How wide should stickers be?

[jr_2]

I'm setting up a Nyle kiln with rail cart. I have to weld angle on the cart to support the stickers. I'll be drying mostly 4x4. I do plan to saw some 7/8" lumber too. The cart will be 6' wide and 20' long. Thanks, Lennie

[DanG]

You should place your stickers no more than 2' apart.  18" would be better.

[Frank_Pender]

I like to use 1" x 1" stickers for better air flow in both pre drying and kiln drying.

[ely]

one inch stickers for me, and like they said above every 18 or 24 inches apart. you will want to keep your stickers in line from top to bottom in your stack as well.

[Tom]

....and if you mean length by "wide" then I would say 4 or 6 feet.  A stack of wood greater than 6 feet wide proposes some healthy air moving challenges and wood in a stack like that may retain moisture and mildew.   I keep my stacks 4 feet wide unless I plan on going way up with them.  Then I make them 6 feet for stability.  \

It's tempting to make them 8 feet because that seems to be a standard length that most people are familiar with, but, you will be happier if you don't succumb to the temptation.

[jr_2]

Thank you all, for the information. You have been a lot of help.

[fencerowphil (Phil L.)]

Welcome,  jr_2!

We are all now assuming that you are planning to thoroughly dry a load of
perfect, mold-free and mildew-free straight stickers to use with that shiny new cart and system.

    Are we right?   

 


Suggestion:

Step one.            Lay long stringers across your angle iron sticker supports on 12" centers.
Step two.            Build cross-hatch pattern sticker piles on these stringers on 12" centers.
                                (hunerts and hunnerts of 'em)
Step three.          Dry these as your first load in your shiny new setup.

You won't regret it in the morning, nope, you won't

Phil L.

[jr_2]

Hi Phil L.,
You have a very good point. The stickers I'm going to use test between 10 % & 11% moisture. I sawed them out of 1 X 10s that were on a roof  (under shingles) for 30 years. Would I still be better off getting them down to 6%? I'm sure I'll run into a lot of problems when I get my Nyle going. I think I've found a good place for answers.
Thanks again,
Lennie

[Ianab]

Would I still be better off getting them down to 6%?

I dont think it will matter much. As long as the stickers are reasonably dry (less than 15%? ) you shouldn't have a problem

Cheers

Ian

[fencerowphil (Phil L.)]

A friend of mine had a couple of fabulous red oaks cut - maybe 3000 board feet
came from these two huge trees. Then he turned around and had it stacked and
stickered with strips of the green wood on 4' centers.      Now that is sad.     

Ian has a point.   If you already have stickers reasonably dry, etc., you are fine.
On the other hand,   I never seem to have enough good dry stickers.

(Would a psychoanylist call this "projection" on my part?)

Even Mulberry can make a sticker, if dried on 12" centers.    That was the logic of the close
centers, namely being able to use virtually any species, freshly cut, to be dried for stickers.

Phil L.

[Shawn]

I have some composite deck boards I was going to rip into Stickers. Would that work, or should they be wood also?

[fencerowphil (Phil L.)]

Hey Shawn,
'spensive stickers!
One advantage to 1" dried wooden stickers in the fact that not only do they
do little to impede the drying of the boards due to their narrow contact,
but also they take in some of the moisture of the wet/green board with which they are in contact,
then exchange that moisture.  In other words, the dry stick gets
"wetted" by the green boards in the pile, but then carries that moisture quickly
on to the air.  The sticker acts like a wick where it touches the green lumber
during the early part of the drying cycle.
 
Composites are often fairly impregnable to moisture.   
This would short-circuit the moisture cycle described above.

You might get some staining (often called "sticker stain"), unless you relieve the faces of the stickers in a similar way that some mill-produced stickers are made.   To do this you would run the sticker over a dado blade on a table saw, running a long but shallow mortise down the center of the top and bottom face of each sticker.   (a pain)

Looks like an experiment wouldn't be wasted here.
Of course,  we will all be glad to hear the results. 

Phil L.

[MSU_Keith]

I have a bunch of saw logs on the ground that I plan on having cut soon. I was going to have the sawyer cut a few boards into stickers - but it looks like its best to go out and buy dry wood and rip into stickers?  I hadn't even thought about this until I read this thread.    I don't like the thought of spending money on wood for stickers when I got so much wood on the ground - any other options?  How about old pallet wood from free pallets ripped down?

[Ianab]

How about old pallet wood from free pallets ripped down?

If it's dry and you can make 1" x 1" sticks out of it... it should be OK.

Some woods you can get away with using green stickers, I do it all the time with Monterey Cypress, but it's very forgiving to air dry and resists staining.
Stuff like maple will stain every time if you use green stickers
If you are only drying construction wood then the stain wont matter, but if it's high grade stuff you dont want to ruin it with staining.

