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Basswood

Started by SILVERTOOTH, April 09, 2012, 02:13:41 PM

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SILVERTOOTH

Has anyone ever used basswood for a board & batten application?

MHineman

  I have a customer that used Basswood to side a lean-to shed for 4-H calves.  He put up board and batten.  I think we cut the boards at either 6/4 or 8/4. and the battens at either 4/4 or 5/4.
  It was probably overkill, but the last time up there to saw other logs, he was still happy with the Basswood siding.
  I think he saturated the boards with used motor oil.
  I'm planning to used Basswood on my chicken house, but I'm going to put it up as shiplap liding and a good quality paint.
  I'll use Black Locust or White Oak near the ground and keep the Basswood at least 8 inches above the soil.  I'll put gravel along the building to lessen the dirt splashed up on the siding.  It will have to be large stone to keep the chickens from moving it around.
1999 WM LT40, 40 hp 4WD tractor, homemade forks, grapple, Walenstein FX90 skidding winch, Stihl 460 039 saws,  homebuilt kiln, ......

SILVERTOOTH

Thanks, I was just planning a shed also....so not critical if it doesn't last 100 years. Think I'll go with it just to use up some basswood lumber.

Brad_bb

Basswood like a Linden, right?  It's a softwood that's easily workable.  Used in model making and some carving.  I don't think it would have much rot resistance.  If it could dry out like on the East, South and west sides not being shaded... Probably not much different than soft pine in that application.
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just_sawing

Bass Wood is legal to put in a stack of tulip poplar when sawing. There for I imagine that people that side with poplar could get Bass as a result. I don't get much on the mill but like cutting it.
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SILVERTOOTH

It does rot quite easily if wet. I do cut some to burn in the wood boiler, just because I'm thinning it out from more valuble trees in hardwood thinnings, and it starts to rot about as quick as it hits the ground. Not much good for heat either. But, I've seen a few sheds sided with popular that seem to hold up well if clear from the ground, so if its comparable to that it may work. I thought roof boards could be another option???

D L Bahler

Often times if done right, the normal concerns for 'exterior' uses of wood don't apply to things such as siding and shake shingles. For example, in the Alps houses are sided and roofed entirely with fir, and this is something that if kept near the ground will rot.

The key is that the wood is all kept at least about a foot from the ground, often much more, and the shingles have plenty of circulation on both sides.

Another example is that poplars -true poplars such as a cottonwood or aspen have in the past been used for splitting shingles.

What is perhaps more important in such applications is whether or not insects are particularly attracted to it -reasons why I avoid using hickory or maple for shingles.

Al_Smith

For firewood it dries fast just takes twice as much of it per volume to get the same amount of heat such as better firewoods such as hickory or oak .Something like early or late in the season it isn't bad when you don't need a rip roaring fire .

Siding it would probabley be okay for a shed or out building if you kept paint or some preservative on it on a regular bassis .

tyb525

Basswood is a poplar, and it was used many times on barns out here. Just keep it at least a foot off the ground. No need for paint, that just traps the moisture. Stain would be better, but it will all fade to gray eventually anyways.
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beenthere

tyb
How is basswood a poplar? Just wonder what you are thinking. ;)
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

Al_Smith

If paint wasn't used for about the last zillion years I don't imagine wooden structures would have lasted very long .

You don't paint both sides of the board .

On the other hand it seems if you keep everything all nice and pretty with paint the tax collectors like to reward you with increased taxes for your efforts . ::)

D L Bahler

modern film paints aint a good idea for things like basswood. The paints they used 200 years ago were a lot different, well adapted to the purpose.

Things like oxide paints, blood paint, tar paint, etc. which are more like modern stains than they are like modern paints, they won't form a 'shell' like modern polymer paints do, which eventually will peel and allow water in -and hold it there.

The biggest concern with a coating is not to block water, but to block UV and stripper wasps. water is secondary to these two major contributors to wood damage, if the wood is clear of the ground and put on so as not to trap moisture anywhere (air movement on both sides)

Basswood, or Linden, or Lime, or Linn as we hear it called around here, is not a Poplar, poplars are of the genus Populus, Lindens are of the genus Tilia. But Basswood can be mixed with Tulipwood and marketed as 'whitewood' as the two woods are very similar. Tulipwood isn't a poplar either, but around here we call it poplar...

And Al, that's a benefit of Indiana, tax collectors take your word for it, and then you only pay 1%.

Al_Smith

Hooray for Indiana, boo for Ohio. They'd tax the air we breathe if they could figure a way to.

So the general consensus is that paint is bad I take it? First I'd ever heard of that. Well I guess it's old crankcase oil then. ;)

D L Bahler

paint is good, IF you take care of it very well. That means, pretty much, re-coating it often (like, every year or two). If you are not going to do that, then you are better off not using it because once it starts to peel, your wood is doomed.

Personally, I'd rather have something that lets the wood grain show through. Go look at a real old barn that still has its original paint on it (maybe you'll have better luck seeing it on old siding now covered with sheet metal, or that is now inside of an addition) if you've got one that's old enough, it will have red oxide on it. This stuff looks more like a deep red stain than a film paint like you'd put on today.

Some folks mix diesel or kerosene with a pigment, folks think it sound dangerous but it's no more toxic or flammable than any other solvent-based paint.

I prefer as light a coating as I can get away with, my all time favorite is also about the oldest there is, pine tar and oil, lightly applied.

I want to venture into making blood paint some day, made out of steer's blood with the clot removed mixed with linseed oil, a touch of salt, and any pigment your little heart desires. There's a door on a house in Denmark that was given one coat of this concoction in the late 1600's and hasn't ever been repainted since, still looks fine today. But being a modern man, I'm a bit touchy about slapping blood all over my walls.

