rough cut lumber anyone know about it

[toy]

Shinnlinger I am glad you posted, I was wondering about the 2X4 or 2X? when you are building a building do you frame it up without drying the 2Xs at all? Do you dry your sheeting first or do you put it up green also? The questions that I asked is pertaining to building a house to live in and not just an out building. The idea of nailing one side and then nailing the center of the baton was a good one, that would help stop splitting as the wood expanded and contracted according to the atmosphere. I built a coal house about 4 years ago or longer and I built it straight from the saw mill without any drying and it is still in good shape with no problems. Does it make any difference how the growth rings is turned to help make it more stable when you are sheeting it and also how they are turned when putting on the batons?

There is a rough built house not far from where I live that the man that built it framed it up just like a regular house [with rough framing] and when he sheeted it he used rough lumber but instead of running the boards up and down he ran them parallel and then he put the batons on over the cracks between the boards. It looks like a log house and has been up for I guess close to 20 years and it still looks fine but I was concerned about the batons being a place to catch water and causing rot but seemingly that hasn't happened. The way that he built it though got me to thinking if you built a house that way and instead of using a baton between boards, if you cut a rabbit on each side of the board but one of them on the front side and one of them on the back side and had some of the rabbit showing between each course and filled that in with silicon caulking. and did the nailing just up above the edge of the bottom boards rabbit, do you believe that would work? It would for sure make it look more like a log house done that way. Any suggestions are welcome from anybody.

 

[Egon]

[if you cut a rabbit on each side of the board but one of them on the front side and one of them on the back side /QUOTE]

Shiplap.:thumbsup:

 

[shinnlinger]

Toy,

If I were to build a house like your neighbors(and I probably wouldn't) , I would do it under a 3ft overhang on a one story house. Overhang is a key ingredient to protecting the boards and I strongly recommend as much overhang as you can handle for any construction. Your siding and paint will last much longer. Traditionally, overhang was avoided in cold climes do to ice damning but with modern insulation and cold roofs this is much less of an issue . But I digress, if I was your neighbor I would also bevel the top of the horizontal batten so that it would shed any water that hit it(I do do this on horizontal window and door trim). If I was your neighbor I probably would have just installed the boards like clapboards if I was that broke, but I would have put some let in braces up before I put the siding on

If I was building an entire structure from green lumber, I would frame conventionally, but run the sheathing boards at a 45 degree angle to keep the structure from racking. If this sheathing splits later on it isn't of much consequence as the fibers of the wood are still intact. I would then wrap this in tyvec and side with whatever. vertical furring strips under raw wood under an overhang is an excellent decision as the clapboards stay dry andany moisture that does find it's way in there can easily evaporate

If money was real tight, I would let in brace my frame as mentioned above, and then install nailers avery 3 ft horizontal to the ground and either B&B or cut 1/2 boards (used to be very common for barns in these parts) and install board and board.

 

[/pine]

...as much overhang as you can handle for any construction. Your siding and paint will last much longer...

Sorry but this is bad advice for anyone living anywhere near hurricane zones...current building practices require minimal overhang (without extensive engineering and added costs).... just check with your insurance company and check their coverage for "wind damage"...

the thing is...the least amount of surfaces that create lift the better...

 

[toy]

Shinnlinger When I built my house we put the sub floor down at a 45 degree angle out of dressed 1by12, we did it that way because that is the way we had seen it done with rough lumber. We used plywood on the sides and then put siding over that. We put fanfold between the plywood and the siding. I was just a ole nott headed youngin when I built my house and I paid for it as I went so I have never had a house payment except for a house trailer while we built and then I sold that as soon as I moved in the house. I used a 2 foot overhang on my house because Dad recommended it to get the water from the runoff of the roof away from the basement and in my area that was a good idea. I understand PINE'S view on having the large overhang in his area. When I built my house I built the basement with one end above ground so that you could just walk in without going down steeps and the ground gradually raises so that there are not too many steps to get into the top floor of the house. I did that because of my Dads health was declining and I wanted him to be able to get to any part of my house without any trouble much. I gave little thought that one day my health would also decline as I get older, I am glad that I thought of Dad when I was building. I am gradually moving into the place where Dad was then and things will be easier for me. I mentioned that so that it might be an idea others might want to think about when they plan on building whether it is a house or an outbuilding.

As PINE made us aware of there are different concerns for different areas of the country. The suggestion about making sure you go through the zoning commission if you are in a zoned area. Where my Mom and Dad live they put a bill on the voting ballot to see if they could get a zoning area set up, it was defeated. They can still build a $75 dollar dog house if they want to and it won't cost them $400 in red tape and bs and their dog won't die of old age before they can get it approved.