Cheers

Ian

[Tom]

Keith,
A quick trip to the dumpster of a building site will get you all sizes of scrap 2x4 and plywood.  Both will produce good (and dry) stickers if run through a tablel saw.

Get permission first.   Lots of these carpenters throw away enough wood to build another house.

[MSU_Keith]

Tom and Ian,

Thanks for the info - the species are red and burr oak mostly with a few maple, hickory and ash.  I'm hoping to turn the oak into wood flooring.  I can get my hands on some plywood but how about particle board or MDF?  I was thinking MDF would be really bad with the way it soaks up moisture. 

The other stuff the contractors use for sheathing around here is the 'foam board'.  I can't believe anyone would buy a house sheathed with this stuff but they're still selling. 

(Sorry to hijack this thread)

[Furby]

Keith,
Another option is if you have some tops or smaller logs, have your sawyer mill the whole log into stickers.
This time of year, bring them into the basement or something for a couple days and they will be more then dry enough.
It won't hurt to let the wood sit dead stacked for a couple days this time of year here in MI.
Just make sure you get out there before too long.
Another way to look at it is if you are going to stack the lumber outside, just use green stickers this time of year.
Not a lot of drying is going to take place when temps are below freezing and if you use "dry" stickers, they'll probly end up wet before the wood really starts to dry anyways.

[metalspinner]

MSU, I like to saw the center of the log into sticks.  The lumber is not good anyway except for a RR tie or something along those lines.  Some of those sticks won't be usable for the same reason the lumber isn't,  but many will be.  As you keep sawing and stacking over time, you will appriciate the importance of good stickers.  Sawing a nice straight oak into sticks will pay off in the long run.

[Don_Lewis]

If you dry Oak, make sure the lumber does not set on steel as that will cause a black stain.

16/4 and larger lumber should use 1-1/2 inch stickers if the load is over 12' deep. If you are keeping at 6-8' deep (front to back as the air flows), 1" stickers would be fine. If you dry less than 16/4,  from green, 3/4" stickers give a little better result than 1" because when you force the air through a smaller opening the velocity is higher and you get better heat transfer. But don't assume then that 1/2" would then be better. Performance peaks at 3/4" and then slopes off as stickers get thinner or thicker. However, if the stack is less tha 8' deep, you can get away with 1/2" or 5/8" stickers with slow drying wood such as Oak.

All of this becomes much less important when the lumber going into the kiln is less that 25%. Airflow has much less effect on drying quality at low moisture contents. That doesn't mean it is always the best move to air dry first, just that if you always air dry first, sticker size is less important

[getoverit]

For those of you that do portable sawmilling for customers, do you supply the stickers for the customer, or do you make them suply their own?

[Radar67]

For those of you that do portable sawmilling for customers, do you supply the stickers for the customer, or do you make them suply their own?

You can cut them from the flitches if the customer does not want to supply or buy them. Or, sacrific a few boards for stickers from their logs.

Stew

[Tom]

I will cut stickers from the edgings for the customer and have been known to saw up a couple of logs.  I do request that they save them in the top of their barn in case they want to saw again.

[DanG]

I always cut stickers wherever I don't have enough log left to make something else.  I made a little rack that I toss them into, with slots for the chainsaw to cut the whole mess into lengths at once.  I always have plenty for my own use and for the customers, too.

When sawing someone else's logs, I do the same, but throw them on his pile at log length.  I don't charge for them.  Little things like that keeps'em coming back.

[getoverit]

since I'm just sitting here waiting on my mill to get here from NZ, I've been doing a LOT of reading. Some of it has to do with stickers, and from what I can see it's one of the most talked about subjects on this forum and several others.

I got out my engineering pencil and went to work drawing up a design for a sticker, based on common sticker sizes. Next, I added a few design features to prevent any type of staining or moisture holdup, and called someone in the extruding business about making a test batch for me of 1,000 stickers. The two main requirements were remaining solid to a temperature of 200 degrees F, and positively no seepage of any kind from the sticker material sutch as plasticizers, oil, glue, etc.

One other requirement was an ability to withstand 30 PSI load rating. I tried to find the heaviest wood I could find, and calculated what a 1" X 12" X 48" piece of it would weigh. Figuring that the highest that anyone stacks lumber is 8', and since every other inch is sticker, only 48" of it is actually wood weight. I then added a little to the weight just to have a security factor.

Anyway, I also added some other design features to the whole thing which should add to the strength and also to it's durability. I'm figuring that if they prove to be reliable, you can keep using them for years and years and load after load, even through the kiln process.

My hopes are that I can produce a sticker that will last for years and years, that is so cheap to purchase in the first place that you would be wasting valuable time to try to make any using normal sawing  processes.

I'll try to keep y'all posted on the design and testing process. 

[Dan_Shade]

what material are you considering?

[getoverit]

a high heat plastic and also a wood composite material