Rough cut for roof boards/sheathing

[Mad Professor]

Got to repair my Mom's barn.  Has horizontal ramdom width ( 8-12"), might be original chsetnut? looks like it.

Do I :

Use rough cut pine
rough cut hemlock
rough cut locust.......

4/4 , span is close to 2 ',.......leaning to hard wood.......


This should last but NOT a 100 year keeper......

[jdtuttle]

Pine or hemlock will be fine. Locust will work if you want to pre-drill every nail hole.
jim

[Raphael]

I'd lean towards the hemlock as it's something of the middle ground between ease of use and strength.

[shinnlinger]

Hemlock is my choice also and around here it the cheapest if you were to buy it from the local mill.

[DBailly]

I'll agree. Hemlock seams to be the better choice. I used hemlock as a replacement on a barn floor recently. It's a bit heavy when wet but its strong and fairly easy to use.

[routestep]

 +4 for Hemlock. I used 4/4 rough cut hemlock for the roof and ship lapped the sides on my shed. Did the floors and loft decking with 8/4 stock, just nailed them down after they dried a bit. I had six, eight, and ten inch widths so I didn't have completely random widths and I just alternated the widths as I went up the sides of the shed. Worked out OK.

I made a rather long infeed/outfeed table to support a board as I cut the edge using a dado blade on my little Dewalt. The fence was long too, about sixteen feet. It took a while to cut all the edges for the ship lap, the shed is 24 feet long.