Maybe if I would use lamb's blood, then I could keep my firstborn son from being killed :) (sorry, the idea of blood paint always makes me think of Exodus)

Al_Smith

I don't know about basswood but the carriage barn on the place my mother lives was built prior to the house and the house is circa 1919. About every 7-10 years it gets a coat of paint and it's doing just fine.

It's a post and beam frame, sugar maple with pine siding. Nearly 100 years old and other than replace a few boards no real problems. Nothing special about the paint just standard old water base latex.

Now I'll agree you're best to stain something like cedar because it won't hold paint worth a hoot.

Since they took the lead out of the paint most of the giant dairy barns have all fell down mostly due to lack of a good roof. What few still standing have been metal sided. Prior to though they laid the paint to them. So either a majority of Ohio farmers didn't know what they were doing or it did some good.  ;)

beenthere

Not everyone will sign on to the ideas that D L Bahler believes. And personally I don't follow the reasoning either. There are good paints for dry wood, and there are penetrating semi-transparent stains. Modern doesn't mean they are not good for treating and protecting wood.
In the past, they used what they had, and agree they did pretty well with what they had to work with. ;)
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

D L Bahler

Let me step back a minute here.

I don't mean paint doesn't work.

What I mean to say is that, if given to disrepair it will cause more trouble than it prevents.

And if the giant dairy barns in Ohio are like the giant dairy barns in Indiana, then they're old wooden siding is probably white oak. Couldn't rot that stuff if you tried!

Al_Smith

They were timber framed with oak but excepting a few they weren't sided with oak.

Way back in the days of lead paint if the wood have dried out it became like a sponge. It was cheaper to first daub them down with linseed oil then wait a couple weeks then swear on the paint.

They were mostly sided with pine. Even though pine is not native they've had railroads since the mid -late 1800's to haul the stuff in. FWIW my parents house is framed with Douglas fir.---vinyl siding these days no more of that paint business.

D L Bahler

When was your area settled?


Al_Smith

Probably around 1800 but there wouldn't be anything left from that era of time. Those big barns were likely from 1890-1900 on to maybe the 30's at the latest.

Now there might have been some out buildings or small barns that were oak board and batten but there weren't many.

Historically the little carriage barns were used then as we use a garage today. Near the house and used to house the carriages plus a few head of driving horses. These could be quit fancy. The main barn was usually located about the middle of the property.

Two reasons. First the smell was away from the house plus it was center ways from all the fields to move the big draft horse to till the ground and harvest the crops.

Around the late 60's the type farming in this area went from dairy or livestock to grain farming. The big old barns became more of a liability than an asset and as a result they get torn down either on purpose or a big wind takes them down. Fact just last fall they took one apart about 500 feet from my house and burned the oak frame work for fire wood. It by the way was pine sided with "car siding". It was erected in the 20s'. --  barn trivia Allen County Ohio.

D L Bahler

Our area was settled first in the 1840's by German Baptist and Amish settlers who brought with them their massive forebay barns, quite a few examples of which still exist dating back mostly to the 1870's and 80's. Later settlers were German and Scotch-Irish who moved in from North Carolina and Virginia mostly, I believe it was. These brought with them a simply 3-bay barn that quickly became the dominant style among the non-Amish, and to some degree among the later Amish barns as well.
Most everything was built by locally sawn wood probably until the turn of the century, maybe a little later. The barn directly behind my house was built in 1910, same year as my house. The house was framed with shipped-in pine, but the barn with local hardood. Most is circular-sawn oak, but long plates and purlins are hand hewn because no sawmill around could saw logs that long in those days. The siding is all circular-sawn oak, covered now with sheet metal.
From the teens through the end of timber framed barns in the 30's, they were sided with pine.

Al_Smith

Barns trivia side. The original question was linden aka basswood.

Back when they cribbed ear corn I've seen them use cotton wood. The trees were plentiful and all they had in them was the mill charge to saw the lumber. They would tin roof them, no paint at all and get a good twenty years out of them.

Now I'm just guessing but if lousy old cottonwood would last 20 years with no paint you'd about think that basswood would do okay with some type of paint or preservative. If you already had the logs it certainly would be cheap enough even if you had to pay mill charges. As soft as it is they ought to be able to fly through it with a sawmill.

tyb525

Sorry, I was thinking of cottonwood. Wood is not like metal, it doesn't benefit from paint nearly as much. and like DL said, if it gets the slightest breach allowing moisture in, the rest of the paint will trap it in, and that causes rot. Wood that is vertical, off the ground, will last as long but most likely longer than wood with paint, unless it is painted so often that the paint forms a perfect moisture barrier. A tiny imperfection in the paint can let moisture in, eventually causing the paint to bubble and peel.
LT10G10, Stihl 038 Magnum, many woodworking tools. Currently a farm service applicator, trying to find time to saw!

Al_Smith

Here we go with paint still. Okay now paint trivia.

Long ago they made two types of house/barn paint. Chalking paint that would kind of "wash off " with the rain which kept the surface nice and clean and non chalking which would not bleed or run used on the trim pieces. Oil based lead paint.

Now those pine or whatever sided houses didn't rot from the inside out just because they had paint on them ill  regardless if it was chalking or non chalking.

Parts of the structure that allowed rain water to become trapped behind trim pieces over doors and windows eventually would rot but that has nothing to do with weather they had paint on them or raw well head crude oil.

When they built the things and had paid attention to the design or spent some of that moldy money on chalking compound likely they wouldn't have rotted in the first place.

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