SORRY to the original poster for derailing his thread for a while, but I believe that the majority of posters don't see a thing wrong with using rough lumber. I hope you build a nice one to hold your machinery in.

 

[shinnlinger]

Pine and Toy, To clarify, I said put as much overhang as you can handle. What you can handle on the coast of South Carolina may be different from what you can handle in Oregon's Willamette valley. IMO, It just makes good building sense to have as much overhang "as you can handle" and I behoove anyone who is building to consider that point.

I can add to this point that if you orient your house so it runs east west, you can take advantage of passive solar heating. In the south, that may be a bad thing. I have a 40" drip line on my house and what that does it it allows no direct sun in the house on the summer solstice, but allows the sun to hit the back wall on the winter solstice. My siding also rarely gets wet unless the wind is really blowing.

 

[toy]

Shinnlinger I understood what you were talking about, I am always interested in how people do things and what their reasoning is for doing it the way they do. Since we live in different parts of the country we can learn the concerns that each of us have in building as it pertains to the location where they live. I have a 2 foot overhang on my house, while most homes in my area have a much smaller overhang, I am glad that I went with the 2 foot overhang. I enjoyed reading your posts. I stopped at a yard sale one day and there was an outbuilding close by and it looked really nice, it was built out of rough lumber and the finish that he had put on it looked real nice. I commented to him how nice it looked and we walked over to it and I noticed a strong diesel fuel smell and I asked him about it and he said that he had mixed diesel fuel and transmission fluid together and coated it. He said that after a few months that the smell would go away, he also told me that was how all the old timers did their barns and he said that a lot of the barns out lasted the farm houses. I have been by that garage several times over the years and I can't tell that there has been any change in the appearance of it at all. The old farmer said that his mixture would outlast any of the sealers on the market at the home centers.

 

[some zilch]

slight hijack, but still on topic:

i just built a 12x14 shed to house my atvs from rough cut. the siding is 1x8 pine boards. do i need to put anything on it as a sealer so it does not rot prematurly? i do not want to paint it, as i like the looks of the wood.

 

[shinnlinger]

Zilch,

If you have decent overhang I would keep it raw wood. I am sticking with raw wood on my house. LOts of old barns in my area, over 100 years old still have their original pine siding that has never seen a drop of paint. I'm not saying the siding looks brand new, but in 100 years I doubt you will care much what your ATV shed looks like. Pine will chocolate brown over time. IF you don't have overhang, put a gutter on it and drain to a rain barrel.

That said, once the wood has been up a year(to dry out), and since your shed isn't huge, you can melt up a pot of paraffin wax on a double boiler (read big coffee can in metal bucket of water over your turkey fryer) and mix it 50/50 with diesel if your pinching pennies or kerosene if your feeling a little richer. SPray that on and see what happens.

If your real cheap, used oil from your ATV's will work too, but it can be more stinky, some claim it is a carcinogen, and if your neighbor works for the EPA you might have problems. It will also make your structure look much older.

 

[Spudland_Dave]

I've been working on plans for a 30x40 garage/shop....been looking into all my options. Looking to save wherever I can I been looking into many options, and they all have me right back where I started...just buying "factory" 2x6's

What I found:
-Option A....My brother's lot has BEAUTIFUL Big, Straight pines with hardly any taper...He wants to get rid of some and offered them to me for free. Looked into sawing them and the cost was just marginally lower then factory wood with no guarantees on lengths of lumber. Add to the mix factory wood comes in the lengths I request and delivered "free".

-Option B...Buy "pre sawn" rough lumber from a "mom & pop" lumbermill....little cheaper then the custom sawing, but still not a big savings. Big plus was I get lengths I request.

Add to that, the "oddness" of rough sawn lumber. Brackets have been mentioned, but in my case where eventually I'd like to finish the inside, this makes a huge difference...The entire "construction world" is geared towards a 2x4 being 1.5x3.5 and a 2x6 being 1.5x5.5.....entry doors, windows, trim, sillcocks, etc... all come sized perfectly as such. Just another dimension of PITA I needed to think about.

When it was all boiled down I came to the conclusion that unless I could get the wood free and saw it free, its cheaper in the big picture to just buy factory lumber.
IMO, the only use I can see rough sawn being ideal on is for trailer decking and for large posts like has been mentioned

It was a humbling experience...I was stoked at first to be offered "free wood" and thought about how I could slash the costs, but the joy was short lived.