wrong. This is with an angle of 5.5 degrees.

All the best Randy 

[ARKANSAWYER]

  I cut the groove with a shaper here at the house.  It is mounted to a pallet that I can load and haul if they have 110 close by.
   One of my customers did rip out part of a 2x6 and drill some holes in his chainsaw bar and mount it so he could make the grove with the tip of the chainsaw.  I do not have any photos of it but it did work quite well.  He sided an 1800 sqft home that way and was pleased with the results.

[Kirk_Allen]

Dave,
How did you make the jig for the resaw?

[Rockn H]

Arkansawyer, I like your resaw attachment.  May have to try that chainsaw/jointer.  Bet I could do some dado, tongue and groove not to mention lap siding.  Know a camp owner with a purple and green saw that will love this idea, he should be a poster child for those guys.  He's been wanting to put siding on his camp only we wanted to do it all onsite. Now I have the answer, seems simple after you drew me a picture.  Good info and smiley faces, what a place.

[Smakman]

I know it might be wasteful, but what if a fellow quarter sawed his siding?  Would that reduce warping and cracking?

[spencerhenry]

i cut "lap" siding for a house last year, i was cut square, no bevel. i milled it 3/4 rough, went up just fine, and looks great, as i recall it covered over 2300 sqft. i am a framing contractor by trade, and do alot of exterior finish. lap siding simply refers to pieces overlapping each other. tapered boards with the rabbet, is what my commercial lumber suppliers call bevel lap, it is a better way to side a building, but in my opinion not worth the extra effort unless you have specific dedicated machinery for that purpose.

[ARKANSAWYER]

  My ARKY re-saw is a flat 2x8 that has a 1x3 screwed to the side by the blade with a knotch cut out for the blade to drop down into.  On the clamp side I have a piece of 2x4 screwed in that the clamp grabs to hold it down to the mill.  The two boards above the blade are finger boards and hold what you are splitting down at the blade and are screwed to  a 1x4 housing that goes over the resaw and is screwed into the sides.  I keep the blade in place by tying the head to the axle where the safty chain goes when traveling.  I push the boards in from the back and feed them end to end and the last I push through with a 1x4.  Can split about 90 8' boards an hour with a helper.  I get the angle by screwing a piece of siding down to the 2x8.  I also use it to split thicker boards down so the siding board has to be removable.  A sharp blade is a must and some wax on the back rail and siding board on bottom help it slide easier.

[sigidi]

great little set up ther Arky,
I hope the leg isn't keeping you away from the mill too long.

[Kirk_Allen]

Thanks Dave.  Thats along the lines of what I thought it would be. 

By the way, we got our chickens and looks like our ducks come in a few weeks.  I wonder if they will become  Dickens with all these chickens leading them around.    Geese come in April.  Turning this place into a farm quick!

[Brucer]

The guy I sawed for last year has a standard product - flat WRC siding, 5/8" x 8". We'd sticker it, shade it, and air dry it -- only took a couple of weeks before it was dry enough for the customers. This was a big money earner.

We'd drop the saw 3/4 inch on each cut, but we had to make the last board a full 1" to clear the clamp. We didn't want any pith in the siding itself (the siding practically falls apart) so we'd always size the cant so the final 1" board held all the pith.

Last fall a local developer wanted about 20,000 BF of bevel siding. He didn't want flat siding, period. The boss figured out how much extra to charge to make the extra handling and aggravation worth his while -- the guy never blinked at the price.

[iain]

I like the look of this wedge stuff

 http://www.radialtimber.com/products/wedgepanpic1.jpg


     iain